Jeff Cline

Most new agents ask me the same question,”How do I make the most out of a limited budget when getting my new business started?”

There are many ways to answer this, and it typically depends on when the questions is asked. So I am going to give you some facts, and myth busters and you can apply them to your new business.

1) MY WEB-SITE

This seems to be the first MYTH. It has to cost alot of money to build a perfect website for my new business, and it takes months to get it just right. FALSE!!!!!

Facts about web-sites:

• You can build a website for under $1500.00 and if you are on a real tight budget under $300.00(this will get you started, and you can alwasy grow your site as you have more budget).
• Time to depoly a site. 1 week! Get it set up, get a few pages on it and get to the business of selling insurance. Dont spend months making your site perfect, because there is no perfect site. The only person you are trying to impress with a site that takes months to build is YOURSELF!!!
• All hosting is the same! FALSE!! This is one thing you should invest in early. A FAST SITE, Google loves speed, so the faster your pages load the better. Dont buy the $7.00 shared hosting account. I would prefer to see you get your own blazing fast dedicated server, you will be glad you did. I have seen them as low as $150.00 a month, and I promise you in the long run you will be glad you did. Many agents make this mistake, and all things equal you may out rank your competition much sooner than you think , just because of speed. Google wants page load speed under 1.5, and most sites dont even get close to this. Flash and a ton of graphics really slow your page down.
• FACT: I built a site 3 days ago, and it is on the second page of Google today for the keywords I am optimizing for. It does not take 6 months to get indexed, if done correctly.
• MY URL: Dont fall inlove with a URL, that is all it is, a $10.00 string of words! I prefer URLS that include the KEYWORDS of your business, Google like this and they tell the customer exactly what your site is about. If your url can tell the full storey of your site, it has done its job!

OK, so you have built your site!!Yeah, now what? You hvae to choose a marketing budget, that you can stick to for 120 days. What ever that budget is, I reccomend splitting it in half and spending 50% on Pay Per Click and the other 50% on LONG TERM SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION.

Pay-per-click is very expensive in the long run, but it will get your business going in hours. You can set up a campaign and start creating leads the same day. If you need a list of good providers, give me a call and I can tell you the one that fits your product the best. You will need to figure between $4.00 a click and $15.00 a click depending on what type of insurance you are selling, and what time of year it is.

It typically takes 3 clicks to make a lead. So you invest $300.00 in a PPC campaign, you will probably see 7-30 leads. You close one leads and take the profite and do it again, and again, and again. You have now started a successful online business.

Over time you are going to see that your cost of leads are going up because PAY PER CLICK goes up every year. IN-FACT, when I started PPC, I was paying .01 a click. So it has gone up 15000% in 14 years, and we expect it will tripple in the next 3-5 years. So do the math, it is going to cost alot more to operate your online business in the future. That is where the other half of your marketing budget comes in. LONG TERM SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO).

SEO,Where do you start? Well you need to understand that SEO is a 3 legged stool and you need all three legs to succeed. You also need to understand that it takes months if not years to get the most out of SEO (that is why is is called a long term investment), but once it starts working for you it will help lower your cost per lead and cost per sale, and it will allow you to keep growing your business at the time you will need it the most.

WE OFFER AN ENTIRE CLASS ON THE ART OS SEO! Give us a call if you would like to be a part of the online or classroom class.