Making Your Website Work Harder for You

The typical insurance prospect would rather do their own research before scheduling a meeting with an agent. While Googling, they might find hundreds of agents ready to sell them insurance, and if every advisor’s website has the same basic contact info, the prospect will likely pick an agent at random.

That’s where the power of a great website comes in. Getting your expertise in front of the prospect while they’re still in the initial research phase lets your website work for you, bringing new prospects to you without making a single phone call. Following are some strategies for building an effective website.

Be professional and personable

Your website is the first chance to make a good impression, so make sure it’s professional and organized. You can hire a pro to build your site, or, if you’re more technically savvy, use a free, customizable website builder like WordPress or Wix. Don’t worry, you don’t need coding or HTML experience. By using a pre-designed, editable template, you can make your website easy-to-navigate with a logical, streamlined structure. Typical menu items or pages include Home, About Me, Contact, Blog, Insurance Education.

Hosting a blog on your website is one of the best digital ways to establish an emotional connection with a prospect before they even meet you. Posting new, light, and personable content on your blog several times a month gives potential clients a reason to come back more frequently.  Client success stories are always a good place to start! The goal of the blog is to appear like a “normal person,” not an inaccessible expert. Remember: the more a prospect feels they can connect with you, the more likely they are to choose you.

Be an expert

The Insurance Education tab is where you can provide product information to your prospects without being too “salesy.” The goal is to appear knowledgeable and trustworthy while answering potential questions. Listing frequently asked questions and your responses to them provides prospects quick insight to common problems and gives you a chance to expand on this information in future blog posts.

One of the best ways to capture prospects’ interest is to write the title of each blog post exactly the way someone would ask the question. For example, it’s more likely that a potential client will search, “Who will get my assets after I die,” than, “Who is the beneficiary of the insurance”.  By making blog titles match organic searches, your articles will be displayed higher on a Google search result page making it more likely prospects will read your post.

Be strategic

Providing thoughtfully curated information on your Blog and Insurance Education pages can help save you and your clients time before meeting. During initial meetings, you typically talk about yourself, your business and the products. If that information is on your website in the form of articles or videos, you can send links giving them a chance to be more prepared for your initial consultation. They’ll come to the meeting with many of their questions answered letting you more quickly assess their needs, saving time and most likely securing them as a long-term client.

One strategic tip: don’t make your knowledge too accessible online or you’ll give away your competitive edge. Instead, publish either portions of articles or approximately 40% of your expertise online and provide an opt-in registration form that will provide more information. By obtaining the person's name and email, you’ll have the chance to reach out directly to the prospect and will have insight into the things that are most concerning to them through the articles they have requested. You can also have them select what areas of insurance they’re interested in and then use autoresponders, a sequence of automated emails that are sent to a subscriber following a trigger event, to provide specific content to the prospect.

Be a speaker

Another efficient way to connect with prospects and clients is to host webinars. Tools like Zoom, Teams and other video-conference platforms can host live events on a set day and time each month. You can speak on the same topic every time or a new one and build your audience base through consistency. Since it’s live, you’ll likely receive questions from prospects about additional topics you can reach out to them directly to educate them on.

Gain audience members by promoting the webinars on your website, social media, and mailing list. Webinars also give you the opportunity to obtain email addresses for prospects where you can not only send registrants a reminder about the next webinar, but also give them access to previous recordings, your blog and your website.

In this age of Google and online engagement, your website can be a primary prospecting tool. Showcase your expertise by creating a personable, polished website, then win prospect’s trust through articles, blogs and videos. Using simple automation tools efficiently captures a prospect’s information, while webinars help educate them and keep you top of mind. Though it may take a bit of work, your website will be working efficiently to capture prospects and turn them into long-term clients.

Remigiusz Stanisławek, EAFP, EFC,owner of Rodzinne Finanse, is a seven-year MDRT member and Top of the Table qualifier. He lives in Poznan, Poland.