What is a sales funnel? How do you turn prospects into customers and customers into repeat buyers? Why are some businesses able to convert prospects into buyers?

The Sales Funnel is the Answer

A sales funnel transports your customers from the initial point of awareness and builds their interest until they purchase your product and service. A lot has been discussed by marketers and thought leaders on how to create sales funnels. However, the perfect sales funnel is not a one-size fits all and would be based on your type of business.

So what should you consider in creating a successful sales funnel?

Mostly common sense. No need to confuse yourself with too many marketing tools, tactics or hacks. A focus on the basics would help you create a converting sales funnel. Read on to learn more about how to do this.

Focus on the Customer

A lot of marketers like to get fancy with funnel creation tools and techniques. You must consider one factor in designing your sales funnels and that factor is not tools or technology. It is the customer. What problems do the customers need you to solve?

How do they seek answers to these questions? Do they go on Google to start querying, hoping to find answers to their questions? Do they talk about it on online forums or Facebook groups?

What is the Customer’s Journey?

As a follow up from above, it is important to plot out the customer’s journey to finding a solution to their challenge. Your business should be focused on helping your customers smoothly along the road to the solution to their problems.

Create Content That Helps Your Customer

The basic rule really is to focus on the customer. Many businesses approach from a position of selfishness, thinking of how much they can make from the customer, rather than how they can help the customer.

Create content solutions for the customer’s problem and distribute these contents where your potential customers can get them.

Consider this Successful Sales Funnel

We worked with a client that offers retrofit double glazing windows. In designing the sales funnel, we asked the client: “what problems are your customers having before they even know who you are, what your product is, and how you can help in achieving their desired outcome?”

Soundproofing was a major challenge for this client’s customers. We found online a vast amount of queries that people search for like, “how to soundproof my window”? “Ideal solutions for soundproofing my window”,  “heat loss and making a room warmer in the winter” and “reducing power on heating a room” among other queries.

These are the challenges that the customers were all facing at the moment. In this case, we simply created helpful and relevant content to help customers in these situations. With search engine optimisation, potential customers can see this helpful content, and once they find us on Google, they know who we are and they “enter” the funnel.

We educate them further that double glazing can help soundproof the home, minimise heat loss, and so on.  Depending on your business, there are other things you can educate your customer on, like providing a justification for your prices and telling them how long it takes to get products delivered.

By providing helpful content, you build credibility, and the customer eventually picks up the phone and asks for a quote. You’d find that the sales process is easier, and there are not so many objections because you have done a ton of work upfront by educating the customer. This one element alone has resulted in millions of dollars of sales.

In Conclusion

The perfect sales funnel for Aesthetic Clinics enables you to see things from the customer’s viewpoint and provide content that effortlessly guides the customer down the funnel. With the perfect sales funnel, you only sell to qualified customers, and it is easier to convert them to paying customers if you have helped them in the search for the solutions to their problems.  

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Using the correct keywords in your content is also very important.

When you are developing your plans and finding the right ideas for marketing your website, you will need to think about keyword usage.

Using the right keywords that are in context will make it easier for online users to find your website when they are searching.

For example, you could be using keywords that are relevant to your business, such as “commercial insurance” or “online business insurance quotes” or “insurance risk” or “professional indemnity insurance” depending on what type of insurance your company specialises in.

If you aren’t sure which keywords would be best for you to use, think about using a keyword tool such as Google Adwords or Moz.

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Of course, driving traffic to your website is easier said than done – especially in the insurance brokerage business. You have plenty of competition funneling away your potential customers. That means you have to work especially hard to set yourself apart from the pack.

Still to this day, one of the most effective methods to increase website traffic comes in the form of the blog. Operating a relevant and content-rich blog can boost your website traffic by up to 55%. That means more people are on your site – inevitably choosing your business over the competition.

So how does this goal translate into real-world action?

How can you create your own memorable and traffic-generating blog for your brokerage?

Follow our collection of 8 steps below to maximise your blogging power and take your business to world-class heights.
 

