One of the most common questions we get asked is “how can we make our marketing more effective on our very limited budget?”
Not all brokers have substantial or unlimited resources for marketing, but there are marketing methods available to all brokers which are free, easy to do and which will drive business growth.
We’ve listed eight ideas here - but which will be most effective? The answer is that this will depend on your business, and what marketing you’ve already done nevertheless these can all prove to be valuable to your business in some way.
Highly effective marketing techniques requiring minimal spend
- Add ‘click to call’ to your website
We’ve put this first because adding this to your website will almost certainly generate more calls into the office, plus it’s quick and easy to do. Advocates claim that you should see an increase in calls of at least 20%, though we cannot personally corroborate this from a broker industry perspective it’s undoubtedly a worthwhile thing to try.
- Contact lost/previous clients
Of all the new business databases available to you, this is likely to be the most responsive.
- Check you’re happy with the image that features on your ‘Google My Business’ listing
Search for your company online and have a look at your Google My Business. The main image within your published listing is key to getting potential clients to click on your website. Ask yourself, does the image encourage people to call you and/or does it make your business look friendly, professional, and welcoming? It should.
- Check that your website is mobile friendly
It is obvious how important this is, so use this useful tool to check. This service from Google is free and only takes a minute.
- Increase the number of calls-to-action in your marketing
The more calls-to action you have on your website, (within reason) and the better they stand out, the more response you’ll get.
- Add a ‘Get a quote’ form to your website
If visitors to your website want a quote from you, nothing should stand in their way. By not having the facility to obtain a quote you could lose clients to others that do.
- Use Google Analytics
Ten minutes spent on this intuitive (and free) tool from Google will tell you which page on your website has the highest bounce rate. In many instances, this is the page where the largest number of prospects have lost interest in your business and leave to visit a competitor. By improving the quality of the message you could quickly boost your conversion rate (see this example of how a home page might be constructed).
- Regularly email your clients with valuable content
Economists have calculated that increasing customer retention rates by 5% can increase profits by between 25% and 95% - that’s a powerful argument to make this task a priority. If you need further convincing, calculate the lifetime value of a client who you’ve held onto for ten years.
For most of these techniques the only cost to you is your time. Pick three or four which would be appropriate for your business and test them out over the next couple of weeks. We wish you the best of success.