Increasing Visits to Your Agency Website
Your agency website is the most important piece of Internet real estate you actually own. It is your home base. It is the core component to creating, enhancing, and mastering your Internet presence. Social platforms are also important and are another part you use to master your Internet presence.
But, the big problem is you don’t actually own your profile on any social platforms. You are simply renting or leasing space on those platforms. At any time Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, or any other platform you might decide to use could shut down your account. And you have virtually no recourse.
That’s why your website is so important. You own it. You manage it. You enhance it. It is a great tool to help people understand how they can benefit from the products and services you offer.
So, how should you use the social platform outposts to drive people to your agency website? And maybe more importantly, which platforms should you spend your time developing?
The Investis IQ Audience Insight Report published in October 2013 gives us some insight to be able to answer this question. The report tracked visitors to corporate websites from social media platforms.
Their research found that LinkedIn drives significantly more traffic to corporate websites than all the other social platforms combined. According to the survey, LinkedIn accounts for nearly two-thirds, 64%, of all visits to corporate websites from social media sites and this is steadily increasing.
Twitter is also gaining in influence, up from 4% in 2011 to 14% today, which reflects the increase in the number of companies adopting Twitter for corporate communications.
Facebook’s share by contrast has decreased by nearly 50% in two years, 30% to 17%, and the findings may indicate that Facebook is a declining platform for B2B corporate marketing. It continues to be a good platform for connecting with individual consumers.
At least for this survey, visits from Flickr, YouTube, Google+, and SlideShare are all negligible, at least for now. LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are responsible for 95% of visits to corporate websites from social media sites.
Just to be clear, I believe Google+ is a special case. While the use of Google+ may not be driving business traffic to your website, it is an important platform to be active on because of its search engine optimization (SEO) benefits. The Investis report said that 54% of corporate website traffic came as a result of a search engine.
The report also found that 20% of all traffic to corporate websites came from mobile devices. However, less than a quarter of companies (23%) provide either a dedicated mobile site or a responsive website. There is clearly a lot more for corporate websites to do.
Here are some steps you can take to master your Internet presence:
- Continue to enhance your agency website. The more information you provide on your website the more likely someone is to find you.
- Make everything mobile friendly. Your website needs to be easily viewable by any type of device that might access it. People are using smartphones and tablets to search. What does your website look like on those platforms?
- Focus on your LinkedIn marketing. There’s never been a better time to enhance your presence on LinkedIn. It should be mandatory that every salesperson in your agency have their LinkedIn profile fully completed. Also, make sure your agency LinkedIn company page is up to date.
- Make sure all of the social platforms you use have links back to your agency website.
Remember, your agency website is your home base — all other platforms where you “rent” space are your outposts that point back to your own platform. These are beginning steps you can take to maximize your agency Internet presence and help drive businesses to your agency.
What can you add to your website to make it more valuable? Let me know.
Steve – good article. I think you are right in saying that Agents need to focus on their web site and drive traffic there. But for all the talk of Social Media and using that to drive traffic to your Agnecy Web Site there is one point in this blog post that you are not showing.
In the pdf that Investis created it says that 1.5% of traffic is coming from Social Media sites. Even though it says that Social Media’s growth has “Tripled” in the past 2 years a 1.5% level is horrible.
Here is the other thing. This report talks about 60 web sites that this company monitors. They don’t specify what industries. Also they don’t say where the companies are based? The report talks a lot about the United Kingdom.
I’m not against using Social Media and maybe using LinkedIn is a better platform to help drive traffic. But let’s keep things in focus here. According to this report, if 54% of the traffic is coming from Search Engines, then what do we need to do with our web sites to get more noticed there.
I’m starting to wonder if Google + will help more in that area than trying to focus my energy and efforts on Facebook or other Social Media platforms.
What are your thoughts?
Scott, you make some great points. One of my concerns with all the information within the industry about using social media is that the focus will move away from “a balanced approach to marketing.” I’ve written quite a bit about “Mastering Your Internet Presence” and I believe it takes all these pieces and perhaps more to make an insurance agency visible to consumers (both personal and business) when they do their research online.
I do believe Google+ is well worth spending some time on because of its search engine optimization benefits to an agency as a whole and individual producers.
Very interesting article. Fact that LinkedIn drives more traffic to corporate websites and the need for mobile access are great points I will share with agents.
Thanks Steve
This article comes at the perfect time because one of my goals for this year was to improve my linkedin account and to learn more about the tool it offers. Can you share a website from an insurance agent that you feel does a great job with social media and blogging? Thanks Ed Cantu