 

1. Start with a Plan of Action

Every good marketing campaign begins with a well laid-out plan. Take the time right now to get your plan in place. Make sure you’re as detailed as possible so you won’t run into any surprises down the road.

Use this checklist to guide your planning process:

• Make a List of Your Audience’s Needs, Wants, and Problems

Your goal is to create authentic, valuable content. The best way to achieve that is by learning about the problems or questions your audience is experiencing while creating content which answers them.

• Get Your Keywords in Order

Take the time to research keywords related to your market, your vertical, your brand, and even your location. Google AdWords makes it easy with their integrated Keyword Planner tool.
 

 
Image Credit: George Kao via YouTube

This tool gives you everything you need to learn about how your keywords are performing and which ones you should utilise in your blog posts to attract more readers. The right keyword usage will really do wonders to drive traffic to your website.

• Determine Inbound and Outbound Links

Getting your links in order adds even more power to your blog posts and drives traffic to your website. Therefore, it’s critical that you understand why you need a healthy dose of both outbound and inbound links in each blog you write.

Plan your outbound links now using credible, well-ranking and authoritative content. Remember, the best way to succeed in link building is through organic exchanges between your high quality posts and others authors’ content.

• Refine Your Call-to-Action

Your CTA is highly important in your blog content. You do not need to always directly promote your company or try to direct readers into a sales funnel. But highlighting your brand and your company through various CTA methods should remain a top consideration in your planning.

2. Schedule Your Blog Posts Ahead of Time

 

 
Once your plan of action is done, it’s time to get a content schedule ironed out. Try your best to schedule your blog posts out 3 months ahead of time. This gives you plenty of room when it comes to presenting new and valuable content.

Of course, this plan does not always apply in the wake of trending topics or news. For example, say you offer home and contents insurance and severe weather unexpectedly damages lots of property in your sales region. You’ll likely want to temporarily suspend your post schedule in favour of addressing this trending topic in your industry.

3. Designate a Specific Time for Blog Writing

This one may go without saying, but it’s important to reiterate. Consistency is key with your blog. You’ll want to regularly create value-driven content that your target market will look forward to reading.

The most effective way to maintain consistency is to schedule specific times dedicated to your blog writing.

Many businesses owners mistakenly think they can just write blog posts “when they have time.” What happens with this strategy? Inconsistent content, lower quality, fewer readers – and less traffic.

Even if it’s just a few hours every other week, add blog writing as a particular piece of your work schedule. Think of it like an important business meeting. If it’s in your calendar as a regular event, you’re much more likely to stay regular in your posts.

4. Make Your Titles Shout

 

 
Image Credit: Nicolas Raymond via flickr

Do you really want to know how to drive traffic to your website? It’s all about the titles.

The power of a punchy title literally makes or breaks your blog post. A catchy title can seriously boost your page views. Conversely, a boring or run-of-the-mill title will ruin the chances of even the best blog content.

So how can you make your titles work better for your brokerage business?

The answer is to utilise the power of psychology in how you put your title together.

• Write Your Title First: You’ll develop the post’s unique value proposition (UVP) and you’ll create your content around that UVP.

 

• Use Facts or Numbers: Direct information or numbers (e.g. “20 Ways to Improve Your Writing”) grabs readers’ attention and encourages them to click.

 

• Always Use Target Keywords in Your Titles: You’ll want your exact match keyword in the title – preferably closer to the start.

 

• Appeal to Value: Give your audience something that appeals to their emotions and suggests they will get value out of reading.v

 

5. Create Authentic Value in Your Posts

When you appeal to value in your title, you want that value to reflect in your content, too. Always make sure your blog posts are providing real, actual value to your readers.

What does ‘value’ really mean in this context?

• No ‘fluff’ content that isn’t useful or interesting.
• No boring posts that just promote your company or services.
• Blogs that aren’t relevant to your audience or your business.

