As an insurance broker, you’re probably not all that familiar with online marketing.
However, you have likely still come across the term call-to-action (CTA) at some point. CTAs can be a huge asset for generating fresh leads for your brokerage from the biggest marketing asset you have in your arsenal, your website.
While the concept is easy to understand at its most basic level, the nuances of using CTAs successfully are much more complex.
Here’s how to generate leads for your brokerage through CTAs.
What Are CTAs?
In a nutshell, CTAs are small sections on each page of your website that stand out to direct your visitor in what to do next. This can include things like ‘Download Now’, ‘Read More’, or ‘Subscribe to Our Blog’.
The visitor clicks on the call-to-action and is taken to the appropriate landing page.
You can also include images that show a preview of what visitors can expect to receive after clicking the call-to-action button. Whatever you would like visitors to your website to do, you can tell them with a clear and concise CTA.
While this may seem a bit obvious, there is much more to an effective CTA than simply placing a few buttons on your website and waiting for the leads to roll in. You need to take your visitors’ wants and needs into consideration to target them with the information and assistance that will help them out the most.
Buyer Stages and How They Impact Your CTAs
In order to target your CTAs properly, you need to understand which stage of the buying process your prospective customers are currently in. The three primary stages are awareness, consideration and decision.
Awareness
In the awareness stage, visitors are just becoming familiar with your insurance business but do not yet know whether or not they require your insurance services. CTAs at this stage should focus on providing basic information and further education on the problems they are currently facing.
Customers at this stage are still in the process of gathering information, so this is not the time to pressure them with heavy sales pitches or requesting quotes.
The awareness stage presents your brokerage with its best chance to become established as an insurance industry authority. This is where you are making your first impression on potential customers and converting them into leads.
You want to provide them with the information they need to understand more about the problems they face so that they can see the value of insurance and using brokerage services.
CTAs for this stage should lead your visitor to download more information, like an ebook explaining the advantages of using an insurance broker. When collecting customer information in exchange at this stage, request only basic customer details, like their name and email address.
You can request more of their information, like phone numbers, in the consideration and decision stages, where your broker can reach out to the lead with a warm and welcoming phone call. In the awareness stage, your first priority is to get the visitor to convert into a lead as easily as possible so that you can begin educating them with the information they download in exchange.
Consideration
At the consideration stage, your visitors are aware of the problems they face and are now looking for a viable solution. CTAs here should encourage them to dig a little deeper.
At this stage, your goal should be to lock in visitor loyalty to your brand. CTAs should invite them to subscribe to your newsletter or blog so that they can continue to learn more about what you have to offer in terms of insurance.
Decision
The decision stage is the final stage of the buying process. At this stage, customers are looking for specific information about your brokerage and insurance offerings to help them make their final decision.
This is where the ‘Request a Quote’ CTA comes in. Leads that come from this category should be passed directly to a broker or agent to continue the purchase process. When obtaining contact information for the visitor at this stage, it is perfectly appropriate to request more details, like home and mobile phone numbers.
Converting Visitors into Leads
Once you have attracted your visitors enough to convince them to provide you with their contact information, at any stage, your next step is to continue to nurture that lead to move them through the sales funnel until they are sales ready. As mentioned above, leads at the decision stage can be passed directly to one of your insurance brokers for follow up.
So, what do you do with those at previous stages?
The primary goal is to provide them with the information that they want and need to establish loyalty, but you also have a secondary goal of leading them gently towards purchasing your insurance services.
Remember potential customers searching online are looking for educational information before making a decision.
If you go in with the sales pitch too strongly at the beginning, you run the risk of turning off potential customers, helping is the new selling and if you provide the information they are searching for then you increase your chances of doing business hugely.
Monitor Your Analytics
To strike the right balance between providing information and delivering a sales pitch, you need to be aware of what your customers are asking for. Keep close watch on your website’s analytics to see which areas of your site are getting the most traffic, as well as the search terms that visitors are using to get there.
A/B split testing is another great way to test the effectiveness of your CTAs. By comparing two options side by side, you can see which one is generating more clicks and sign-ups from your visitors.
The terms your prospective customers are searching for give you invaluable insight into the type of information that they really need. In crafting your CTAs, take care to direct your visitors to more of the information they want most.
Once an awareness customer has devoured the information at that level, they are ready to progress to the consideration stage, so start slipping in CTAs to lead them to more detailed information.
Some customers may even jump straight to the decision stage, so be sure to include a ‘Request a Quote’ CTA on the decision stage pages of your website to make it as easy as possible for your website visitors to convert into customers.
Generating Conversions
Through using CTAs for lead generation, you’ll gain many new subscribers and their contact information, but you can’t expect them all to convert to paying customers overnight.
The CTA is just the starting point of the customer relationship, so take the time to nurture it until customers are fully ready to buy.
There is no set timeline for how long the conversion process will take, so be patient as you nurture your leads. With careful strategy and content planning, many of them will convert eventually.