Is your insurance website working hard to help you build your business? It should be. If you’ve got a modern, mobile-friendly responsive website, it can be a powerful tool to help you bring in more leads, better serve your existing clients, and present you as an authority in your space.
Let’s be real. You want to succeed. More leads, more clients, more commissions.
So investing your own time and resources into tools that aren’t helping you reach these specific goals is a waste. You probably have a ton of lead generation tools at your disposal. But if your website isn’t one of them, you’ve got a major missed opportunity on your hands.
Sound interesting? Here’s how you can put your insurance website to work for you.
Content, Content, Content
Traditional marketing has been replaced and digital marketing methods have stepped up in its place. Gone are the days of paying for quarter page advertisements in the back of a local magazine to promote your business. Today’s businesses - big and small - are turning to digital marketing, instead.
Content is the cornerstone of your digital marketing efforts. To put it simply, content is the digital assets created by brands and individuals and distributed online. Content is a blog post, a social media post, a video on Youtube, or an email delivered to your client list.
How Content Marketing Works
With content marketing, you’re giving away valuable information (content) to your target audience before asking them for anything. With the right content, your audience can begin to view you as a trusted authority who can help them solve their biggest pain points and problems.
You can see how this differs from traditional advertising, where you shout at the masses how great you are and demand that they buy your product/ service right now.
“If brands can develop an effective strategy for creating content based on proper understanding of their target audience, they’ll not only drive leads but will also increase sales,” says Neil Patel, New York Times bestselling author and marketing guru.
The secret to success with content marketing is simple:
- Know Your Audience
- Be Consistent
What’s your niche?
Do you specialize in contractor insurance, aviation insurance, or trucking insurance? Identify your primary audience and start creating content that is meaningful to them. Answer all of the questions that construction professionals bring to you when they get a quote for contractor general liability. Create a blog post or video blog and answer those questions.
Be consistent. According to Neil Patel, “If you want to reap the dividends of content marketing, you need to dedicate adequate time to content creation.”
Understand who you are creating content for and then stick to it. Try to publish a new blog post once a week, at the very least.
Now, what do you do with this content?
Share Content on Social Media
Get your content in front of your intended audience with social media. No matter what your own social media behaviors are - power user or absolute avoider - there’s no denying the widespread reach of social.
- 97% of online adults aged 16-64 say they have visited or used a social network within the last month.
- Internet users now have an average of 7 social accounts. (This number is up from 3 in 2012)
Facebook is still the reigning social media network. 79% of US internet users log in to Facebook.
You can share your content in one of two ways on Facebook:
When you’ve got a new blog post published, you can post it on your Facebook business page/ personal page. This is known as an organic post, and a limited amount of your followers will see your post.
You can also pay to promote that post using the Post Promotion option in Facebook or create a paid advertising campaign where you can target Facebook users based on demographics such as their location, age, gender, occupation, and other identifying factors. By investing a small amount of your advertising budget, you can get your content squarely in front of the audience it was intended for.
If you haven’t explored Facebook advertising yet, you may be interested to know this little tidbit:
Facebook is estimated to generate $21.57 billion in US ad revenues in 2018, which would account for 83% of the total social media ad spend in the nation.
Social media marketing is just one way to get your insurance content in front of the right people.
Share Content via Email Marketing
You have another opportunity to share your content with your intended audience. Email marketing is a powerful tool for your insurance business.
Email your newest content to your email list. Joe Pulizzi, the founder of Content Marketing Institute, believes that email is the most important channel for sharing your content because it’s the one you have the most control over.
But make sure you’re emailing the right way. Don’t spam your prospect begging for their business.
Deliver value to your list of prospects and current customers by sharing content that speaks to their specific challenges and pain points. Answer their questions, provide tips and tricks, and be an authority.
Now you’ve got consistent content that’s aimed at your specific audience. Maybe that’s a small business owner or a roofing contractor. You’ve gotten that content in front of them through a variety of channels, such as Facebook and email marketing.
Someone is reading your content and has decided that you may be the perfect person to talk to about their insurance needs.
Now it’s time for your website to really get to work: turning visitors into prospects and prospects into clients.
Online Tools: Raters and Chat
The way that consumers interact with companies and businesses has changed. Today’s consumers are used to finding the information they need online and getting instant answers, products, and services -- many without ever talking to a live person.
Messenger apps, live chat, and bots are new ways consumers communicate with businesses. Many consumers make buying decisions based on how quickly they can get something and whether or not they need to talk to a live person to do it.
You can meet consumer expectations and the demands of modern shoppers by making sure your website has a chat functionality and an online rater tool.
Live Chat
Many consumers want the best of both worlds: they want immediate answers to their questions without the hassle of picking up the phone, calling a customer service department, listening to terrible elevator music while they wait on hold….
Live chat functionality can give them just that.
A Forrester Research study found that many online consumers want help from a live person while they’re shopping online. According to the study, 44% of online consumers say that having questions answered by a live person while in the middle of an online purchase is one of the most important features a website can offer.
Live chat can make your online prospects happier. Integrating live chat into your insurance website is an easy way to get your site working hard for you.
Online Insurance Rater
Give your potential prospects exactly what they’re looking for with an online insurance rater - and get a new lead in the process. Someone who visits your website and uses your insurance rater tool is highly motivated to buy a particular product. Your rater can give them the information they need: an instant online quote (without any phone calls)!
That doesn’t mean you won’t get a chance to talk to potential prospects. It’s one more avenue for you to generate leads and meet the needs of prospective clients who may be too busy to get on the phone with you right at this moment.
If your insurance website doesn’t have an integrated insurance rater tool, you’re missing out on a major opportunity to convert potential prospects into customers.
How Does Your Website Stack Up?
Is your website hitting all the marks or are you leaving behind potential prospects?
If your insurance website is a brochure-style site that you had built a decade ago, it’s probably not serving you. If you’ve got a modern insurance website site that’s fast, responsive, and mobile-friendly; consistently publishes content targeted to your audience which you can use for digital marketing efforts; delights prospects and clients with online tools such as live chat and insurance raters….
Then you’ve got a website that’s working as hard as you are.