Insurance Websites - 3 Strategic Pillars Fundamental To Success pptx

Ok, now that we have that disclaimer out of the way, let’s talk about the first pillar of success with insurance websites: Understanding Traffic.. Having insurance websites doesn't do yo

Insurance Websites - 3 Strategic Pillars Fundamental To Success

By: Jason Hornung – President Jason Hornung Agency, Inc

I’ve discovered 3 strategic pillars that are fundamental to the success of anyone who wants to market online

But before I get into those, you should know that the assumption here is that you already

understand that having insurance websites are essential…

I’m NOT going to be talking about building a website here today – what I have to share with you

is far more advanced than that

Ok, now that we have that disclaimer out of the way, let’s talk about the first pillar of success with insurance websites: Understanding Traffic

For those of you that don’t know, traffic is getting people to your website You’ll also hear the term visitors – visitors and traffic are interchangeable terms

Having insurance websites doesn't do you any good unless people see them – and just putting up

a website won’t bring traffic to it either

You have to put strategies into place that will bring those visitors to your site

If you’ve been studying online insurance marketing for any period of time, you’ve probably seen all the so-called gurus shouting about millions of ways to generate traffic and how traffic is the key to being successful online

You’ve probably also seen stuff about push button software that brings massive free traffic to your insurance websites

I want you to know right now that all of that is total crap and couldn’t be further from the truth There’s no such thing as a push button software that will bring you free traffic – it’s all a hoax

Traffic is very important, but it’s not the end all be all – it’s only 1/3 of the success formula And it’s more than just traffic – its getting targeted traffic

What I want to do here is de-mystify traffic because it’s an area where so many people get confused, make mistakes and lose a ton of money

The first secret you need to know about traffic is how to separate the different ways of getting it The most basic separation is between paid vs free traffic

Paid traffic is exactly as it sounds – you give money to receive traffic Most people associate paid traffic with the term Pay Per Click or PPC

Examples of PPC traffic are Google Adwords and Facebook Ads But paid traffic doesn’t stop there Additional methods of paid traffic are banner ads, media buys and email blasting

This is by no means a comprehensive list of all paid traffic sources, but I’m limiting it to these because they are the most effective for the scope of our conversation today

Free traffic is a highly deceptive term While it’s true in the sense that you aren’t paying for clicks with these methods, it will cost you something to get this kind of traffic – it may be simply time and effort or it could be paying an outsourcing specialist

The bottom line is that “free” traffic really ain’t free You will most commonly hear the term SEO or Search Engine Optimization associated with free traffic, but it certainly isn’t the only way to get people to your site under this category

Here’s what you need to know about free traffic – to make it work it will take a long time and usually more money to get it going It’s a long term effort Also, it doesn’t provide the type of targeting that you’ll need to attract customers in your area, so you really should focus your time

on paid traffic sources

The second secret you need to know about traffic is how to separate the high quality paid traffic from the crappy paid traffic

In marketing, to be successful, you need to be able to clearly define your target market High quality traffic will come from sources that most closely match your ideal client profile

You need to evaluate all of your paid traffic options and choose the one that will allow you to put your ads in front of the most amounts of the people you want to reach If the source has people that have already indicated an interest in something similar to what you offer, it’s even better

In the vast majority of cases, you will pay more for this kind of traffic The trade off is that you’ll generate more insurance leads and sales because of your targeting

Where I see a ton of people make mistakes is in this traffic evaluation process They only

compare sources by the actual cost of the traffic itself

You should be comparing traffic sources by testing them There’s two metrics you want to look at: 1) Your cost per lead acquisition 2) You cost per sale acquisition

Let me give you an example:

Traffic source A has a cost per click of $1.75

Traffic source B has a cost per click of $4.25

You decide to run a test on each and buy 100 clicks from both sources

Out of your 100 clicks, traffic source A generated 10 leads and 1 sale Your CPL is $17.50 and your CPS is $175

Out of your 100 clicks, traffic source B generated 50 leads and 10 sales Your CPL is $8.50 and your CPS is $42.50

Most people would have shied away from traffic source B because the CPC was almost 3 times higher, but in all my testing I see typically 5 times the amount of leads and 10 times the amount

of sales from more expensive traffic when it matches my target client profile better

A lot of people will also pick the cheaper traffic source, only make a sale or two and lose

money Then they are left believing that online marketing doesn’t work and they simply give up Which actually brings up the first HUGE marketing lesson you must understand

Testing is EVERYTHING!

