Many organizations invest significant time, effort, and resources into building new websites, only to find themselves asking a familiar question:
Why isn't our website generating any leads?
They become frustrated and disappointed when their investment doesn't pay off. The key to a successful website is its ability to cater to all phases of the insurance buying cycle.
These websites are visually stunning and incredibly cost-effective, thanks to the wide range of pre-built website themes available on platforms like HubSpot CMS Hub™, WordPress, and other popular web hosting platforms. However, many websites still struggle to generate leads despite their impressive features and affordability.
The truth is that not all website designs, whether pre-built themes or custom websites, were created to generate leads. It's common to become enamored with the aesthetics of a website design and overlook the necessary elements for lead generation.
Is Your Website Built to Drive Lead Generation?
In many cases, when a company creates a new website, its primary goal is to highlight the solutions they provide. They dedicate most of their time and energy to three key areas:
- Appealing aesthetics
- Informative content about their organization
- And the solutions they provide
While appealing aesthetics, informative content, and highlighting solutions are a good start for a website, they are only a fraction of what is needed to generate leads.
When a potential customer visits your website, they have a specific goal: finding the information they need to make an informed decision to determine:
-
If your solution can help solve their problem
or
-
If your solution can help them take advantage of an opportunity
Put simply, visitors to your website want to decide if it's worth their time to delve deeper into your company and the solutions you offer. A well-built website can assist visitors in self-qualifying themselves.
It's important to remember that visitors may be at different stages of their buying cycle when they come to your website:
- Awareness – the buyer is actively seeking out possible solutions for their specific issue
- Consideration – the buyer is actively evaluating solutions that align with their interests
- Decision –the buyer has made a decision on the approach or method they will use to solve their problem or seize an opportunity
Refrain from assuming that every visitor to your website is prepared to jump right into a demo, a 15-day free trial, or a proof-of-concept.
Below are three main reasons why your website may not generate leads.
Reason #1: Lack of Helpful Information for Each Stage of the Buying Cycle
A common mistake many new websites make is that they often only focus on providing an overview of their solutions, assuming that if a serious buyer is visiting their site, they must be ready to make a purchase.
The content primarily revolves around giving customers access to product literature, trials, and live demos. While this content holds significance, it is only relevant when the buyer is in the decision stage of their buying cycle.
Your website must deliver the right content to cater to each stage of the insurance buying cycle.
Awareness Stage
During the Awareness Stage, your website needs to offer valuable educational content that allows potential buyers to gain insights into the issues, problems, or potential opportunities that pique their interest. This stage is all about helping prospects educate themselves and make informed decisions. To cater to this stage effectively, you can provide a variety of content options, such as:
- Educational blog posts that go beyond just republishing news articles
- Informative explainer videos
- Active presence on social media platforms
- Access to analyst and research reports
- In-depth use cases
By providing diverse content options, your website can become a valuable information hub for prospects in the Awareness Stage. This will empower them to confidently navigate their buying journey, knowing they have access to the resources they need.
Consideration Stage
During the Consideration Stage, it is crucial to offer informative content that assists prospects in gaining a deeper understanding of potential solutions for their specific problem, issue, or opportunity. In this stage, you can provide various types of content that can help prospects make well-informed decisions. Some examples of content that are effective during the Consideration Stage include:
- Customer Testimonial Videos
- Case studies
- ROI Calculators
- Webinars
- Podcasts
By providing a wide array of content choices, you have the power to captivate potential customers and steer them toward selecting the optimal solution for their requirements.
Decision Stage
The Decision Stage is when you can provide the content and resources to help prospects choose your best solution for their problem or opportunity. Examples of content used in the Decision Stage include:
- Demonstration videos
- Live custom demos
- Free trials or Proof-of-Concept offers
- Product and vendor comparisons
- Exclusive offers
Many companies have a wealth of this valuable content, such as whitepapers, ebooks, and case studies that can significantly assist interested buyers in their decision-making process. However, despite having such valuable resources, many companies must provide convenient access for these interested buyers.
This lack of convenient access can be a missed opportunity for companies to engage and nurture potential leads. Without easy access to the content, interested buyers may become frustrated and abandon the website, leading to lost opportunities for lead generation.
To address this issue, companies should ensure that their website is designed with user-friendly navigation and intuitive search functionality. This will make it easier for interested buyers to find the content they are looking for and access it with just a few clicks.
Additionally, companies can consider implementing a gated content strategy, where interested buyers must provide their contact information to access valuable resources. This ensures convenient access for interested buyers and enables companies to capture valuable lead information for further nurturing and follow-up.
By providing convenient access to valuable content, companies can effectively engage interested buyers at various stages of the buying cycle and increase the chances of generating leads. It's not enough to have valuable content; it's equally important to make it easily accessible to interested buyers.
Reason #2: Limited Ways to Convert
To effectively generate inbound leads from your website, it is crucial to offer valuable content throughout the buyer's journey and provide convenient access to the specific information that interested buyers seek. This proven approach ensures that potential leads can easily find the content they need at every stage of their decision-making process.
Many websites we review rely on a generic "Contact Us" call-to-action (CTA) as the primary means of engagement. However, this CTA is typically intended for buyers in the decision-making stage, ready to engage.
Using this generic CTA, potentially interested contacts are often lumped together with other requests, making it challenging to engage and convert them effectively. Creating specific conversion paths or CTAs for each stage of the buyer's journey is important to ensure a seamless and targeted approach to lead generation.
To effectively generate leads from your website, it is crucial to have conversion paths or CTAs for every stage of the buyer's journey. Once you have developed helpful content for each stage of the buying cycle, you can create targeted CTAs aligning with each stage of the buying process.
By implementing this approach, you can seamlessly guide potential leads through their decision-making process and increase the chances of generating quality leads.
Reason #3: Limited or no SEO strategy in place
To effectively market your company and attract potential buyers, it is essential to have a comprehensive SEO strategy in place. With it, interested buyers may be aware of your existence and be able to evaluate your company and the solutions you offer.
By implementing a complete SEO strategy for your website, you can increase your visibility and drive traffic from organic searches, social media, and referrals, allowing you to reach a wider audience and generate more leads.
Please ensure that every page on your website is fully optimized, including all landing pages, blog posts, and email campaigns. Optimization is critical to attracting more traffic and reaching a wider audience, allowing you to generate more leads.
Refrain from relying on direct visits (buyers who are familiar with your company and type in your URL) and email marketing campaigns - implement a comprehensive SEO strategy to increase your visibility and drive organic traffic from searches, social media, and referrals.
Conclusion
Instead of pushing an interested buyer straight to a Decision Stage Call-to-Action (CTA), it's essential to recognize that only some visiting your site are ready to purchase. By allowing potential customers to explore and learn more about your company, you create an opportunity for them to understand how your solutions can benefit them.
As you are well aware, the insurance buying cycle can often be a lengthy and complex process. It is essential to focus on attracting and retaining visitors in the decision stage and cater to all three stages of their buying journey. By catering to each stage, you can effectively engage potential customers, providing them with the information and resources they need to make informed decisions.
If you're seeking valuable feedback on your website, we have a solution for you. Get a free website assessment to measure your site's impact on lead generation.
