Part of running an independent insurance agency is constantly marketing to grow your client base. That continual growth requires you to stay up to date with the latest marketing strategies and tips.
Optimize Your Website
Start by optimizing your website. Make sure that your design is simple, professional, and easy to navigate. Ensure the website itself has all of the relevant information on it, including your agency’s contact information and a list of your services. Consider adding a review or testimonial section, and make sure to follow an SEO strategy as well.
Organize Your Content
As you optimize your website, pay extra attention to the content on it. As mentioned, you need your contact information and pages for each of the products/services that you offer at a minimum. Ideally, you also have an educational section or blog where you share information that will position yourself as a thought leader in the industry and a proud supporter of your community. Take some time to make sure this content is organized readers can easily find what they need by browsing or searching.
Optimize Your Social Media
After ensuring your website is up-to-date, turn to your social media presence. You don’t need to maximize your presence on every platform. Do some research on your target audience and figure out which platforms they spend the most time on. Then, focus your efforts on those platforms. You may also want to consider LinkedIn, as it can help significantly with your networking in addition to reaching new commercial clients.
Don’t forget to include links to your social media profiles on your website. You also want to make sure to post regularly on social media and encourage engagement. Respond to comments on your posts and comment on posts from others that are relevant to your community.
Check Your Data
You want to maximize the results from the effort you put into your agency’s marketing. Part of this is avoiding wasting time on leads that you don’t have complete information for. Another aspect of this is ensuring you don’t have the same person listed twice in your list of leads. Not only would you waste effort targeting them twice, but you may annoy them or seem unprofessional if they receive the same marketing emails twice.
To avoid issues like these, take some time to go through your client data and clean it up. Remove duplicates and ensure that you have all of the information you need about contacts. If you find a record in your database that you are missing some information for, send an email asking them to update it.
Sending a message will also give you the opportunity to get extra information that lets you target your marketing efforts. For example, you could also ask how clients prefer to be contacted or which of your insurance services they are most interested in.
Create a Communications Schedule
One big mistake that insurance agencies make is only contacting clients when it is time for a renewal or when an issue occurs. While some clients will prefer this approach, you’ll usually see better results if you can keep your agency in the mind of your clients throughout the year. This should involve communicating with them every few months in some way. You can share knowledge, ask them to complete surveys, or just share holiday greetings. The goal is to make your insurance agency seem approachable.
Make the Most of the Tools From Your Carriers
Insurance companies typically offer independent agents and agencies a range of tools to help promote them. After all, each carrier wants you to sell more of their policies than those from other carriers.
Take advantage of whatever tools the carriers you use offer. This may be an agent portal, a mobile app, or another digital tool. Some tools may speed up the process of getting a quote. Others may be things such as logos that you can place on your website.
Use Automation When Possible
Savvy insurance agencies take advantage of various available tools, not just those from their carriers. One excellent tool is automation. This is especially useful for things such as email campaigns.
This can even tie into some of the previous tips. For example, you can set up email templates that automatically ask clients to update their contact information if some fields have been left blank. Or you can automate sending bulk newsletters with insurance news or holiday greetings to clients.
Conclusion
You can use many of the same marketing strategies in 2022 that you have used in previous years. Start by honing your online presence, especially on your website and social media pages. Then, clean up your data and fill in any gaps. If you haven’t already done, develop a strategy that keeps you in regular communication with your leads and clients alike and take advantage of available tools and resources whenever possible.