3 Tips For Designing Your First Insurance Website

Over the last 10 year we have designed over 1,000 websites for insurance professionals. During that time is has become very obvious that it’s harder working with agents who are building their first website compared to ones who are redesigning ones already in place. Below you will find our top 3 tips for building your first insurance agency website.

Don’t Stress On Making It Perfect

Whether you realize it now or not, it really doesn’t matter if the car is red or green in the picture representing “Auto Insurance”. As an insurance professional you are going to use your website differently than let’s say a florist. What this means is your website should help you become more efficient, that might mean letting your clients make payments, file claims, fill out forms or enroll online. You likely won’t know exactly what efficiency tools are going to work until you launch the site and see how your clients use it. We call it “Battle Testing” the website.

Forget About Instant SEO Results

Fact, if you buy a brand new web address and launch a site on it, it’s going to take a few quarters before the site is fully SEO’d. As a “newbie” website you have a lot to prove to Google before your ranking is going to peak. First off they want to see the site live on the web address for at least 6 month. Secondly they want to see your site listed on other sites across the internet and thirdly you better be active with social media. To assume you are going to launch the site and in a few weeks be on the first page is a recipe for failure. In the short term work on marketing your website and training your staff to utilize it with clients.

Remember You Sell Someone Else’s Products

 I the best tip is to remember you sell insurance, the carriers are the ones controlling the products, the pricing and the plan structure. This means your website should focus on the services that you offer. It should tell people who runs the company, why you are unique and what type of value you bring to the table. It’s still amazing how many agents don’t want to put their pictures on their sites…… big mistake! The consumer wants to do business with someone they trust and can identify with. Make no mistake if they wanted a transactional relationship they would have gone somewhere else online.

If you need help and guidance with your website and social media presence please visit www.benefitstore.net and request a free consultation.

Ken French

President

973-607-1916 Ext 1

Understand The Technology You Need To Sell

As most of you must know by now two of the biggest insurance companies in the USA (when it comes to individual & family Health Insurance) recently announced that all sales must now come via their “Coded Online Broker Enrollment Links.” That they would no longer be taking paper applications.

Basically what this means is, to sell these carriers you need a website. You also need to login to these carriers broker portals and create your own quoting & enrollment link. Which is free and takes about 1 minute. Then you can either send the consumer to your site or go there with them and enroll them.

Supposedly this was announced about 4 weeks ago to every broker and General Agent across the country by these 2 carriers.

Funny thing is, last week I received four phone calls from four different insurance agencies. I honestly didn’t know anyone of them as they weren’t my clients. All of them said basically the same thing.

“We have been following you on LinkedIn for a few years. We know you used to be a General Agent and we were hoping you could explain what it means to get “enrollment links”. We have reached out to the carriers and our GA and we can’t get any answers that make sense.”

Long story short, I had to teach all four how to login and obtain these links, plus all four of those agencies needed websites built to house the links, which we took care of. But I think the point of the story is how chaotic it is out in the health insurance world. I am not going to sit here and rip the GA’s and the Carriers. But what I am going to do is suggest every agent and agencies start to realize that it’s survival of the fittest moving forward. You can’t expect anyone to guide you or be proactive when it comes to teaching you technology and industry changes that you need to know.

You need to look in the mirror and understand you have to be accountable for all of this stuff moving forward. No one is going to help you, they have their own problems.

I mean how many sales you can make if you don’t have the ability to make a sale. I would say that’s something worth 10 minute of your day to learn and setup.


Ken French

Ken@snoozzy.com

www.benefitstore.net

973-607-1916 Ext 1

Technology Your Insurance Agency Should Have Today

Below is an overview on what we feel the top insurance agencies are doing when it comes to website and social media setup and strategy. If you feel you are behind in the game contact us for a free consultation.

P&C Agents & Agencies (Your Website Should Allow Your Clients The Option To)

-File a Claim Online Via Carriers Site
-Make a Payment Via Carriers Site
-Request A Certificate
-Take online Defensive Driving Class

 

 

Life & Health Agents & Agencies (Your Website Should Allow Your Clients The Option To)

-Quote or Enroll any individual medical and voluntary products
-Compare term insurance products and rates (via a rating engine given to you by IMO)
-Have an educational section on healthcare reform

General

-Should now have video testimonials from clients (written ones now deemed worthless)

Social Media

-Should have a Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter page setup for agency
-Should have at least 55% of your book of business following you
-Should be posting 5x’s a week (balanced content strategy)

Learn More About Us @ www.benefitstore.net or http://www.propertyandcasualtywebsites.com/

Ken French
973-607-1916
Ken@snoozzy.com

Pre-Written Message on LinkedIn

When you connect with someone new on LinkedIn, it makes a lot of sense to have a "Pre-written" (thanks for connecting) message to send out to them. The key to this process is making sure you can do it quickly and efficiently.(You could be sending out 5 a day!)

So to summarize
You connect with someone new on LinkedIn
You go and TAG them into a folder in LinkedIn
You then copy and paste your "Pre-written Message" to them using the LinkedIn Messaging tool.

Below is an example of a Pre-Written Message
I just wanted to thank you for connecting with me. I am the president
of Bob’s Insurance. Our main focus is Home, Auto and Life Insurance.
You can visit our main agency site at www.bobsinsurance.com or call
me directly at 987‐654‐2222 for a free consultation. Feel fee to tell me
a little bit about your business and the types of clients you’re looking
for? I will do my best to send them you’re way.

Ken French
ken@snoozzy.com
www.benefitstore.net
973-607-1916 Ext 1

Improving Your Agency Website Tips

I always find it amazing how passionate Insurance Agents can be about “Selling by Price”. Basically this means agents always seem to get really mad when you even infer that selling by price should be a strategy they consider.

Listen I am very against selling by price, in my opinion it’s about building an agency brand. It’s about building something professional that your clients are going to refer to other people. It’s about building a tradition of high end insurance service excellence. This means in your physical office and online with your agency website.

The problem I find is that same guy who went berserk on the phone when talking about his frustrations with growing his agency, is the same guy that has the agency website that has zero branding.

That’s the website that has the “Generic” About Us section on the site.

The site where they slap your logo on it and say here is your new insurance agency website.

So here are my “What Should Be On Your Agency Website Tips”

-         - Who runs the company

-          -What does the agency specialize in

-          -Why is the agency unique

-          -If interested how to take the next step with your agency

-          -Company history

-          -Staff information (if they talk to the consumer)

-          -Active Social Media Presence

-          -Testimonials from top clients

The above information isn’t even insurance specific, in my opinion it’s business 101 common sense to have on any business website.

Shoot me an email if you want a free review of your current agency website! We will tell you what we would do to improve it.

Ken French

President

www.benefitstore.net

Ken@snoozzy.com

973-607-1916 Ext 1

The Classic Impulse Over-reaction

We find that we get a lot of phone calls from insurance agents and agencies that have recently gone to the “Annual Convention”. At these conventions one of “Key Speakers” usually tries to impress the crowd with a lot of web and social media buzzwords and general concepts that most of the crowd pays attention to.

The problem is, most of the attendees understand the concepts are very important but really lack the hands on experience on how the technology, social media or website concepts can really be implemented to actually help them and their agencies.  

So what ends up happening is the insurance agent overreacts, out of fear and impulse spends a lot of money and ends up with new technology that is impressive….. but has no real value to help their agency and insurance model.

Our point is this….. Technology is a lot like the old “Gold Rushes”. Once the public starts to hear about it the gold is already long gone and the “rush” moved to a new secret location. If you want your agency to be successful with technology you can start with being more hands on. The best education is trial and error. This will allow you to make better long term decisions.