Don’t let yourself be fooled into thinking that things are going to work perfectly right out of the gate They very rarely do – this discourages people and causes them to give up

Also don’t fool yourself into thinking you know what will or won’t work You have to try everything and let the results make the decision for you Just look at our traffic source example

we went through a moment ago

Alright, so to recap this lesson, in order to be a success online, you must understand traffic And you absolutely positively must test everything

The second pillar of success with insurance websites is understanding conversion Simply put, conversion is getting someone to take action

There’s actually three levels of conversion The first level has to do with your ads

With all traffic sources, you are going to be using ads to drive those visitors to your website The type of ad will vary depending on the source, but will be only one of three things: A text ad like on Google or Facebook (these are actually a hybrid ad with text and a picture), an image ad when doing banners & media buys or an email

You absolutely must put systems in place for tracking your ad’s performance The main metric you are going to use is called CTR or click through rate This is the percentage of people who have seen your ad and actually clicked on it

The higher your CTR, the better the ad conversion you have The better your ad conversion, the more leads and sales you are going to get It’s a really simple equation And with many traffic sources, if your ad converts higher, you’ll pay less money for each visitor to your site

The second level of conversion is turning your traffic into leads To turn your visitors into a lead, you need to have some type of device (often referred to as a lead magnet) that you give to people on your insurance websites in exchange for information that they want

Common lead magnets are videos, free reports, white papers and webinars You capture a lead

by requiring someone to give you their name, email and any other information you want in order

to get the lead magnet

When measuring lead conversion, you will look at a metric known as the opt in rate That’s simply the percentage of people who visit you site and request your lead magnet

And of course, the more leads you have, the more sales and money you make

The third level of conversion has to do with turning your leads into sales Here’s an area when the vast majority will fail with their marketing efforts

You have to really understand your market Very few markets will people buy instantaneously and insurance, particularly life insurance ain’t one of them

Which brings us to the second HUGE marketing lesson you must understand

You need to develop a lead nurturing process

Lead nurturing is getting someone ready to buy from you Far too many people go in for the kill right away and try to sell on their website or through their follow up emails

You have to remember that people buy from people and selling online is no different than in person

I recommend that you use an email auto responder system to send out a series of emails that take people to blog posts, articles, videos etc where you are not trying to sell them anything for a period after they request your lead magnet

All you want to do is build a relationship and gain your lead’s trust Once you’ve done that, then you’ll have permission to sell to them

Your lead nurture process could be as little as a few days or as long as a few months You’ll need to test out what gets the best results for you

When measuring your sales conversion, you’ll just look at the percentage of people who go from being a lead to a paying customer

Ok, so to recap this lesson, in order to be successful online, it’s critical to understand all three levels of conversion and that in order to turn your leads into sales, you need a lead nurturing process in place

The third and final pillar to success with insurance websites is something you never hear any so called guru talking about, but it is the most critical piece of the puzzle: Understanding

Optimization

Optimization is the process of scientifically improving your conversions Because there are three levels of conversion, you have optimization strategies for each conversion level

Let’s take a look at the first – ad optimization To improve your ads, you must constantly be testing all of the elements on the ad The headline, body copy, images, color – all of these things will contribute toward how well or poorly your ad converts

Next is lead optimization Here you are going to test your lead magnet, videos, copy – every element on your website

Finally you have sales optimization To maximize your sales, you will want to test every

element of your lead nurturing process

You’ve probably picked up on the theme of testing here You are going to hear me hammering

on this point often because it is so important All marketing is a test and even if something is working, in 99% of the cases it can be improved

Dr Flint McGlaughlin is the head of a company called Meclabs, they are the leader in online optimization strategies He has this saying that I absolutely love… he says that complacency is the enemy of excellence

He uses this saying to bring home his belief that in order to truly succeed online you always have

to be testing all three phases of your marketing It’s been my personal experience that this is 100% true

Which brings us to the third HUGE marketing lesson you must understand

You have to know exactly what your market wants and match your message to those desires

You’ll be able to short cut many of the failures in the beginning by doing your homework and speaking directly to your ideal prospect

Now I realize that a LOT of what I am talking about here goes way over your head It's because I've been doing this for years already!

At this point, you really have a couple of choices you can make You can take all of the free information I provide (which is a ton) and go out and create your own insurance websites

Or you can utilize some of the products and services that I've put together to help you with those processes I encourage you to take a look at how I can help you by simply clicking the link below:

See my products and services here