As you market your insurance agency, don’t forget to include reputation management strategies. Reputation management is crucial for any company, but it is especially important for insurance agencies, as your clients need to trust you. Discover more about reputation management, including why it matters.
What Is Reputation Management?
To put it simply, reputation management is your strategy of managing your reputation. Of course, it is more involved than just this. With reputation management, you work to oversee and influence everything that influences the public perception of your insurance agency. This means maintaining your reputation both online and offline in the community.
Why Does Reputation Management Matter?
The biggest reason that reputation management matters is its ability to influence whether you bring in new clients. If someone doesn’t like the first impression they get of your agency from a quick online search, they are going to find another insurance company instead.
With a business like insurance, you hope each new client becomes a long-term client. As such, losing a potential client due to poor reputation management can cost you income for years to come.
Don’t underestimate the importance of managing your reputation. In today’s modern world, 88% of people put as much trust in online reviews as they do in personal recommendations. And you should expect potential clients to look for online reviews and other information about your agency before becoming a client.
How to Manage Your Insurance Agency’s Reputation
Now that you understand why reputation management is so important, how do you make use of this new knowledge? The most obvious part of reputation management is reviews, but this is far from the only component. Your reputation management strategy should include the following components.
Monitoring and Encouraging Reviews
As mentioned, reviews are a big part of your online reputation, although they aren’t the sole factor. There are two main parts of reputation management related to reviews:
- Encourage satisfied clients to leave reviews.
- Manage and respond to negative reviews.
One of the most important things you can do is encourage your clients to leave reviews. The more reviews you have, the more weight potential clients will give them. One report says that average consumers need 10 positive reviews before they trust a business. Additionally, having more positive reviews will reduce the impact of negative reviews. After all, if you have 10 reviews and one is negative, you only have a 90% positive review rate. But if you have 100 and only one is negative, this jumps to 99%.
The other important thing is to respond to negative reviews. If someone has a poor client experience with your agency, do what you can to improve it. Your ultimate goal is to make up for their poor experience, so they change the review. But even just responding and showing a willingness to resolve the issue can help. Remember that potential clients will want to know that your agency can handle criticism.
Deliver an Excellent Client Experience
Most of the reviews will focus on the client experience, and this is the main factor potential clients are concerned about. So, do what you can to optimize the experience for clients. Just some of the things you can do to ensure an excellent experience include:
- Providing correct and consistent information about your agency across websites and directories.
- Making your agency easy to reach.
- Responding promptly to clients and potential clients.
- Having an easy-to-navigate, professional website.
- Having an intuitive client portal.
- Regularly getting feedback from clients and taking it to heart.
Be Active on Social Media
In addition to reviews, one of the most important parts of your online reputation is your presence on social media. You can be in control of your online presence there to help grow your brand.
At the very least, start by claiming your agency’s profile on each of the major social media platforms your client base may be on. This prevents other profiles from being confused for your agency. That could be disastrous as you would have no control over their actions. Claiming your profile also prevents someone with malicious intentions from claiming it to hurt your reputation, although that is not likely.
Then, focus on using social media on the platforms that your clients and potential clients are on. Be active and engaging. Use social media to connect with and reach out to clients. Use it to highlight that you are part of the community and how your agency gives back.
Pay Attention to Other Mentions of Your Agency
While most of your online mentions will be in reviews or on social media, your insurance agency will also likely occasionally appear in local news or industry blogs. Pay attention to these and track the sentiment behind the mentions. This lets you know when you have to do damage control. It also gives you the chance to highlight an extremely positive mention.
Conclusion
Reputation management helps your insurance agency attract new clients and maintain those that you already have. Think of it as your digital first impression, and its importance becomes clear. Start by managing reviews, but don’t forget to pay attention to social media and the customer experience as well.