The right marketing plan can make a world of difference between a successful independent insurance agency and a struggling competitor. Do you wish to leave the level playing field and elevate your competitiveness to higher ground? That requires adopting a mix of digital marketing strategies for insurance agency growth.
Agencies grow by expanding their reach, and one of the most efficient ways to achieve this is by having a robust online presence. Showcase your insurance expertise with meaningful blog content, run digital ads, and spread brand awareness through social media. These efforts will help drive more prospective policyholders to your agency.
Make it an all-encompassing campaign with strategic community outreach. This allows you to market your solutions to local fans that already love your brand. You can even leverage professional relationships to find new business, legitimize your brand, and stand out in the crowd. This article discusses in-depth how to market an insurance agency.
How to Market Your Independent Insurance Agency on the Internet
About 67% of millennials would prefer to shop insurance products digitally if offered the means. Similar experiences are becoming increasingly popular among older policyholders. About 71% acknowledge their desire for internet-based claims processes, such as virtual chat or video interactions. Based on these much-evolved consumer preferences, insurance agents' online presence is a crucial survival factor. Try these six web marketing strategies for your insurance agency:
- Create an agency website and get it ranked locally: A well-designed website will establish credibility for your business while serving as a key lead generation tool. Optimize the site for local organic search with SEO and up-to-date NAP information. Ensure the site is mobile-responsive to maximize traffic and to make every visit count, create compelling landing pages with CTAs and a stunning homepage.
- Content marketing to create brand awareness and authority: Prospective buyers are constantly scouring the web for information on insurance products. Put your brand in front of these audiences using attention-grabbing online guides, how-tos, and page insights that help to move them swiftly along the buying journey.
- Utilize paid ads to boost your online presence: Run Google Ads with keywords for which you’re not currently ranking to boost your SERP visibility. Supplement that with Facebook Ads to expand your local community reach with more followers and likes. To target a more professional audience, advertise your products on LinkedIn.
- Monitor and manage your online reputation: Online reviews can impact your agency’s ability to attract new customers. You can increase positive reviews in several ways. These include incentivizing happy customers and sending personalized follow-ups through email. Create a reputation management system to track, stop, and manage negative comments before these are published online, hurting your image.
- Be active on social sites for strong social proofing: Besides good feedback, social proofing weighs heavily on most insurance consumers’ purchase decisions. This is why you should have a strong brand presence across all social media platforms. Publish engaging material on your profile pages and drive positive interactions with relatable posts. This strategy helps build social proof for your agency and earns you the trust of your potential customers.
- Initiate one-to-one communication with email marketing: Insurance buyers have one of the highest engagement rates for marketing emails, according to a Mailchimp study. About 21.36% of subscribers will open their emails, and 2.13% will click on the CTA. Leverage email marketing to establish relationships with leads as well as existing and previous customers. Marketing insurance products this way helps to build lasting trust with prospects. It pays off when the leads you’ve been pursuing a while finally need insurance, and remember that you can fulfill their insurance requirements.
How to Market Your Independent Insurance Agency in Your Local Community
Standing with your local community at an hour of need is one of the most powerful marketing strategies for an insurance agency. It’s highly rewarding, with 87% of consumers saying that they would more readily buy from a company that’s involved in social advocacy. Here are some ideas for this strategy:
- Be actively involved in local events: Participating in local events as a sponsor or volunteer increases your brand exposure. To optimize the ROI, ensure that the sponsorship cost is reasonable and attendee volume is high. Distribute agency-branded wearables and business cards for your brand to easily stand out at the event. Also, avoid local occasions with too many competing sponsors to get noticed. You can also find important local events in your area online using these sites: Eventbrite, Patch.com, and All Events in City.
- Get involved within the school system: You could join a school board or parent-teacher association to build relationships with potential customers. Supporting high school festivals and showing up with your team can leave an indelible impression of your brand in stakeholders’ minds, including teachers, parents, and school board members.
- Take community engagement online: Identify and engage in local events of interest through social media. By liking and commenting on posts about upcoming special occasions, you’re getting your brand noticed for free. You can even share local events that you’re sponsoring or supporting in some way on your business page.
- Follow your customers to the most commonplaces: From hardware stores to auto dealerships or repair shops—there are so many local areas to find potential insurance buyers. Go to these places and start informal conversations that could pave the way for a sales pitch later. Always resist the temptation to pitch straight away when you meet someone for the first time.
How to Market Your Independent Insurance Agency Through Professional Networking
Consumer trust is harder to come by when you’re just starting your insurance agency. However, professionals are knowledgeable and can tell if you’re the real deal or not. Networking with them can provide a much-needed credibility boost as you build a name in the industry. Some practical approaches for that include:
- Join local business chambers: As a commerce chamber member, you could play key roles in lobbying the government and championing matters of public or business interest like tax, legal, or economic reforms. For your involvement, you can increase your brand’s local visibility, score important customer referrals, and grow your reputation. This association gives your agency more credibility, with prospects saying that they’re 63% more likely to buy from a member than from an outsider.
- Partnering with other professionals: Prospective insurance buyers deal with different types of professionals at different points in their lives. A homebuyer who engages a real estate agent or mortgage broker may require title insurance as part of the closing requirements. This shows the significance of having lead-sharing partnerships with professionals who may be interested in customers similar to yours. Win-win referral agreements are some of the most cost-effective marketing strategies for insurance businesses.
- Find opportunities on local networking sites: These platforms provide an opportunity to showcase your expertise and get noticed by other professionals. Start by looking up like-minded group meetings (virtual or in-person) on Meetup or provide correct answers to relevant questions on Reddit. Quora has over the years grown into a formidable intelligent discourse platform and is certainly appropriate for insurance agents. React on posts and comments and write articles on LinkedIn to assert your domain expertise there or attend trade shows, business seminars, local fairs, etc., to make your presence felt offline.
A multifaceted approach with online and offline components is the best way to market insurance agencies today. However, if you sell insurance policies, you need to adapt to the changing consumer preferences for digital experiences at key phases of the buyer journey. How you pull this off can make or break your business, which is why learning how to market insurance solutions cannot be overemphasized. At Stratosphere, we have the resources and expertise to market and help grow your independent agency. Contact us today to get started!
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