Insurance Marketing Matchmaking: How to get into the action

10 February, 2014

Are you single? Know anyone who is single? I have a few friends out in the dating world and I have to say they are brave souls. As it turns out, you can’t just sit at home and wait for the phone to ring or for a well-meaning cupid to help you make a love connection. If you want to find romance, you have to get into the action. You may also have to kiss a lot of toads!

The same is true for your company’s insurance website. You can’t just create an insurance website and sit back and wait for the phone to ring. You have get out there and BE where the prospects ARE. Frequent online interaction is key because just like in dating, you may have to engage with a lot of tire-kickers before you find a serious prospect.

While there is no Match.com to connect with insurance marketers and prospects, the Internet is a good starting point. But don’t proceed blindly. You need a solid plan to attract the best potential business matches.

Below are three basic steps to help you achieve this goal:

1.  Develop a list of targeted and specific keyword phrases. I would never go onto a dating website with the single criteria of finding a “MALE,” yet some insurance organizations apply this type of broad criteria to their online ranking efforts. It’s important to get specific. For example, I sell inbound insurance marketing services. So you might assume that I should try to rank for the phrase “inbound marketing.” My HubSpot keyword tool tells me that phrase is searched for 8,100 times every month. However, it is a very difficult phrase for which to rank because companies from all industries are competing for it. It might take me two years of more of writing about “inbound marketing” every day on my website to even touch the third page of search results. And if I rank for the phrase “inbound marketing” I’ll probably attract all kinds of prospects who are not even in the insurance industry.

It’s far smarter to choose more specific phrases. These phrases attract fewer searches but those who find you will be better potential matches.

I’ve seen several insurance organizations that have optimized their websites for broad terms like “auto,” “homeowner” and “insurance.” Sadly, this optimization will do them no good – it’s the equivalent of searching for “male” on dating websites. Because there is so much competition for these words, it’s impossible to rank for them. Even if you could rank, those who search for the word “auto” could be looking for a variety of things beside insurance.

2.  Once your targeted keyword phrase list is complete, assign one or two keyword phrases to each page of your insurance website. For example, if I want to rank for “insurance brochures” that would be one of the targeted keyword phrases for the “insurance brochure” page of my website. Again, the key is specificity. Be strategic and strive to attract online searchers who will be interested in the content of that page. If you have two left feet, you probably don’t want to attract a date who likes to compete in dance competitions. Likewise, if someone is searching for insurance copywriting, don’t attract them to an insurance design web page.

3.  Set up each website page to achieve your keyword goals. While there are SEO gurus with all types of tricks up their sleeves, the following are basic SEO principles that anyone can use to achieve ranking. As a basic starting point, your website page should be set up with the one or two targeted keyword phrases in each of the following off-screen and on-screen locations: 

  1. In the page title (off-screen copy)
  2. In the meta tag description (off-screen copy)
  3. In the alt tags for any images (off-screen copy)
  4. In the on-screen page headline
  5. In the on-screen page copy a few times – while avoiding unnatural text or keyword stuffing

With these tactics in place, your insurance website may be able to organically rank in the first three pages of search results, depending on how much competition exists for your targeted keyword phrases. However, don’t be surprised if you don’t rank right away. If it was easy, everybody would do it!

In our next article we will discuss what else you can do to achieve ranking and insurance marketing matchmaking if at first you don’t succeed!

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