The last few years have been a whirlwind of change in the insurance marketing world. The shift from traditional outbound marketing modalities to inbound internet based strategies is palpable. We are seeing large numbers of agencies build new websites many of them replacing older brochure type sites with newer brochure type sites. Whether you use a local advertising firm or a friend of a fiend to build your new website make sure they understand on-page optimization., Run your site through Marketing Grader, SEOquake, or SEO Site Tools to make sure you have a fighting chance of being found by the search engines.
If you build the perfect website, nail the most strategic keywords, and can garner links from the very best sites in your business, you still have to look beyond SEO. Consider traditional marketing methods to enhance your SEO efforts and to supplement your lead flow.
Use email marketing. Keyword strategies, content marketing and on-page optimization can generate significant traffic when done correctly. However, without a call-to-action, to capture the lead, and a good follow up system to make sure leads don’t fall through the cracks, all you have is significant traffic. A lead capture form on every page and a CRM for email follow-up will improve your hit ratio, and increase your ROI.
Telemarketing still works. Targeting large contractors in a small area require some direct contact. For example, there are 485 artisan contractors, with greater than 25 employees, in Orange County CA. If I’m an agency and I’m marketing contractors, I am going to optimize my site for them, but unless I employ some other marketing strategies, I’m probably not going to see very good results.
Don’t forget about traditional marketing just because you built a new website.