After earning his finance degree from the University of South Carolina, Chad Stalvey imagined himself working on Wall Street. However, when the 2008 financial crisis swept the nation several months later, Chad was forced to reevaluate his career path.
Fortunately, he was offered the life-changing opportunity to take over an agency in North Augusta, SC, where he could apply his financial background toward helping local families and businesses with their insurance needs.
Getting started wasn’t easy at first, though. Fresh out of college, the then 25-year-old worked close to 80 hours a week, and his wife had just had their first child shortly after becoming an agent.
However, his hard work has paid off, and his agency now serves around 2,000 households.
We caught up with Chad to learn more about some of the challenges he faced during his first year, his initial approach toward digital marketing and where he believes the future of the industry may be heading.
Melon Local: What challenges did you have to figure out during your first year?
Chad: I was 25, so I didn’t have much experience running stuff myself.
I think many of the challenges I had were hiring and training a team and finding out the best processes and systems for our agency.
While that was all going on, we moved to North Augusta — a city I’ve never been to — and my wife gave birth to our first child, a brand new daughter!
I was probably working about 80 hours a week during the first year because I wasn’t too sure what the best way to get everything done was.
So, I thought if I just went in there and did everything myself, then it would work.
As far as marketing, we tried everything because I was in a new town and I didn’t know anybody. We tried billboards, direct mail and internet leads.
ML: What was your initial approach to digital marketing?
Chad: I had no idea about that space whatsoever. We were buying internet leads, and that was probably the only thing we were doing that was based online. It wasn’t until a few years in I realized that’s not how I search for things.
If I’m going to find anything, I go online and search for it, and if I do that for myself right now, I’m probably not at the top of the list. It’s something I probably thought about more in the last five years.
One of the other things I started doing myself was making a lot of posts on Facebook and looking online at ways to improve my ranking if someone searched for insurance in our area.
Then I talked to someone two years ago who said they were using y’all, and I said that it sounded like something I should be doing.
ML: What was it like when you first started talking to us?
Chad: I was looking for someone that’s been used and liked by other agents, and I ran across you on a Facebook group. And everybody in that space said you have to try Melon — so I did!
Everything on that demo looked good, but to be honest, I was already sold just based on the sheer amount of agents who said they’ve used y’all and said it worked.
I eventually signed up with y’all in September of 2021 and started doing ads online, and those have happened to help a lot!
ML: That’s awesome to hear! Can you tell us about some of the positive results you’ve gotten through us?
Chad: We’ve gotten more leads and conversions. We’ve also written more auto and fire insurance policies this past year than we’ve ever written.
Even during the previous year, we maxed out our auto growth target around September, and we weren’t hitting anything for fire yet.
So I mentioned that to my Client Success Manager, and he said, ‘hey, let’s just change around the ads to be more along the line of homeowners and anything else in that field like renters insurance and that kind of stuff.’
ML: How does it feel having such a dedicated Client Success Manager?
Chad: I am thrilled with him. It’s nice I have the same person to talk to every month!
He’ll call and say, ‘hey, listen. I can see we’re down in the number of leads you had this month. We can look at doing something different.’
It’s the same person; it’s not only that I’m going to be the only person to lay eyes on it. I feel that he has the best interest of our agency at heart, too, so he’s always looking as well to see if anything needs to be changed on Melon’s end too!
ML: Where do you see the future of the industry heading?
Chad: I’ve been with our company for 13 years, and even in that time frame, I’ve seen a lot of change. Earlier, when I first started, we used to send out a lot of mail.
Print is not as common anymore — everything’s going online. So I mean, that’s definitely the way stuff is going.
So I would encourage anyone to not only advertise online but to improve their presence to make sure they’re getting reviews on Google and Yelp and all those sites to make sure you’re popping up at the top of a list if someone is searching for insurance in your area.
Learn more about how Melon Local can help with your unique digital insurance marketing needs by scheduling a demo with us!