Here are a few examples of great blog content for insurance brokers:

• Easy Tips to Secure Your Home
• What to Look for in Renter’s Insurance
• Guide to Staying Prepared for Emergencies and Disasters

4 Steps to Determine How Much Insurance Coverage You Need

When you’re focussing on giving your readers value, everything else (like your call-to-action and links) will have an even greater positive benefit.

6. Aim for at Least 1,200 Words in Each Post

 

 
There’s no hard rule on the word length to your blog posts. But as trends continue to come in, one important fact is emerging: longer-form content typically gets more shares, more views, and more traffic.

According to the ‘2017 Blogging Report’ from TrackMaven, posts in the 1,200-1,400 word range are shared the most. Accordingly, this is where you should try and aim your own writing.

Remember that your content is about value first, not word count. Don’t fluff up your word count unnecessarily to hit this goal. Instead, include topics that have enough substance to use this many words.

7. Promote Your Content Across All Channels

 

 
Image Credit: Blogtrepreneur
Imagine taking a vast amount of time crafting wonderfully-written, highly valuable content for your business. It’s your finest work, and offers really valuable insight to your readers.

Now imagine if you lock that blog post up in a dark closet of an abandoned house where no one will read it. What’s the point of writing it if no one will ever see it?

This is where the importance of content promotion really shines through. Content promotion is just as important as creation. That’s why you have to make a concerted effort in getting it out there for your prospective readers to see it.

Use tools like Buffer to automate posting and promoting your content on social media. You can schedule content releases to roll them out over time as well. This is a huge time-saver in an otherwise tedious process.

8. Monitor Your Analytics and Respond to Success

 

 
Finally, you’ll want to regularly check up on your blog posts and see how they’re doing. Ideally, you’ll want to find out which posts are the most (and least) successful. From there, you can make adjustments to get even better results in future blog posts.

Google Analytics makes it easy to have a look at your traffic and assess your current digital marketing success. There are all sorts of other analyzing tools to get a spotlight on your web traffic.

You can use this data to…

…learn which topics, titles, and other factors affect page views.

…better connect with your readers for better traffic potential.

…make changes to your blogging strategy to get better results.

In the end, valuable, organic content will always pay off for your business. By giving your readers a reason to view your content, you’re also giving them a reason to choose your insurance business.

Over time, cultivating a worthwhile blog will come together to increase website traffic significantly – and take your business further.

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Many insurance brokers do not know where to start when it comes to optimising their online marketing and crafting the most effective mobile lead generation.

They don’t have a lot of skills marketing and they are also very busy with running their business. If this sounds familiar, you are likely looking for ways that you can improve your business and increase your leads.

One of the most crucial aspects to making sure that your website is as effective as possible in generating leads is to ensure that it is optimised for mobile.
More people than ever are using their mobile devices as their primary way to surf the web, run businesses and do many tasks – including researching insurance.
According to the 2015 Communications Data Report by Ofcom, smartphones are responsible for a third of all Internet access. This is an increase from 23% in 2014. Two thirds of adults now have a smartphone and we spend a steadily growing amount of time on it every day.
However, as we enter 2017 smartphones are responsible for over 50% of all Internet access.

So, there is a very good chance that many people who are visiting your insurance website are looking for information.

The problem occurs when your insurance website isn’t suited to the small screen that your visitors are viewing it on.

If your website isn’t optimised for mobile, the potential customer will struggle to navigate the site and it will be challenging for them to read your information.

hey are likely to go and enquire about insurance from your competitor, whose website is easier to use on mobile.

Maybe you have been aware that your audience is increasingly using mobile, but perhaps you haven’t been prepared with the incredible velocity with which it has grown.

Another very important thing to know is that Google penalises your website if it is not optimised for mobile.

This means that it is more critical than ever for your website to be optimised for mobile. You can hire a professional to help you do this or if you have a bit of coding knowledge you can easily do it yourself.

Optimising Your Insurance Brokerage Website

In order for your insurance brokerage website to be optimised for mobile, it needs to be easily
readable on a small screen, forms formatted correctly, call-to-actions and links need to be easy to click on.

