Over the past few years, the marketing industry has been heavily influenced by the advancement of technology brought forth by the pandemic. As technology becomes more ingrained in our hyperfast marketing environment, it’ll be increasingly important to remain on top of new trends to remain competitive in whatever industry you serve.
As a small business owner, keeping up with every trend across your business can feel impossible. Luckily for you, you’re not in this alone. The team at Musselwhite Marketing has put together this quick read to help guide your 2022 marketing plans. Moving into 2022, here are some new things that’ll be relevant to our 7 Pillars of Marketing for Insurance Agencies. Following these trends will ensure your marketing strategy for 2022, and for years to come, is trendy, relevant, and timely within your respected niche.
Without any more delay, let’s jump in!
Website Trends
Websites are the lifeblood of many businesses today, as prospective customers are more likely to experience a business’ online presence before interacting with their brick-and-mortar facilities. In 2019, almost 70% of insurance consumers conducted a web search before calling an insurance company.
With the majority of consumers turning to the internet for information about insurance companies and products, keeping your website up-to-date should be a main priority of yours moving forward.
Every year website trends evolve. Today, even the smallest business needs to have a website that is fully functional and provides a seamless user experience. Here are some of the top trends to consider when upgrading your site this year.
- Simplistic Web Designs: Consumers today feel bombarded by ads, branding, and excessive information. Marketers have realized that nurturing the buying journey is more important than trying to convince a consumer to make a decision right away. Keeping your homepage and other pages simple will allow the consumer to seek out the information they need, without getting overwhelmed before they even start.
- Mobile-Friendly Sites: Mobile web browsing has been on the rise since around 2015. In 2021, over 55% of web browsing took place on a mobile device. As older consumers age out of the market, this number will only continue to rise. Making sure your website is formatted for mobile devices could help increase your conversion rates. Deloitte conducted a study that showed if a mobile site loaded just one millisecond faster, conversion rates could jump by as much as 8%.
Optimizing your website to create a nurturing buyer experience for every consumer should be a priority of yours this year. Whether it be the look of your site or the backend code, making a few changes can help you remain relevant and could improve your bottom line. If this seems like something out of your team’s scope, we can help! At Musselwhite Marketing, we offer an array of web services including web design and maintenance.
Content Trends
Consumers don’t like bad content. Aside from your website’s format, your content is king. If a consumer comes across your brand and finds your content is either not engaging or disingenuous, they could quickly leave your site in search of another.
Besides trying to keep consumers on your site, your content can help impact your Google search rankings. To effectively leverage content in 2022 and beyond, here are some trends to be on the lookout for:
The biggest trend you need to be aware of is the implementation of hyper-personalized content. When people think of this kind of content, they likely think of an email message from a large brand that is addressed personally to a consumer. While this is personalized content, hyper-personalization takes it a step further.
Hyper-personalization is when a marketing team is able to identify very specific types of customers who use their products or services and create content that’ll align with their wants, needs, and preferences. If you haven’t already, dedicating some time to come up with buyer personas will help you create more personalized content experiences.
Besides hyper-personalized experiences, more consumers are also seeking out interactive content over static content. This makes sense after discussing personalized content, as it seems like consumers just want deeper, more meaningful connections with the content and brands they’re interacting with.
As an insurance agency, creating interactive content might not seem like it’s worth your time, but thinking outside the box could result in a really unique piece of content that garners heavy engagement from prospective customers. If you need any assistance creating these personalized experiences, check out our content marketing capabilities to see if we can help you.
Video Trends
Up to now, we have been focusing on more backend marketing trends such as web development and content marketing. It’s time to get our hands a little dirty and talk about some video marketing trends.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, video marketing is on the rise, and it doesn’t show signs of slowing down. More people are consuming media, watching videos, and interacting with brands online than ever before. If you haven’t dedicated your time to creating video content for your brand yet, now is the time to start.
Right now is the perfect time for any agency, large or small, to get into video marketing. Video content has swung towards being minimalistic in production value. Video marketers have begun to mirror the content that millennials and Gen Z enjoy, even on their professional accounts. This means brands like Chipotle, the NBA, and Washington Post are making TikTok-like videos to attract viewers.
This switch in video content is a great opportunity for smaller agencies to expand into the visual media marketing game. And the more intimate video form allows businesses that may not have a large budget to get into video creation. Some simple gear you can get to help the process includes:
While cheaper than investing in a DSLR camera, or other professional equipment, these items will still set your team back a bit. To ensure you keep a healthy bottom line while still hitting your marketing goals, it may be worth looking into outside funding options. If you need a large chunk of change, a business loan is likely the route you want to take. If you already have some money saved but just need a little more, a personal loan for your business is another option to explore. Whatever funding option you choose, remember to effectively budget for the entire department before applying for a loan. You can use the funds across the whole business, not just for this gear.
Social Media Trends
Last, but certainly not least, we need to address social media trends as we head into 2022. Today, 80% of people have at least one social media account. If your agency isn’t active on social media, this year is the perfect time to build up your presence.
Social media is constantly evolving, so there are always new trends to explore. Some of the top trends to be on the lookout for moving forward are:
- Live Audio Chat Rooms: Twitter Spaces came out earlier in 2021 and allows for users, brands, and anyone else to communicate live via voice chat. Spaces rooms are great for webinars, informational sessions, and other organic situations where talking directly to consumers could be helpful. While Spaces is the best audio option right now, Spotify recently came out with Greenroom which has shown some promise as well.
- Uplifting Content: The past few years have been hard on everyone. People are ready for a break in their content, and your brand could provide just that. While the insurance industry isn’t known to be too uplifting in nature, there are ways you could “brighten” your content just a little. If you can, try to showcase some of the people who work at your company online. A staff interview or spotlight is a nice way to break up mundane content and make things more personable. Similarly, you can highlight a story in the community where you had an impact. Whatever route you take, make sure to be genuine and true with your content.
Maintaining a social media marketing plan can be difficult for a smaller team. We offer social media services that’ll help you hit your goals. If interested, feel free to contact us today.
Final Words
As we head in 2022, try to remember some of these timely tactics you can use across your marketing efforts. Even just trying one new thing could help your team immensely.
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Charles Musselwhite
Charles Musselwhite is an author, speaker and co-owner of Musselwhite Marketing (est 2009) along with his wife Linda Musselwhite. Together they are “CaLM” (Charles and Linda M). Charles is an Ontraport Certified Expert and a previous DigitalMarketer Certified Partner holding several DM certifications.
