7 Mistakes Insurance Agencies Make When Outsourcing Content Creation
A familiar story goes like this. An agency picks a content vendor in January, pays the first invoice in February, and by June has eleven blog posts that the owner would never put in front of a client. Who messed up? Hard to say. The vendor did the job as described.
Frustrating, isn’t it? The writer usually isn’t the weak spot. The trouble starts before anyone types a word: a vague brief, a vendor chosen because the quote was low, a contract nobody rereads. Who writes counts. How the job was set up counts nearly as much. Seven mistakes cover most of what goes wrong, and none of the fixes costs anything close to a rewrite.
1. Never checking whether the text is original
Copied content tends to surface last, and often by accident. One freelancer runs the same template for three clients. A new writer lifts a definition from a carrier’s brochure and swaps a verb. Google finds ten near-identical pages and ranks maybe one. Your name is still on yours. Picture a compliance officer spotting reused wording in a live ad. You’d be the one explaining.
The check is quick, though. Scan each draft against the web before it goes live, using a tool whose report people outside IT can follow. GetSolved offers a free online plagiarism checker that does this. Paste in the article or upload a DOCX, PDF or TXT file, and it compares the text with billions of web pages. Seconds later you get a similarity percentage, highlighted passages, a link to each source and an export for your records. It also marks sentences that look machine-written, which helps when a vendor insists everything was typed by hand. A first scan needs no account, and the text isn’t stored for good.
Decide beforehand what you’ll accept. Stock phrases and quoted definitions, fine. A whole paragraph that matches another site, no. With plagiarism detection in play, a rewrite request rests on a percentage and a list of lines, not a hunch. Make the scan a condition of acceptance in the contract and file every report with the invoice. If someone disputes the work six months on, the answer is already in the folder.
2. Hiring on price
A cheap quote feels like a win until the draft lands. Take a writer who spends Monday on gym memberships and Tuesday on SaaS pricing. Do they know an umbrella policy from excess liability? Probably not, and readers notice. One shaky definition and they begin doubting the rest of the page.
Short samples tell you little, since anyone can fake two pages. Pay for a small trial instead. Ask for something in your own line of business and read it with a producer beside you.
What to check | Good sign | Red flag |
Terminology | Handles terms like named perils and coinsurance correctly and explains them | Blurs “coverage” and “policy” or stays vague |
Questions asked | Wants to know your preferred carriers and who’s reading | Takes the brief without asking anything |
Sources | Ties each claim to a state or carrier document | Cites statistics with no origin |
Accuracy review | Names the fact-checker | Says “our editors handle that” and moves on |
Watch the vendor who agrees to everything. Or says nothing. People who never push back rarely think much about your market.
3. Briefing in one line
“Write something about business insurance.” That sentence has probably launched more forgettable posts than any other. Leave gaps and the vendor fills them with guesses. In a market the size of a county, guesses miss.
Twenty minutes on a brief saves weeks of back-and-forth. Include:
the reader (restaurant owners in your county, not “small businesses”);
one purpose for the piece: a quote request, a renewal nudge, or plain education;
products and carriers you place, and ones you don’t;
a couple of tone samples you like and words you never use;
disclaimers and license details that must appear;
pages on your site the article should link to.
Revise it after each project. Anything the vendor asked twice goes in.
4. No compliance check
Every state plays by its own rules, and an outside writer has no way to know them. Promises about savings, “guaranteed approval,” testimonials, side-by-side rates, any talk of a carrier’s financial strength: regulators care about all of it. Your compliance officer probably struck a few phrases last year. The freelancer never heard about that. So “lowest rates in town” goes in, because it sounds like normal marketing. To a regulator it’s a claim with nothing behind it. Who gets the letter? The agency. Not the vendor.
The fix is plain. One person approves everything. The vendor gets a written list of banned claims and required disclosures before the first draft. Every figure carries a source, and a figure without one stays out. Laws also move around, so ask your own compliance contact whenever you’re unsure. Don’t lean on what a vendor remembers.
5. Writing for nobody in particular
People type small, practical questions into a search bar. “Contractor insurance requirements in Ohio.” “Does renters insurance cover a stolen bike?” A generic national piece answers neither. A page that answers one earns trust quickly, and trust is what eventually gets a stranger to call.
Map your topics to the questions buyers ask along the way, from the first vague worry to the last comparison of quotes. A roofer in hail country has different problems than a restaurant owner two hundred miles off, and the articles should say so. Your producers field these questions daily, so ask them for a list and pass it on. Add local detail only when it’s real: state minimums, regional weather, nearby industries. And request a keyword plan before the first draft, not after. Each piece should start from something people actually search.
6. Counting the wrong things
Page views are nice to look at. They don’t cover a producer’s salary. Plenty of agencies sit through monthly reports packed with traffic graphs and still can’t say whether content sold a single policy. Agree on what to measure before signing, and tie it to revenue.
Metric | Where to find it | What it tells you |
Quote requests from content pages | Form tracking, call tracking | Whether articles lead readers toward a sale |
Organic clicks on target queries | Search Console | Whether your topic plan matches real demand |
Time on page and scroll depth | Analytics | Whether readers find the material useful |
Email replies and renewals after campaigns | CRM, inbox | Whether retention content works |
Revisions per deliverable | Your own project log | Whether the brief and vendor suit each other |
Go through the table with your vendor every quarter. Drop what earns nothing. Put the effort into the few pieces that bring in calls.
7. Handing over the keys
Some agencies find out months in that the vendor controls the domain connection, keeps drafts in a private account, or owns the image rights. Leaving then feels like a hostage situation. A similar slip: emailing client records so a writer can “personalize” examples. That shows sensitive data to people with no reason to see it.
Get the basics in writing. Finished work is yours once you’ve paid. The vendor gets a limited-role login, never your admin credentials. Customer information stays in your own systems. The agreement lists turnaround times, included revisions and what happens if you leave. Tedious paperwork, no doubt. It also keeps one bad quarter from turning into a bad year.
A short plan for the first month
Seven fixes at once is too many, so pace yourself. Week one: rewrite the brief and name a compliance reviewer. Week two: scan every draft that arrives. Week three: agree on lead-based metrics with your vendor. Then, before you sign any retainer, give a new candidate a paid trial.
Content work rewards patience and punishes shortcuts. Underwriters know that better than most. Bring the same habits to it: clear criteria, verification, a paper trail. Stick with them and the articles in your inbox will be ones your producers are glad to forward to clients. That’s the real test.