The Beginner’s Guide to Being an Online Insurance Agent

Are you thinking about expanding your insurance business? If so, the internet can be a place to market your credentials and insurance agent services. Unlike media or newspaper ads, you can buy a website or create one without sharing the page with anyone else.

The internet is a highway of information. It is not much different from a classroom or literature found in the bookstore. But, unlike learning the Dewey Decimal Classification or understanding the syllabus of a college course, many more people can perform an internet search using a particular search engine. As an insurance agent, you must learn how to create your own online dictionary, in the form of a website, that attracts and keeps people’s attention.

There are two main ways to attract online insurance customers. You can market your services on another person or company’s website or just create your own. We will focus your attention on the latter, since you wish to become a full-fledged, online insurance agent.

But before you spend any money on a domain name or hire a web designer, you should take some time creating a marketing plan. Ask yourself, what are your objectives for building this website? Some insurance agents use their websites strictly for generating new leads. Usually, these sorts of websites allow the online visitor to submit a request form for insurance quotes or an appointment. Others may wish to sell insurance online. In order to do so, you must be licensed with certain insurance carriers that allow online quotes and applications. You can incorporate both the request form and insurance quote search engine on your website.

You must consider other elements of the website before going live. What should you name your website? The name should be easy to remember and reflect the purpose of the site. If you wish to promote your own name as an insurance advisor, you should include your name and primary business function in the website’s title (i.e. jblowninsurancegency.com). After choosing a name, you must find a web hosting company to list your agency website. Also, you will need a plan to attract online readers that could become insurance customers. The majority of web traffic comes directly from search engines. Therefore, you will need to write articles or use company approved material to attract potential, on-line customers. Otherwise, you must consider advertising on the major search engines (i.e. Adsense - Google or Overture - Yahoo) or other websites to drive traffic.

There is little chance of people coming to your website, especially if you do not work on it or spend advertising dollars. Some webmasters might imply that building a website is enough but this is not true. When you started your insurance business, you needed to build a clientele and it took time. Building a website should not be viewed as an exception. As a result, it is a good idea to submit your articles to newspapers, including online financial and insurance websites. This can bring credibility to your name and website. But, these articles need to be written for viewers and not the search engines. Do not stuff your articles with keywords (i.e. health insurance), in order to achieve higher search engine rankings. You cannot fool the search engines for long and your site might be penalized by Yahoo, Google, or others.

In addition, it is important that your site is easy to navigate and use. If not, you will find that most viewers spend little time on your website and may never come back. You should build a page where you provide a link to your website. As a new website, I would recommend not restricting others from linking to to your insurance website. However, this does not imply that you should link back to their site. Be careful! You do not want your website seen as a link farm by one of the major search engines. Your site might disappear from their searches.

Being an online insurance agent is going to be hard work. First, you need a marketing plan before buying a domain name. The marketing plan must focus on the goals of the website. Are you going to use this site to attract new customers via a request form, sell insurance online, or a combination of the both? If you are going to sell insurance online, you should find carriers that will license you. Your website also should be user friendly and filled with articles that people are interested in reading. Website advertising on search engines can bring a lot of traffic to your website; however, the price tag can be hefty, depending on the search term and the number of daily hits. In addition, you might consider buying text ads on other websites as a means of marketing diversification.

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