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As a specialist online business, we know how important it is to effectively market our product via our website. It's our shop front, so we've invested in it to make sure it works hard for us.
While brokers build their business through personal relationships, part of the initial battleground for customers is online, especially with younger home buyers who do part of their research via the internet.
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The web has changed buyer behaviour, so while your prime focus is building the business and client service, it's important to understand the basics of website marketing so you can ask your marketing team, or your aggregator, the right questions.
So what can you do to your website to improve lead generation but also potentially earn you some revenue? Here's some tips we've learned over the eight years of running an online business.
Content
First, your website needs good content as it's what attracts potential customers in the first place. It needs to be highly targeted to your audience and focused on how you can solve their problem or achieve their dream, rather than boasting about your credentials. This means being very clear about who your target audience is – whether it's first home buyers or self funded retirees – and providing the information specific to their interests. This could even extend to creating a micro-site specific to a target audience, similar to what we have done with the launch of PL Broker.
The content also needs to be updated regularly. We blog on a weekly basis, providing advice and tips to our customers on how to better manage their money and promote this via social media. It's played a key role in ensuring we rank well in Google and attract customers to our site.
What is becoming increasingly important is optimising your website for mobile and tablets. Australia has the highest rate of smartphone ownership in the world, with around 7.5 million Aussies accessing the internet via their mobile in one month alone. Some finance companies are predicting that as much as 80 per cent of their loans will come via mobile devices.
Traffic generation
There are two key phrases to be aware of when it comes to traffic generation, and that's organic versus paid for traffic.
Organic traffic comes from people clicking on links in the search results that appear on the main page of search engines like Google. A mix of providing relevant content and using the keywords most searched for by your target audience will help you rank higher in organic search results and drive more traffic to your website.
However, finance is a highly competitive online marketplace and you can't rely on organic traffic alone. Our personal finance business need to rank highly for personal loans in Google to make sure prospective customers click on our website first, so we also use pay for per-click advertising for certain keywords. Likewise, as a broker, you'll need to compete against other brokers on keywords like 'mortgage', 'home loan' or 'first home buyer', but make sure these are chosen strategically such as using words that highlight a location or specialism.
Google has an amazing array of tools that your team can access to ensure you're using the right keywords with the budget available.
Make money from your website
Websites generate sales leads but can also earn you some additional revenue.
One option to consider is affiliate marketing, which is when you sell advertising space on your own website to third parties. As the publisher, you would earn a commission on either the clicks, leads, or sales generated by the advertiser. Sound time consuming? It doesn't have to be. There are affiliate marketing networks that can set this up for you or use Google AdSense.
The only word of caution is to be sure that the advertising doesn't detract from your brand or impact on your sales as ultimately the business needs to be put first.
Like us, your website is part of your shop front. Prospective customers and partners either form an opinion about your business or seek information to affirm a referral they have received, and assess your ability to meet their needs from this. It can make the difference between them picking up the phone or going to your competition. Surely that's worth an investment in time and money?
