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Your insurance agency’s website matters to your online image, so I must ask: when is the last time you updated your agency’s website? Even more importantly, I should ask, does your insurance agency even have a website? With the way prospects find us independent insurance agencies these days, it is important to have a website that’s updated on a regular basis. So what does it take to have a profitable website? Let’s dive into what you need to do to drive people to your insurance agency’s website and keep them there, but most importantly turn them into clients.
- You must know and understand your geographic marketing reach. Ask yourself, what is your agency’s realistic geographic marketing reach? Is it measured in zip codes, or is it measured in counties? Is it all based on which part of the country you live in? Is your agency a state player, regional player, or national player? The difference plays a large role in your website strategy. Why have an agency website if it’s not profitable for you? It’s a significant investment, so let’s start by marketing or speaking to the correct geography in all aspects of your agency’s website.
- You must know your audience. Who are you wanting to talk to, and who do you and your agency want to sell to? What I would recommend is sitting down with the right SEO specialist and filling out persona forms. Persona forms help you and the company who’s making your website understand who you want to write insurance on. For example, one of ours at Paradiso Insurance is about “Tom and his wife Julie.” They own a business in the outskirts of Hartford, CT, and they have been married for 20 years and have three children. They make in excess of $300,000 and they live in a 3,500 square foot home and own classic cars. This is an example of a persona; it’s all about the details. If you can write to this type of theoretical family, your agency should design a persona around it so you can properly attract them to your website. This step is going to help your content writers better understand your target demographics.
- Make sure your agency does a branding guide. Without a branding guide in place, your website will look like and feel like so many other generic insurance agency websites. Your branding guide will go into detail on your tone, your agency colors, and so much more. Hiring the right person to help you create your agency’s brand guide is key, and you will see it’s not that expensive. You will see a return on your investment by incorporating branding guidelines into your agency’s website and marketing efforts, that I can promise you.
- You must have your local phone number in large print at the top in the right hand corner of your website, no questions asked. If clients or prospects are simply using the internet to find your agency number, make it incredibly easy to find.
- When hiring the right website designer, make sure you do a little research on on SEO (search engine optimization) specialists as well, and how long they have been mastering their craft. SEO plays a major role in your agency site ever being found in the internet world.You can’t sell to those who can’t find you or your agency, so work with an SEO professional to maximize your content’s traction.
- Have pictures professionally taken of your agency office and of your staff, and add those to your site (all the while following your branding guidelines). Stock pictures just don’t work. Plus, you want to show the rest of the world the people who are talking with your clients and prospects. This is a small investment, but it’s what’s going to separate you from other agencies and help you with building trust. Your staff matters, and you should not fear showing them off on your agency site.
- Make sure that your website makes it easy for your visitors to find all of your social media profiles.. Only add the social media profiles that your agency is looking at regularly. For example, if you put a Twitter button on your site and your agency hasn’t posted on Twitter in nine months, you will not want to add that button. If a prospect goes to to your website and hits the Twitter button and lands on your agency’s twitter page and sees you haven’t posted, that is sending him or her a message and not a good one. It essentially looks like the digital world’s equivalent of a run down business that’s no longer in service.
- Make sure you have the right landing pages on your website. What does this mean exactly? Hypothetically speaking, let’s say you sell classic car insurance and write a blog about classic cars, but your agency website doesn’t have a classic car landing page, so you put your auto insurance landing page in there. That is misleading, and you will lose internet leads, and you will never have the opportunity to convert those leads into sales again. Make sure to sit down and explain to the designer of your website what your purpose is, and tell them exactly what you and your agency sells.
- Your domain ownership matters. For example if your agency is called American Insurance buy both AmericanIns.com and AmericanInsurance.com . Have both URLs directed to the same website; you don’t need more than one.
- Is your website mobile friendly? If not get on the phone with your website designer and get it mobile friendly immediately. There’s a lot that goes into this step, so I’ll leave it to the professionals, but this is crucial for extending your reach.
These ten tips are critical to maximizing the profitability of your insurance agency’s website and I would recommend you to hire a professional website designer who works for a reputable company. Don’t go to some part timer or someone who does it on the side; that’s like going to a car repair shop looking for a doctor to fix your broken arm. Find a professional to outsource your work to, and please don’t look to spend as little as possible, because as you know you get for what you pay for. Making these improvements to your site will help you and your agency moving forward, and if you need help finding professional website designers or SEO professionals, just reach out to me and I can give you some suggestions.
