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Estate
Planning Web Site Service A compilation of successful marketing tips from our clients. Overview
These pages cover
techniques our clients are currently using and
having success with. They are designed to help
increase traffic, maximize the chance for a visitor
to contact you, network with your community and
quantify the value of this web site service. Below
is our 3-Step plan to maximize your web site's
usefulness. STEP 1
This is a
tremendous benefit that should not be
overlooked. The very FIRST thing you need
to do is to let your site save time and
money. What is your time worth? If you
charge $180 per hour and you can save even
just 30 minutes of your time per month (by
letting your site handle the client's
basic education), the service has paid for
itself. At that point, any other time
saved in this fashion or new business is
icing on the cake.
Sample
Marketing Tips (discussed below): STEP 2
Having a
site is like opening a physical office -
if you don't tell people about it, they
won't know to come. Although we market
your web site at estateplanning.com and
send you leads, the best way to boost your
site's usefulness is you.
Sample
Marketing Tips (discussed below): STEP 3
The last
step, and an extremely important one, is
to track your leads. If you don't ask
every person if they've seen your site,
you will not be able to quantify your
site's usefulness. We can't stress this
enough. We have many professionals
receiving new business from leads we sent
them, and they were completely unaware of
it. Don't make this mistake! It's easier
than you think to incorporate this tip
into your daily routine.
Sample
Marketing Tips (discussed below): TIP:
Conventional
Marketing A)
Print Your Web Site Address On EVERYTHING B)
Contact Local Media C)
Mailings to Existing Clients and Other
Professionals TIP:
Internet
Marketing A)
Search Engines Almost all of the
engines use different methods for determining where
your listing appears in the results of someone's
search. These criteria can change often, making it
difficult to retain high placement. However, one of
the most common things they all use is called META
tags. These tags are put at the beginning of your
"welcome" or "home" page automatically by our web
builder. It defaults to using tags such as "living
trust" and "estate planning," but these tags can be
anything you want. If you would like to customize
these, you can edit it yourself (if you have the
proper software) or you can just email us what you
want, and we'll do it for you.
Although you can
register at each search engine individually, some
web sites specialize in registering you to ALL the
search engines. You can try them and see if they
work for you. To find some current ones, run a
search using a search engine for "traffic
boost," "search engine placement,"
"promote your site," or something
similar.
We gave a
presentation about Building Your Business on the
Internet at the Heckerling Show in Florida, which
you can download here in PowerPoint
format or
Acrobat
Reader format
(requires the most recent version of acrobat
reader, which you can download for free
here). B)
Cross-Linking with Affiliates, Charitable
Organizations or Local Businesses If you run some
quick searches on Yahoo and other search engines
for "estate planning," the result will be
"gazillions" of listings. (Not really, but it will
be a LOT.) If you limit your search to your local
community, city or area, you can find a wealth of
sites with whom you could potentially exchange
links. Other good "crossing-linking" possibilities
for you could be local charitable organizations,
local business (any type), sites dedicated to
seniors, and information-based sites like on-line
newspapers or magazines. C)
Build a Page for Affiliates, Charitable
Organizations or Local Businesses Offer to create a
web page exclusively for them, filled to the brim
with their information, background,
services, etc. Simply collect this information from
them, and use one of your 10 blank "custom" pages.
Keep in mind that the custom blank pages will give
this organization a link on almost EVERY page on
your site. So, not only are you hosting their web
page free of charge and giving them an "Internet
Presence," but you are also MARKETING them to all
the people visiting your web site. Once you have
explained this to them, let them know to start
telling people to come to your site to see this
information. Now you have other organizations
marketing your web site! D)
Banner Ads & Link Exchange E)
Ongoing Seminars F)
Publish Articles G)
Listing Services TIP:
Mailings As mentioned in
other tips, mailings are a fantastic tool in
conjunction with your web site. We use to spend
thousands of dollars to produce full color products
marketing our products and services. Then, we spent
a fortune mailing them out to you and our other
clients. With the intense growth of the Internet
over the last three years, we quickly discovered a
brilliant alternative - postcard mailings. At
20¢ per postcard, it is absolutely the least
expensive way to keep in touch with your client
base. The down side has always been the lack of
information you can put on the postcard. That's
where your web site comes in. We have discovered
that most people prefer the postcard to a thick
booklet, especially when you don't overwhelm them
with information in small print. And if they want a
hard copy, they can print it out. One of our
clients sent a postcard that simply said, "It's the
new millennium. Stay up to date with today's
financial issues and ensure your family's future.
Visit free educational web site at..." Large text,
a nice picture, to the point and the all important
word, "free." This method not only keeps you in
contact with your clients, but increases the chance
for referrals when they method your site to their
friends and family. You can also send out email
mailings that say the same thing as the postcard.
We find that a healthy mix of email and postcard
mailings works best.
Lead Tracking
Note: Make sure to include a different
extension in every mailing. For example, your
postcard could read, "Call 800-728-2665, ext. 95"
And when someone calls in and mentions that
extension (or more commonly, you ask them how they
heard about you and they mention the postcard and
extension), you have tracked the lead to this
mailing. This way, you can distinguish new business
based on your marketing.
TIP:
Free Information
Kit One of our most
popular marketing tools is the "free kit" idea. By
default, it is turned on when we turn your site on,
but you can disable it at any time. The content of
the kit default to products we can sell you, but
you can make the kit be anything you want. It can
be just our products, just your products or a
combination of the two. It's up to you. But the
concept is (as always) to get people to contact
you. For a couple bucks of free information, people
are willing to volunteer their contact information,
when they otherwise wouldn't. Don't underestimate
the value of the word, "free."
TIP:
Word of
Mouth Perhaps the most
overlooked method of building interest and traffic
to your site is the most basic: TELL PEOPLE ABOUT
IT. Talk it up. Inform every caller of your
site.
How many
phone calls do you get in one day? What do you
think would happen if you asked every caller,
"Do
you have Internet access? We have an incredible
wealth of free educational material on our site
which you can read at your own pace without costing
you a penny." Did
you know that more than half of the people who call
your office have access to the Internet? You'd be
surprised how many seniors have a child or
grandchild with Internet access. And a good many of
them will love going to your site to pre-educate
themselves! TIP:
Lead
Tracking Make sure you track
your leads so you will know who came to you from
your web site. When you get an e-mail or free kit
request, it is obvious they came to your site. But
what about a phone call? One great suggestion is to
add a unique extension number to the phone number
you advertise at your site (e.g., 310-728-2665
x50). If you can, try to make sure this number goes
straight to one person's phone. That way, you can
have ONE person receiving and documenting all the
Internet calls, and asking if they have an
extension number. When they say, "Extension 50,"
you know the person came from your site!
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