For insurance marketing professionals, the tasks of creating demand, generating leads, nurturing prospects, closing sales, and retaining customers are full of unique challenges.
Competition in the insurance industry is fierce and products are frequently quite similar, requiring insurance marketing teams to find new ways to build brands and connect with customers.
Insurance companies must often reach customers indirectly through financial advisors and institutions, making messaging and campaigns more complicated. And the very nature of insurance and its intangible benefits presents a more complex value proposition (see Best Insurance Digital Marketing Strategy).
Fortunately, insurance marketing professionals can take advantage of a wide variety of digital marketing tools for targeting audiences and measuring results that can help to get the most return on limited marketing budgets. But mastering all the channels, strategies, tactics, and analytics of digital marketing can be overwhelming for any marketing team, and the rapidly evolving nature of digital marketing only adds more complexity.
Some marketers define strategy as an analysis of your goals, taking into account your target customers and your competitive advantage (see Insurance Digital Full-Funnel Marketing).
“Marketing strategy” can also describe the overarching method you’ll use to achieve your marketing goals in the long term. This marketing strategy is accomplished through many highly actionable, short-term tactics. Many insurance companies are failing to adapt to the needs of online shoppers, which presents a big opportunity for you to shine.
Insurance marketing is all about selling insurance policies and promoting to your target audience. If you’re relatively new in the market, there’s a high chance that only a few people know of your existence. This means that no matter how favorable your insurance policies are, you’re not making sales or generating leads because your brand awareness is low.
In the insurance industry, every new person you reach counts. Being intentional about your marketing efforts and expanding your online network can directly help you generate more leads and make more sales.
With these 9 insurance marketing ideas, you can get your brand in front of as many potential clients as possible in an effective way.
The right strategies and tactics make it easy to stand out from national and local competitors. Referrals are still necessary, but today, the lion’s share of opportunities are available online.
Insurance agents must maximize offline and online marketing channels and strategies to generate more leads and sell more insurance policies.
Making the most of them requires a website that creates a stellar first impression and provides an intuitive user experience. But there are several other ways to supplement a great site.
This is where defining and targeting your ideal customer with smart marketing strategies comes in.
The right strategies and tactics make it easy to stand out from national and local competitors.
Referrals are still necessary, but today, the lion’s share of opportunities are available online. Making the most of them requires a website that creates a stellar first impression and provides an intuitive user experience. But there are several other ways to supplement a great site.
How Does Insurance Marketing Work?
When it comes to insurance marketing, a one-size-fits-all approach never works. You need to tailor your marketing strategies to your goals, which are heavily dependent on your target customers.
For instance, if your marketing goal is to increase brand awareness, you need to adapt your strategy to make sure that you are advertising to the right audience based on their needs, geographical location, gender, online preferences, etc. You also have to keep monitoring the effectiveness of your strategies and improving them as you go along.
Strategies for Successful Insurance Marketing
Here are examples of the strategies we typically recommend for insurance marketing campaigns:
- Promote your social posts. Social media is the ideal channel for connecting with customers on an emotional level and reminding them that insurance isn’t just about policies and claims, but about protecting the most important things in their lives. While reaching your audience with organic social efforts is no longer viable, promoted posts and social ads are a cost-effective and highly targeted way to reach your best prospects.
- Protect your online reputation. Customers increasingly rely on online reviews when making purchasing decisions. Using a repetition management tool can help to manage the acquisition of reviews from customers, to monitor your reputation across all online reviewing platforms, and to address negative reviews in ways that promote a positive and caring identity.
- Offer chat. Customers often have questions or run into obstacles during the purchasing process, and many prefer to chat rather than make a phone call. Offering a chat service on your website can help to quickly address customer concerns and move them farther down the sales funnel.
- Engage with video. Video is one of your most powerful marketing tools, especially for mobile users who prefer watching video over reading pages of content on their mobile screens. Use video to answer frequently asked questions, provide education on insurance topics, present quick client testimonials, and to create a human connection with your prospects and customers.
- Reduce CPC with remarketing. Insurance-related terms are among the most expensive keywords in paid search. Remarketing campaigns can help to reduce your overall paid search budgets, as remarketing ads have higher conversion rates and lower CPC than search ads.
- Retain customers with email automation. After your investment to secure a customer, an automated email and nurture campaign can effectively help to retain the customer and support cross-selling opportunities. Using an email automation program ensures a regular and logical sequence of communication and enables you to tailor messaging to a user’s specific preferences, history, and behavior.
