1. Social Media
Social Media platforms provide exponential reach and, over time, can provide huge payback. People you know serve as connections to people you don’t know. for example 1,000 LinkedIn connections can link you to as many as 1,000,000 professionals. That’s more reach for the money than you’ll ever get out of local newspapers or your favorite trade journal.
New websites going up constantly yet many of them are not optimized. People who know how to build websites don’t always know how to properly optimize them. Learn about on-page optimization. What are the key search terms people will use to find you? Do you have enough content on each page? Are there enough pages to establish authority? Are the key search terms in the right spot on each page? Has your designer followed best practices? Even if I’m referred to an agency, the first thing I do is Google “business insurance Orange county CA” to see where they come up. Ideally, Many times your website is the first impression someone gets of your agency. It’s not all about looks. Increasingly people are becoming more adept to browsing and knowing intuitively what to expect from a website that functions well. Does your site pass the 4.5 second rule?
3. Know your Competition
Knowing what you want to sell is only half the battle. Keyword research will tell you how competitive it’s going to be and what you can expect in terms of activity. A competitive analysis will tell you who the top ten competitors are for a particular search term and what it will take to beat them. Start your keyword research using Google Adwords .
4. Know How to Beat Them
Who are the top ten competitors showing up on page 1 of the results page? How do you compare and what do you have to do to beat them? Is it links, indexed content, on-page optimization issues with your site, or a combination of various issues? The closer you are to the top the more traffic you’ll see and convert.
5. Drip Marketing
Most warm and cold leads fall through the cracks. Drip marketing is the most efficient way to touch prospects and keep your agency top-of-mind until the prospect decides they are going to buy something. Most of us are victims of our own success and get so busy servicing the clients we just sold that there is very little time to continue the necessary follow up with warm and cold prospects.
Drip marketing is also the most efficient way round out an existing account. You can easily set up campaigns to market to single policy holders in both commercial and personal lines. Capturing qualified leads is expensive. Drip marketing helps you leverage every lead.
In the real estate world its “location, location location”. In the internet world it’s “content, content, content”. How does it work? You write an article, blog, or create a video that is relevant to your business and that adds value to the World Wide Web, and get that content placed on a relevant site, with some rank and reputation, and link the content back to the webpage you are trying to promote. So, content marketing is communicating with prospects and clients without selling. By writing an article or creating a video and freely giving away your expertise, you are establishing yourself as an authority on a given subject. The keys to content marketing are relevance and value.
Video killed the radio star. Not really. Though, it certainly changed the radio star. The Internet hasn’t killed traditional marketing either. If you want to target the top tier manufacturers or contractors in your marketing area, there are more likely hundreds than thousands. Sometimes the best way to reach the decision maker is to pick up the phone and call. There is a lot to be said for running a telemarketing campaign the compliments your keyword efforts. I can’t tell you how many times a prospect, for whom I have left a voice mail, follows me on LinkedIn, or looks for me on Google. Don’t throw away conventional marketing methods. They ‘re still very effective.
