At AgentMethods we provide a library of content, but we also tell our agents to:

• personalize the copy of your site
• localize to the community your serve, and, finally
• edit the copy so it sounds like you.

We stress how important it is to have a website, but it should be a site that is professional and reflects you and your business.  It should be a site that you’re proud to show off because that is an excellent way to drive traffic to your site.

Once you are pleased with your site send an email with a link to your site to your customers, prospects, friends and family.  Tell them to pass your site along to others, so they too can see it and learn about you and the products that your selling.

And, remember, keep tweaking that site… it will never be finished because there will always be one more things you need to change or add.  This is just the beginning …

The Web site you had several years ago likely doesn’t work in today’s online world. Rather than go through the expense and effort of re-launching your site regularly, you can address the constant change by making regular small updates to your site. To help you with this, we’ve put together a checklist of the eight activities to keep your site updated.

See the list at Life Insurance Selling Magazine.

There is a lot of focus on the value of websites as lead generation tools. This message is pushed by many of the technology vendors in the website space. They’re telling you “websites are lead generation tools!”, “It’s all about search optimization!”, and “launch a quote engine and watch the money come”.

The reality is that the successful online agent needs balance just as much as the successful traditional agent. Your insurance agency website isn’t just for lead generation or quoting – actually, it may be an even more valuable tool for retaining and growing your existing relationships.

Let’s go through Steve’s four pillars of profitability to look at how your website can support them in a balanced way:

Keep: Your website puts you just a click away from your customers at any time. Put resources on your site that educate customers and help them from day 1. Make sure they know they can always reach you online. Put your picture and contact information on your homepage to remind them who you are and that you are there to help. Relationships go a long way in keeping a customer.

UpGrade: Make sure you explain the benefits and risks of different coverage amounts. Link to tools, resources, and articles that can help your customers learn about the risks of being underinsured. This sets you up to have your customers ready to increase their policies when the time comes.

Round Out: Put content on your site for all of the policy types that you sell. On your homepage, rotate the policies that you feature on a regular basis to make sure they all receive exposure. This reminds your customers that you can meet all of their insurance needs and helps you round out your business.

Get More: Today, most of the focus is on websites. It certainly is an important aspect, although it isn’t the only one. You need to make the right first impression, and more  often this happens on your site. We believe that a professional site with good, informative, and educational information should always come before a quote engine. Make sure you build trust with your prospects before asking for the sale!

After a few minutes on the website, he began to notice things were a little off. Nothing major, just a typo here, some improper grammar there, a section out of alignment somewhere. When he started adding these clues up, he slowly came to a very bad realization: he had fallen victim to a phishing scam.

The moral of the story is not that you should NEVER click on an email from any financial institution claiming it needs sensitive account information. We already know that (ahem, dad). Instead, the moral of the story lies in the clues that gave way to my dad realizing he’d been had – the typos, grammar errors, and bad page layout.

As the general public is becoming more experienced with the web, they’re getting more and more sensitive to the small clues that separate a quality, legitimate, website from a fly-by-night scam. One of the most important functions of your insurance agent website is to build trust. To succeed, it must look 100% professional. No matter what type of insurance you sell, as your visitors move through the process of doing business with you, they’re going to expose you to a lot of very sensitive information. They absolutely must trust you if you are going to get their business. If your website gives them any reason whatsoever to question your level of professionalism, you can expect them to move on.

Please learn from my dad’s mistake! If you want people to trust you, make sure your website reflects your professionalism.

And, by the way, in case you’re wondering how things turned out for my click-happy pops, looks like he saved himself by realizing right away that he’d been had. He spent the day yesterday at the bank where they had him close all of his accounts and open new ones. This time, luck was on his side.

Our own Aaron Kassover has been featured in the recent Life Insurance Selling magazine, where he gives three quick tips getting high quality traffic to insurance websites. Check out the article, “Beyond Search Engines: 3 Strategies To Drive Traffic To Your Web Site” on their website.

Here are some additional points to  consider to help you position yourself as a knowledge broker instead of just another salesperson and, in turn, build a relationship with your prospect and customers, so that you become the go-to-person for answers regarding insurance issues.