There should be no need to magnify the size or scroll horizontally.

Everything should be laid out in an easy to read way that makes the most of the small screen space.

The rule for any website is that it should be well organised and easy to understand, but this is even more important when the user is viewing it on a small screen.

On a small screen the design should be simple – no space should be wasted.

Also, because most mobile devices have a limited band-width, it shouldn’t load anything you don’t need.

Of course, these design qualities that value simplicity and efficiency should be present in any website – whether mobile or not. A well designed website does not have any unnecessary clutter and it loads quickly, presenting all of the important information in an easy to understand and accessible way.

Simple Steps for Website Optimisation

It’s not as hard as you might think to optimise your website for mobile.

There is a simple trick that you can use in CSS called “Media Queries.”

It can allow you to create responsive websites that will change their appearance according to the device that the website is being viewed on. This can be changed if you have access to the main CSS file of your blog.

If you are on WordPress, you can click on Appearance and then Editor and make sure that you see the words “Stylesheet” across your screen. The bottom of this file is where you will add the code.

The next step is to determine the criteria that you want to use for the mobile browser.

You can determine the maximum width.

This means that every device that accesses the site with a screen less than the determined amount of pixels wide will use the CSS that is specified within the brackets.

A good rule of thumb is to use 1020 pixels as the cutoff size for mobile.

Keep It Simple

Then, you will be stripping down the design of the site to make it better suited to mobile.

It shouldn’t be too wide – it should strike a balance between filling up the screen and being readable.

For example, you may want to put your content in a vertical line and then use the tag “width: auto” to allow this content to take up the width of the screen no matter what size the mobile device is.

You will also want to eliminate all of the extra features and visual bells and whistles that may not work on a small screen.

For example, sometimes social media sharing widgets don’t work on mobile devices, so you can choose to hide them instead.

Also, make sure that the text is at the right size so that it is easy to read on mobile. You may need to boost the font size for all of the text within your articles and web content.

Trial and Error

As you tweak the elements of the website, keep checking how it looks on mobile so that you can adjust it to your liking.

A quick tip to test this is on your desktop or laptop drag your screen edge in, reducing the viewing size and assess how your website is optimised for all screen sizes including tablets.

It might take a few rounds of tweaks until you get it looking and functioning correctly on a small screen.

If you are unfamiliar with code, you can always ask a web designer to help you with this part. Even if you end up paying a professional to optimise your site for mobile, the increase in leads will be worth the investment.

At the moment, more potential customers than ever are using mobile to search for insurance services. If your website isn’t optimised, you are missing out on their business plain and simple.

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To make your B2B lead generation efforts really count, start by creating a clear, focused channel to apply your energy through.

Begin by developing your buyer personas and from there you can take the next essential steps to reach those primary buyers.

This is how you’ll get the results you need, stay ahead of the competition, and avoid the most common pitfall of insurance marketing – wasting time on lead generation efforts that lack the focus required to attract your target.

1. Identify Your Primary Buyers

 
This is the absolute first actionable tip you should take in order to ensure that your marketing efforts can go to work for you generating leads.

If you are not clear on who exactly is buying your services, then how do you know how to address your ideal leads or to develop tailored content that will engage, inform, and support your potential future clients?

Start by looking at your current customers.

What do they ‘look’ like?

What industries are the primarily coming from?

What questions would they have about insurance?

How is it that you solve their problems?

From examining your present buyers, you can look at who you would like to expand your marketing efforts to and what type of buyers are the most likely to be interested in your services.

2. Answer Their Questions

 
 
Only if you speak to their needs are you likely to trigger interest.

Take the time to brainstorm your buyer personas. Everything from their age range to their likely professional experience is useful for getting a fuller picture of who you are reaching out to and how to best tailor your efforts.

Make a detailed list of the needs of your personas.

Come up with answers to the problems and questions they are facing and determine what information would be the most valuable to them.

• How can your insurance products help their business and alleviate their problems?

 

• What risks are they most concerned about?

