When implementing your marketing strategy, one of the biggest mistakes you can make is trying to sell insurance at all times. Picture this scenario: you are asking for your measurements for a new suit and, the moment you walk into the store, a salesperson asks you for your preferred payment method. Would you actually buy the suit? Trying to get visitors to request a quote and hire you as soon as they get to your website can be counterproductive. In this week’s post, we explain the 3-step process to build an insurance marketing funnel to increase traffic, nurture leads, and boost conversions.
What Is An Insurance Marketing Funnel?
When explaining the customer buying behavior such as for an insurance agency, we defined the marketing funnel as the stages that prospects go through to buy a health benefit plan or sign a broker of record letter. Marketing funnels are specific to each company, but generally speaking, they can be divided into three stages: top, middle, and bottom.
Top Of The Funnel
This stage focuses on increasing the visibility of your agency. The marketing tactics implemented at the top of the funnel need to make your target audience aware of your services. Leads at the top of the funnel are not ready to buy yet.
Middle Of The Funnel
The middle of the funnel is the stage in which you concentrate on nurturing your leads. The marketing tactics at this stage encourage your leads to engage with your content until they become qualified leads, which will depend on your agency’s scoring model.
Bottom Of The Funnel
This last stage focuses on selling your services. Your prospects are now ready to be presented with the information required to purchase. The content needs to be compelling to inspire them to take action.
Before diving into the steps to build your insurance marketing funnel, it is key to understand the difference between a lead and a prospect. Nowadays, with company-specific definitions and marketing automation software and CRM systems contributing their own, it is more complicated than ever. While a lead is any visitor that interacts with your agency, a prospect is a qualified lead. Therefore, you will find out if the lead is a prospect in the middle of the funnel when the information is captured.
Steps To Build An Insurance Marketing Funnel
Building a marketing funnel is not an easy task. It needs to be highly personalized to your agency’s sales process and revenue goals. But there are basic steps that are important to cover. Below, we share the three steps to build an insurance marketing funnel that will help you increase traffic and make your leads ready to buy.
Step 1: One Stage At A Time
Building an entire insurance marketing funnel from scratch, and at once, can be detrimental to your strategy. Focus on one stage at a time. Think about your agency and identify your needs to decide on what stage you should start working.
63% of companies find that generating traffic and leads is their top marketing challenge. If your agency is not selling health benefit plans and you are not signing enough broker of record letters, start working the top of your funnel. Once you have established the top, work your way down to the bottom to convert those leads into clients. By focusing on the top, you will be building the audience to whom you will sell later. However, if your traffic is high but conversions are low, the problem is at the bottom of your funnel. Start building your marketing funnel focusing on the bottom and work your way up. By doing so, you will start increasing the amount of revenue for your agency.
Step 2: Pick The Tactic For Each Stage And Create Content
There are different marketing tactics you can implement in each stage of your funnel. But make sure they align with the established goals. When starting to build your insurance marketing funnel, pick one or two tactics and create high-quality content for each of them.
The marketing tactics implemented at the top of the funnel are usually free, educational, and they provide value for the visitor. For example, social media actions or blogging. The tactics used in the middle of the funnel, like webinars, demos or quote forms, supplement the content you built for the top and they aim to collect lead information. Lastly, at the bottom of the funnel, it is important to help your prospects make the decision of hiring your services, you could push them to your sales page or testimonials.
Step 3: Connect Your Tactics
The marketing funnel is divided into different stages, but that doesn’t mean the stages are isolated. To create a strong and converting funnel, there must be continuity from the top to the bottom. By doing so, you will be helping your visitors move from one stage to the next one and, you will know when it happens and how. Connecting your tactics is easy if you have created high-quality content that stays on topic and is valuable for your visitors.
Marketing Tactics Example
To translate this information into tangible marketing actions, start by writing a blog as a top of funnel tactic. Creating content to help prospects make better decisions about their benefit plans will establish you as a thought leader in the industry. In addition, start sharing the posts on social media along with other relevant information about your agency. In the middle of your funnel, ask them to subscribe to your blog or attend a webinar to deepen their knowledge and become experts in picking their company’s benefits plans. Connect your blog with your webinar by including a call to action or pop-up that invites visitors to sign up to your webinar to capture leads. Also, create a subscription box to your blog that is always present at the bottom of each post.
When you get to the bottom of your funnel and your leads are ready to hire your services, present them with all the information needed to make the decision. You can add more value to this step by offering a promotion. For example, offer a technology solution to your prospects so they can modernize their HR processes when talking about the same topic in the blog or webinar.
Final Thoughts About Insurance Marketing Funnel
Building your insurance marketing funnel won’t be an easy process. Start by asking yourself questions such as how do customers find you, what kind of information do customers need from your agency at each stage, or how will you know if they moved to the next stage? This is not a project you will complete in a day and, once you’ve built your funnel and have implemented some tactics, you will have to keep reviewing and tweaking as you grow. Your funnel is not something you will just forget about. But the work is worth it, an insurance marketing funnel is a powerful tool to help you grow your agency.