- Optimize for mobile. Consumers increasingly shop for and make purchasing decisions on their mobile devices, and insurance products are no different. Ensuring that your email communications and website experience are optimized for mobile screens is likely the difference between keeping customers engaged and sending them elsewhere.
How to be Successful in Insurance Marketing?
Make Sure Your Branding Is Consistent
Whatever brand you build should be a happy byproduct of the direct response marketing you do on a regular basis.
For example, you should use the same font and color scheme on all of your marketing materials. It’s always bothered me when people use one set of colors on their social media profiles and then switch it up on their websites. It’s confusing to prospects and should be avoided.
You should also ensure that the stories you tell and messages you send are consistent across all of your marketing channels.
For example, if you tell a story about a client who bought life insurance in a direct mail piece, make sure you test a similar story (or the same story) in your email marketing as well. In a nutshell, building a successful personal brand as an insurance agent comes down to two things – having a clear message and differentiating yourself from the competition. If you can do those two things, you’re golden. Just make sure it’s consistent across all channels.
Leverage Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the best tools for marketing, period. This is because most consumers prefer email than any other form of marketing, which means a large percentage of consumers have made purchases and scheduled appointments directly from their inbox.
One of the biggest keys to success in insurance email marketing is keeping the content engaging.
Also, make sure you include a link to an online scheduler in your emails – this is one of the best ways to get appointments on autopilot. If you can link your email autoresponder to your online scheduler, you can literally sit back and watch the appointments come in.
Finally, make sure you take advantage of your email signature. Use it to include not only your calendar but your phone number and physical address. Give your prospects multiple ways to contact you. The email signature is one of the most underutilized pieces of “email real estate” that insurance agents can use to get more business.
Get Disciplined With Your CRM
One of the best insurance marketing tips has nothing to do with insurance marketing – it’s getting to know your CRM. Take a day out of your calendar and do nothing but get to know your CRM’s features. Call up your CRM company and ask them to walk you through some of the little-known tips and tricks of their power users. If you’re a paying customer, they should be receptive to the idea.
You should integrate your CRM to your calendar, your email autoresponder, your website forms, and your phone number.
That way a lot of the heavy lifting is already done for you. You just have to log in and add additional notes, feedback, etc.
Managing your CRM is arguably the single best way to stay on top of your various marketing channels and follow up with your prospects. It allows you to see who is likely to convert and who isn’t. It also allows you see which marketing channels are working well and which aren’t.
Insurance marketing strategies for grow insurance business
The insurance industry is saturated with national brands making a lot of noise, making it tough for local insurance agencies to be heard by consumers. Smart marketing strategies are necessary so that an insurance agency can stand out from the national and local competition.
These are but a few examples of marketing strategies an insurance agency can employ, but every agency should consider the market and exactly what the target market is looking for before implementing any new program.
1. Boost Credibility within Your Community
Growing your client base starts with your local community. After all, it’s much easier to develop relationships with prospects and customers when you can meet them in person. As an insurance company, there are a lot of opportunities for making a positive impression within your local community.
Broad marketing strategies such as billboards and public transport advertising can be an effective way to get your name out there when you’re just starting and need to build brand awareness. But you can take a more active approach, too. Consider sponsoring a local sports team or 5K race, volunteering for local organizations, and buying booths at events, such as arts festivals. These can all help you get the word out while boosting your credibility.
2. Pay-per-click Advertising
Competition is fierce in the insurance industry. And most people seeking to purchase insurance are looking for a good deal. While they’re scouring Google for the best options, you don’t want your website to appear on the last possible results page. You can give pay-per-click (PPC) advertising a try to counteract this. By bidding on specific keywords, you can get your insurance company in front of more people than you can in the search results alone.
You’ll be the most successful if you find a trusted digital marketing agency to help you launch PPC advertising campaigns for your insurance company.
Because it’s so competitive, you’ll likely need some professional help creating your PPC campaigns. Forget trying to figure out geo-targeting, device targeting, and keyword bidding strategies on your own.
PPC is a form of online advertising in which the advertiser is charged a fee each time one of their adverts is clicked. In essence, you’re paying for targeted online traffic. The idea is that this cost becomes negligible when PPC is working properly because the value of a click (and a potential sale) is worth much more than you’re charged.
The two most prominent types of PPC ads are featured on Google and Bing. PPC ads on these search engines are also known as paid search. You can also incorporate paid social ads on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram into your marketing strategy.
When choosing the keywords you want to rank for, don’t just choose the most popular ones. While “health insurance” may have a huge search volume, it can also be extremely expensive to target. Targeting more specific keywords with lower search volumes, like “health insurance for seniors,” can be equally as effective and better for your ROI.
