3 months ago I wrote With Jack’s year in review post. This was after only 4 months in business—1 of which was a soft launch. After putting my 81st customer on cover this week, I looked at some of the same figures that lead to that post.
Three months ago, my figures looked like this:
- 16,449 visitors
- 153 quotes
- 41 customers
- £10293.93 gross premium written
Today, they look like this:
- 19,482 visitors
- 247 quotes
- 81 customers
- £20377.29 gross premium written
Traffic has dropped considerably, which is inevitable after the buzz of launch day fades. So have the number of quotes I’ve processed. Despite this, my conversion rate has improved and I’ve generated another £10,000 of Gross Premium Written.
I wanted to gain a better insight into these figures. I’m putting the same number of people on cover despite a drop in traffic and quotes.
I took to the solo founder group I’m a member of and asked why they thought this was.
The consensus is:
Insurance is a yearly purchase. Much of my audience wouldn’t have been ready to buy insurance initially as they had existing policies.
Secondly, With Jack’s launch garnered interest from a user base that isn’t my market (geographic eligibility/fit the criteria). It also exposed With Jack to people who are my market and used us to arrange their insurance. They now follow With Jack on social media or recommend us to their friends, exposing us to more of our target market without the same footprint as launch.
Our overall footprint is smaller, but our target market footprint is bigger.
This sounds right. More than 50% of my visitors have come from the States. (I still receive quotes from people outside of the UK—even thought it’s a .co.uk. domain and the currency is in GBP—but fewer than before.)
I’m also seeing more sign-ups through recommendations. I’d love to encourage this behaviour with a referral program.
Top Sources of Traffic
Three months ago, my top sources of traffic were:
- Designer News
- This blog post
- Product Hunt
Today, they look like this:
- Designer News
- Organic search
I’ve been focusing on creating content, so I’m happy to see organic search performing well.
What I’m more interested in is traffic that converts. Whilst I stupidly didn’t track this from day one, I have Goals set up in Analytics. They monitor my CTA click-throughs and those who complete a quote and submit their details.
The traffic that converts best is:
- Organic search
- This blog post (Difficult to know if these are legit or out of curiousity)
- Business Health Checkup Tool
- This blog (hiya!)
Jack's Strategy
When I launched With Jack I had no idea what would work. I still don’t. But 6-7 months in I’m building a better picture of where to focus my time, energy and money.
Content is performing well. I think this is because most insurers don’t cater their content to creative professionals. They can tell you why a tradesman needs insurance or a solicitor, but not a web designer or developer.
Some of the stories I’m sharing about insurance for creatives invoke action or plant a seed. I’ve just paid for sponsored content on a popular blog, so it will be interesting to see how that converts.
I also built a tool that generated more quotes in 2 days than the entire week before. Few of these have converted yet, but I’m hoping there’s a delayed effect and it’s a slow burner. The response to the tool has been positive.
As the months progress, I’m hoping less of my marketing will be guesswork and more decisions will be informed by data.
Something tells me, however, that it doesn’t matter if you’re 7 months or 7 years in—marketing is a constant experiment and full of surprises.