• Create a professional website with valuable content.
• Use email to reinforce the relationship
• Consider starting a blog, which you update on a regular basis.

The goal is to demonstrate the value you can bring to the decision-making process.

In the “old world” of selling insurance, building trust began with your appearance. As the saying goes, you don’t get a second change to make a first impression, and the first impression is largely visual. You needed to look professional. This meant having a clean haircut, wearing a well-pressed high quality suit, and showing up in a Cadillac. We all know intuitively what a trust-worthy professional is supposed to look like, and in the old world building trust was based largely on looking the part.

In the “new world”, most agents are never in the same room with your prospects. They visit your website, talk to you on the phone and exchange emails. But they almost never see you in person. That first impression is no longer based on showing up to an appointment in a shiny Cadillac and crisp suit. Our prospects don’t care what kind of car we drive.

First impressions today are based on your website. Your prospect starts building their impression of you the minute they type in your domain name. Does the site load quickly? Does it work in their browser? Is your page well-designed, clean, and on point? Do you provide informative and well written copy? Or, does it take 10 seconds for the homepage to come up? Do you have a broken image?

Built right, your website can “seal the deal” with your visitors before you even talk to them, showing them that you are someone they trust. But done wrong, your website destroys your chances by making a first impression that you are not someone they should trust. So save some money on the Cadillac, and instead make sure your insurance website makes the right impression.

Blogs have become the rage among insurance agents with websites. With the rise of blog popularity among insurance agents, most likely you heard many reasons why you should start one. You may have heard that blogs help with SEO, they get your site indexed more quickly, and they give you a place to generate new content with diverse messaging.

For all of the reasons to start a blog, insurance agents should still think twice before adding one to their insurance website. Why? Here are eight reasons:

1. They are a LOT of work. True, blogs are easy to launch. But to keep a blog fresh, you must continue to add content. This means adding new posts on a regular basis. Otherwise, your blog will quickly go stale and look abandoned.
2. Blogs take your attention away from selling. Every minute you spend on your blog is a minute you aren’t spending with a prospect. If you have leads to contact or quotes to follow up on, they should always come first.
3. Nobody’s going to read it anyway. Let’s be honest. Your customers don’t want to keep up to date on the latest musings of an insurance agent, and they really don’t want to know the minute details and inner workings of the industry.
4. You’re an insurance agent, not a writer. Writing is hard, and reading bad writing is even harder. Unless you are a pent up writer, masquerading as an insurance agent, chances are good you are stretching yourself in the wrong direction with your blog.
5. A blog isn’t going to make or break you. Lots of other things will. A blog might be a cherry on a sundae, but until you’ve got the complete sundae, you can do without. Do you have good inbound links? A high-quality insurance website? A watertight process for follow-ups? These, and many other things, should come first.
6. Your point of view isn’t original and compelling. With all of the professional writers and bloggers online, there’s a good chance someone else already wrote the blog post you’re thinking about, and they probably did a better job.
7. Blogging isn’t a quick fix. Even if you have a great blog, you aren’t going to see results for months. Even then, it will begin with a trickle and grow very slowly. If you’re looking for leads today, look elsewhere.
8. Typos and bad grammar make you look unprofessional. If peoplle dont think your professional, they are’nt going to buy from you. Unless you writing is flawles, theirs a good chance it will hurt you more then help you. (See what I mean?)

So before you jump on the blogging bandwagon, take a minute to consider the downside. It’s not often talked about, but it’s definitely there. Is your insurance agency really ready to jump on the blogging bandwagon?

Here is a quick intro to Leads Management in Agent Methods:

• Track all of your leads – Add leads, take notes and filter your leads to help you keep your information organized.
• Never miss a follow up – Add and schedule follow up activities with your leads, and see a history of your interactions.
• Easily import and export leads – AgentMethods makes it easy to import and export leads from other sources.

We’ve also produced a demo of the new Leads Manager in action:

Questions bout this or other features in AgentMethods? Contact us on our support site: http://support.agentmethods.com/.