How's your web?
Mortgage Solutions08-10-2009
Many financial services firms don’t buy leads because they generate enough of their own. Some will use traditional marketing methods and spend a lot of money building their brand so consumers seek them out when looking for financial advice. Many use online marketing to drive consumers to their websites where they can make a request to be contacted. Neither of these methods is cheap and usually only the largest companies can afford to spend large amounts on marketing.
Over the last few years, the arrival of lead generation has levelled the playing field as it has meant that companies of all sizes and with varying degrees of marketing expertise can harness the power of online advertising. Rather than spending thousands of pounds to get consumers to go to your website with no guarantees of any contacts let alone conversions, you can effectively buy the positive results of somebody else’s marketing spend in the form of leads. The idea is that somebody else has optimised their online marketing spend so that you don’t have to which means that you don’t need an expensive website in order to generate leads. However, the mistake that many lead buyers make is that they think this means that if they buy leads they don’t need a website at all. In reality, for an adviser to be successful from lead generation they need a website and should also spend some time and money making sure it is a good one.
Remember that a lead is a consumer that has gone online looking to speak to somebody about a financial product or service and has filled in a form to be contacted. This same consumer could have chosen any number of ways to find a qualified adviser to speak to. They could have looked in their local yellow pages, they could have gone to their local high street to find their local adviser but they didn’t. They chose to go online and fill in a form. This reveals something very important about the consumer from the point of view of a lead buyer - that the consumer likes to transact online and the internet is important to them. What this means is that the quality of your website will also be important to them. Even if they haven’t found you by visiting your site, they will probably look you up online either before you’ve even spoken to them or at some point during the advice process.
Most reputable lead providers will inform the consumer who is going to contact them when they have submitted their information online usually in the form of a thank you page. On this page, advisers can display their company name, their logo, contact details and a company description. There will also usually be a chance for the adviser to display their website address. The first thing that many consumers will do once they have seen this page is click on the website address to find out more about the company that is going to contact them. As a lead buyer, this will be the first real interaction that the consumer will have with your company and can often influence the consumer’s decision before you’ve even picked up the phone to call them. If they don’t like what they see, they might just ignore your call or go back online and fill in another form. In this respect your website is like your shop window - if consumers like what they see they are more likely to purchase.
Another vital role that your website plays is that you can use it to promote all the products and services you have to offer. If you buy a mortgage lead, the consumer will have filled in a form looking for mortgage advice but they might also need life insurance. If they visit your website and see that this is something you also provide, then your website will help you cross-sell into other products and this will increase your return on investment from buying mortgage leads.
It’s all very well talking about a “good” website but what exactly does this mean from the lead buyer’s perspective? The most important elements of using your website to convert more leads is to make sure you have displayed your contact information prominently on the homepage. You want consumers to do more than just browse and admire your site. You want them to pick up the phone and call you and a clearly displayed phone number will help. Also, consumers often fill in forms at work and then can’t answer their phone straight away when you call them back. However, these same consumers will most likely visit your website and if your contact details are easy to find they will most likely copy down your number and call you back at a time that’s more convenient for them.
Another important element for a lead buyer’s website is to try to add a human touch such as a picture or personal profile. Filling in a form online is a rather anonymous process and if the consumer clicks onto your website and can see exactly who is going to be contacting them it will help build a rapport with the consumer before you have even contacted them. At the same time, it is important to make your website look as professional and sophisticated as possible and this doesn’t have to be expensive. It’s usually more a case of making sure your site doesn’t look unprofessional. For example, make sure you have an email address that matches your business name and website address. There is nothing more offputting to a consumer than seeing an email address from a hotmail account.
Lead generation works for business of all sizes but those that do best from buying leads understand that consumers who fill in forms online are very different from other sources of business and the processes and systems required to deal with leads are therefore different.
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