 

Take into account their needs, taking a detailed look at the current issues that they may face within their industry, as well as projected problems for the future.

3. Develop Your Primary Buyer Personas

 
This is a critical early step in the business to business marketing process.

Once you have identified and researched who your potential leads are, it’s time to develop the personas.

What are the ingredients of a strong buyer persona?

It is through your own insights and experience with customers, combined with market research, that you can develop your most dynamic, detailed – and accurate – personas.

In order to garner the most info from your current client base, you can use surveys and short interviews. The more feedback that you can get from the customers that you are working with now, the better you can understand their needs and tailor your marketing strategies to potential future clients. Use emails to ask questions and request feedback.

You can also create a questionnaire on your website to ask questions and gain insights from potential customers who may be visiting your website. Tools like Surveymonkey are available to help marketers get that all-valuable customer data.

Another, more personal option, is to call your client list and ask if they have time to answer a few questions for your brokerage.

For market research, there are many tools that you can use in your insurance marketing. Google Analytics, Audience Reports, and Facebook Insights will all help you to learn more about your prospective and current clients.

You can keep track of data like demographics, interests, and locations and use that to improve your personas and craft new ones as and when necessary.

4. Start Slow as You Build Your Own Skill at Creating Personas

 
One mistake often made is trying to create too many personas, without truly understanding who they are or having a clear distinction between the various characters in their target audience.

As you begin, start with one persona and then build from there. One well-developed primary buyer persona is much more useful than seven poorly developed, poorly researched ones.

Once you are capable of creating distinct, relevant personas, you can expand your ‘persona population.’ Depending on the needs of your brokerage, you could have anywhere between two to six, ideally three or four.

For insurance marketing, it depends on how expansive your client base is.

For example, if your brokerage specialises in commercial insurance, then your range of buyer personas may include:
 
 

Corporate Cameron, CFO in charge of the company’s insurance policy and renewals. Has an obligation to put the insurance policy out to tender during drastic changes in the market and does a lot of research as to know what he is talking about during the tender process.’
 
 
 
 

Business Owner Barry, runs a family business with 5 – 20 staff. Wants to make sure he’s covered for everything, but is also conscious of price. Generally loyal to his broker (until something goes wrong).
 
 
 
 
  

New Business Neville, has just started a new business or purchased an existing one. He doesn’t know anything about insurance and is vigilant in his research to ensure he’s got the cover he needs and understands the costs involved. However Neville is generally naive and doesn’t understand the value of insurance.
 
 
If you provide products like professional indemnity insurance, to concentrated professions then you would want to work to develop personas for professionals in the various industries that you specialise in, such as:

“Construction Contractor Chris”
“Lawyer Luke”
“Accountant Andrew”
“Financial Advisor Frank”

What matters most to these people?

How can your brokerage help them achieve their goals?

5. Develop Content for Your Personas Only

 
Your next step is to create valuable lead magnets and content for your buyer personas.

While regular blog and social media posts are the foundation of your lead generation efforts in attracting your buyer personas, to further engage and convert these personas into leads, you will need more dynamic, value-driven content that is catered specifically to their needs.

White papers, eBooks, webinars, informational videos, and other content are hugely effective tools for lead conversion once you have attracted them.

Craft lead magnets that directly answer the needs of your buyer personas. As you have a detailed understanding of what questions and concerns they have about business risk and protecting their professional standing, you can tailor your business to business lead generation efforts around your well-developed personas.

6. Analyse and Refine

 

business to business lead generation 3.pngIn order to put your best foot forward for generating those B2B leads through your buyer personas, the final step is to analyse your marketing efforts and then use that insight to refine your personas.

With tools like Google Analytics you can look at how attractive your website content is and what visitors are spending the most time focussing on. Gauge the power of your social media presence by looking at your social media likes, shares, and retweets.

The more you know about how successful your lead generation efforts are, the more you can improve your personas.

If you are not engaging the leads that you want, then work on creating more insightful, well-researched buyer personas and content. When you speak directly to your audience, they will listen.

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