Everyone knows who that talking gecko is. We all know who Flo is, too. Naturally, people are always curious about the havoc that the mayhem guy is going to cause in the next Allstate commercial. While these characters are certainly memorable and firmly cemented in the minds of consumers as representatives of their respective brands, their popularity doesn’t do much for independent insurance agencies.
In fact, their widespread recognition may make it even harder for independent insurance agencies to compete with “the big boys.” While competing with national brands can make things challenging for smaller insurance agencies, an online marketing strategy that’s both well composed and well executed can level the playing field significantly, particularly in your local market.
How Today’s Consumers Shop for Insurance
Before you can create an effective online marketing strategy for your insurance agency, you have to learn how many consumers shop for insurance in today’s connected society. The majority of shoppers will at least do some cursory research online before they purchase an insurance policy of any kind. And a significant number of consumers will purchase the coverage they need or want online, without visiting a large or small insurance agency or involving an agent in their transaction.
How do you generate leads and close sales when you might not even have the opportunity to talk to a prospect before they buy insurance? With digital marketing, of course!
Digital Marketing Basics
As Musselwhite Marketing, we firmly believe that your overall digital marketing plan should rest atop seven foundational pillars. These pillars include the following:
- Website
- Content
- Online Ads
- Video
- Social Media
- Reviews and Testimonials
While each of the pillars just mentioned can be highly effective on its own, the most effective way to market your agency and insurance products online is to implement a cross-channel approach. In other words, it’s better to use all of the pillars instead of one or just a few of them.
When you meet with us for a discovery session about your digital marketing, we’ll explain the importance of each foundational pillar and how they can cohesively work together to elevate your insurance agency to the next level of success. For now, we’re going to discuss a few of the pillars individually and discuss how you can use them for the purpose of marketing your agency to consumers over the Internet. And we’re going to start with content.
Quality Content
We think everyone would agree that it’s a good thing that the days of stuffing an endless number of keywords into your online content are long gone. It’s also a good thing that quality and relevance are now important elements of the content you share online.
While it’s still advisable to use thoughtfully chosen, meaningful keywords in your titles, subheadings, meta descriptions and taglines, using keywords too often in a single piece of content can actually hurt where your pages land in search engine results pages. If your website doesn’t rank well in SERPs, it can make it difficult to attract visitors. Instead of worrying about using keywords throughout your material, choose topics that are relevant to your target audience that are based on keywords and prepare content in a natural way that flows well.
Although many people know they need insurance, they often don’t have a full understanding of what kind of coverage they need or what a particular policy entails. You should use your content to educate prospects so that they have a complete understanding of the products you sell. When people understand insurance, it’s easier for them to recognize the reasons they need a certain kind of coverage.
Social Media
According to research conducted by Celent, insurance providers claim that the number one benefit of social media is marketing, followed by customer service and generating new sales leads. A study performed by Accenture revealed that nearly 50 percent of people would at least consider comments they saw on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter when they were making decisions about buying insurance.
If you’re not using social media to promote your insurance agency, you might be missing out on a countless number of sales opportunities. More importantly, you may be missing chances to help people secure the insurance they desperately need.
In general, the insurance industry isn’t known for making emotional connections with consumers even though insurers provide coverage for some of the most personal events that can happen in a person’s lifetime. From health insurance to life insurance, long-term care insurance, disability coverage, property and casualty coverage like car insurance and more, consumers rely on insurance to cover them during what can be some of life’s most emotional moments, such as when a loved one dies or a car accident occurs.
Social media is a wonderful tool that enables you to make connections with consumers long before they have to call your office to file a claim. You can use social media to interact with people, provide advice, make product recommendations and get to know the members of your target audience and their precise needs. By doing these things, you can establish your agency’s reputation for being reputable, trustworthy and caring. All of those attributes are typically important to consumers looking to purchase an insurance policy.
Video
By next year, it’s estimated that video will account for 80 percent of consumers’ overall Internet consumption. Video is a remarkable marketing tool, especially for mobile users who prefer to watch videos over reading text when they’re on the go.
If you doubt the power of video as it relates to your online marketing strategy, consider the following:
- People recall 95 percent of a message when they see it in a video, but just 10 percent when they read the same message
- A typical person will spend 88 percent more time on a website that has video compared to one that doesn’t
- Blog posts that have video get 300 percent more inbound links compared to posts that don’t have video
And those are just a few of the stats that demonstrate the power that video has. Sharing client testimonials, educational videos and clips that answer some frequently asked questions are just a few of the ways an insurance agency may want to use video on its digital platforms.
Learn about Our Digital Marketing Services
While focusing on content, social media and video are three of the leading digital marketing strategies, you can do more to promote your agency and insurance products. When you choose Musselwhite Marketing as your digital marketing partner, you can rest assured that we’ll use every online marketing pillar to promote your agency and products. Learn about our full suite of digital marketing services now and contact us when you’re ready to schedule your complimentary discovery session.