3. Develop a Business Network
Developing a Business network is one of the best ways to grow your business. Yes, today, most of the contact may happen online, but you can still find unique ways to demonstrate your value as a partner.
You can collaborate with other agencies specializing in different types of insurance or even consider seeking out real estate agents and mortgage lenders, as their clients will likely need your products and services.
Once you’ve made the introduction, be consistent with your follow-ups. Find unique ways to add value to your strategic partners’ businesses, and you’ll start generating referrals in no time.
4. Invest in Content Marketing
Content marketing for insurance companies is an integral part of any marketing strategy. Want to drive traffic to your website while also driving qualified leads? Content marketing can help you achieve this and more if you stay consistent.
Content marketing gives you a unique opportunity to share your insurance industry expertise with your audience. It can be difficult to navigate the industry language and available policy options.
By creating content that helps prospects and clients understand their options for coverage, such as blogs, guides, and tip sheets, you can deliver lasting value. This makes content marketing one of the best insurance marketing ideas out there. And over time, if you stick with it, you can become a trusted authority on all things insurance.
5. Manage Online Reviews
Managing your online reviews is one of the most critical insurance marketing strategies for winning new clients. With 89% of customers making an effort to read reviews online before buying a new product, it’s evident how important reviews are to your company’s reputation.
Reviews help prospects and customers make better decisions, and online feedback is generally trusted as much as feedback from a personal friend or family member would be.
Reviews also help set expectations for new customers. They can determine if your company provides adequate customers service and support, which can make or break their decision to work with you. These are all reasons why review management is so important. Consider how you respond to online reviews because those reading your reviews are also reading and considering your responses.
Purchasing an insurance product can be a long-term commitment. That’s why many insurance policy buyers carefully read customer reviews before deciding on a product.
Positive customer reviews can significantly skyrocket your insurance sales and lower customer acquisition costs.
The easiest way to leverage legitimate and positive online reviews is by messaging or emailing satisfied clients or providing them with a pre-written review template.
Each day, reviews can be read by thousands of consumers—93% of whom are influenced by what your buyers have to say. Reviews have a big impact, so making sure you have a consistent flow of real feedback on Google, Facebook, and industry-specific sites can help you build trust and draw in more insurance leads.
6. Build a Referral Network
Strategic partners for insurance agencies include real estate agents, mortgage lenders, estate planning attorneys and even other insurance agents. If your insurer specializes in a specific type of insurance – for example, worker’s compensation – many other agencies are instead focused on auto and home insurance, and they can refer business clients to you.
When it comes to building strategic partners, plan it out and be consistent. Take a box of donuts to a mortgage lender’s office once a week with a stack of your cards and a note thanking them for thinking of you.
Offer to sit in open houses with real estate agents. Add value and partners will emerge to provide you with solid referrals.
Referral marketing is incredibly effective, but alone, it doesn’t guarantee that word will quickly spread about your business. If you want to amplify the positive messages your clients are sharing about you, you need to have an insurance marketing strategy that puts reviews into play.
7. Partnerships
Another way you can get effective referrals is by reaching out to local businesses that aren’t direct competitors, but still have an audience you want to reach. For example, you may ask to form a partnership with an accounting firm.
In this partnership, you can both exclusively recommend each other to customers in search of services like yours. You can promote the partnership on your website and social media, and they can do the same.
Partnerships, of course, aren’t limited to the digital space. You and your partners can and should promote each other while chatting with clients in-person, so your partnership grows even more beneficial. You can also partner up to host or run a booth at local community events to further drive growth together.
8. LinkedIn networking
While in-person networking is still an effective way to build relationships, the days of handing out piles of business cards to gain a few leads is behind us. These days, you can easily market yourself as an insurance agent on LinkedIn, reaching people well beyond your direct locale.
Here are a few key tips for networking on the social platform:
- Fully complete your LinkedIn profile (and business page, if you have an agency)
- Write a personalized note to everyone you request to connect with
- Post consistently
- Give value and build relationships through your content by engaging with connections or by hopping on a call before making a big ask
- Follow up with warm leads who haven’t taken any next steps
LinkedIn is a particularly great insurance marketing platform for agents and agencies that specialize in policies for businesses. Nearly 80% of B2B marketers agree that the platform helps generate leads, so it never hurts to reach out.
You can even use LinkedIn to build your business partnerships and further drive referrals, too.
9. Social media ads
Social media marketing beyond LinkedIn is a must for pretty much every industry these days. Customers are using social platforms to not only connect, but also to shop and research.
Social media platforms are great for building new relationships, engaging with your audience, and providing excellent customer service.
But you’ll need to develop a robust social media strategy (especially for video marketing) and create content that resonates with your audiences across these platforms.
In addition to posting organic content on each platform and engaging with followers, insurance agents can use social media ads to drive brand awareness and gain leads among users who aren’t following their page.
While ads are available on every platform, we especially recommend investing in Facebook retargeting ads. These Facebook ads help you draw back consumers who were already interested and browsed your insurance website, but may not have taken the next step to request your services.
Marketing and sales are the main drivers of your insurance agency, and one cannot exist without the other. Think about it; sales propel your business forward, and if you’re not selling policies, then it means your agency has no revenue, customers, or a future.
On the other hand, marketing helps you increase your brand awareness and generate leads that eventually convert to customers. So, if your sales department is the car that drives your business’s success, then marketing is undoubtedly the fuel.
A well-planned and executed insurance marketing strategy can help you create a loyal customer base and enhance your profitability. Unfortunately, most insurance agencies only prioritize sales and ignore marketing, which is where they go wrong.
10. Build an Effective SEO Strategy
Are the insurance plans you offer region-specific? If you answered yes, this means that the geographic location of your agency matters, even if you don’t have a physical office.
So how do you successfully target and market to people in your area? The answer lies in local search engine optimization or SEO.
Local SEO refers to how well a website ranks on Google in a local search. For example, say a potential customer is searching for “insurance agencies near me” or “Virginia Beach insurance agency.” If your local SEO is optimized well, you’ll rank higher on search engines and likely appear on the first page—which is essential for attracting potential customers to your site.
Most insurance consumers use digital channels like Google or Bing to research different insurance companies and types of insurance products.
You may only appear in the search results if you have an effective content marketing and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy.
With the right website content, you can improve brand awareness, generate good-quality leads, and establish yourself as an industry leader.
SEO is a long-term inbound marketing tactic, typically taking 4-6 months before you start seeing results.
What are the Benefits of Having a Good Insurance Marketing Campaign?
You’re probably wondering, why do I need insurance marketing? Well, here are the top benefits of implementing a good insurance marketing campaign.
- It increases your sales: if more people are aware of your agency and products, they will purchase from you. Some marketing strategies also increase your credibility, making you more trustworthy.
- It enhances your brand awareness: before you start pushing sales, first build your brand, as this will enhance your visibility. Marketing also helps you educate your customers about your products, ultimately making you seem reliable.
- It helps you identify strategies that work: by trying out various campaigns, you’re able to optimize your marketing strategies and focus on the ones that yield the most results.
- It helps you earn your customers’ trust: customer trust is equivalent to gold in the insurance world. You’ll be able to build a solid customer base which will then increase your revenue.
- It helps you build your reputation: your agency’s reputation is critical to its profitability. Insurance marketing helps you engage with your customers in a transparent manner, shining a positive light on your brand.
Insurance Marketing to Millennials
Most insurance agencies focus on baby boomers, but this strategy may put them out of business. Currently, millennials are the largest generation globally, so you should channel most of your marketing strategies towards them.
You should, however, note that old-school tactics may not work, and you need to adapt your marketing strategies specifically for Millenials. Some of the things they need from insurance agents include being understood, authentic messaging, customized policies, automation & technology, and a streamlined buying process.
Different Ways to Measure Success for Your Insurance Company’s Marketing Campaign
There are various metrics you can use to determine how successful your insurance marketing campaign are:
- Return on investment (ROI): this is the amount of revenue you generate from your campaigns against the amount you used to advertise your services.
- Website traffic growth: since you started running your advertisement, how many more website visitors have you generated?
- Leads generated: there are two aspects to this KPI. You should look at the marketing qualified leads (prospects that are most likely to turn to customers) and sales qualified leads ( leads that are very close to making a purchase)
- Referral traffic: these are the customers that visited your website or offices from other websites or from customer recommendations.
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): this is the amount you spend trying to convert a lead to a customer. If your marketing strategies are effective, your customer acquisition costs will be low.
- Customer retention rate: your marketing strategies should not end when you acquire a customer. They should also focus on retaining the client so that they remain loyal to your business.
Even the best salesman can’t sell something he doesn’t understand. Insurance products are regulated by state insurance laws and company policy, so there can be a lot of information to learn.
You learn your state regulations before you receive your insurance license and the company training occurs once a company appoints you.
Still, seek out relevant continuing education classes and product training from the insurer to ensure you have all the information you need to understand your product. Finally, make it a point to know your competitor’s product, too, so you can handle objections effectively.
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AUTHOR: Oleg Parashchak – CEO Finance Media & Editor-in-Chief at Beinsure Media
