Are you intentional about your insurance agency marketing? If
you’re sailing by on your current client base and waiting for the phone to
ring, you’ll soon be left behind. As
one of our clients recently said, the “order-taker” agencies are quickly
becoming a thing of the past. With most potential customers searching for
insurance online, you need to be thoughtful about your agency brand and how to get it found. [SD1]
Your first step is a healthy assessment of your agency’s
brand and marketing strategy. Gather your team, survey your customers, and take
a look at how you’re seen. From there, think about how you want to be
seen and get steps in place to make that happen.
2. Define your brand
Before you can start marketing your agency, you need to have
a solid base of who you are as an agency: your brand. Do you have a
specialization? Are you known for serving a particular geographic area or type
of business? Think about what it is that sets you apart and build your brand
around those strengths.
Once you know what to show off, get it out there.
At a minimum, have an agency website and app. Both these tools are critical to
getting your name out there. Add a social media presence only if you can
maintain it well. You’ll need to share something once a week at a minimum. Otherwise,
your social page will look outdated and reflect poorly on your agency.
Increase your presence with photos and videos
showing off your agency personality – staff pictures, images of your community,
and other visual aids give visitors a picture of what is most important in the
industry: relationships. A blog is an excellent tool to expand on who you are,
including highlighting your service and expertise, both of which are critical
to bringing in new customers.
Make it easy for people to get in touch with you.
Include easily identifiable “contact us” forms on your website and respond
quickly to social media and other inquiries.
And create ways to gather potential customer
contact information. Have a pop-up asking website visitors to sign up for an
email list, request contact information when signing up for an in-person or
online event, and collect emails when visitors request a quote or to view
expert content. The more ways to can gather contact information, the better.
Once you have that contact information, get it
organized in your agency management system or CRM, and reach out. As we said,
those who passively wait for customers to reach them are falling behind.
Be active about gaining contacts, too. Ask for
referrals from current customers and see if they’re willing to write a positive
review on sites like Google, Yelp, and AngiesList to help bring in more
business. The more access points and outreach you can muster, the better.
Get the Tools You Need to Make Marketing Easier
The marketing tools of today are less about
advertising and more about building a relationship. While price and policy
matter, it’s who you are and the expert service you provide that makes the
difference.
We know and value building these relationships,
which is why we built our
Partner Platform system to help agencies improve service with time-saving
systems. Our integrated accounting and policy downloads, customer-service tools
like integrated VoIP and automatic caller profile pop-up, and targeted sales
and marketing systems like our
integrated CRM and marketing automation are all designed to automate
tedious tasks so agencies can focus on people and service.
Learn more about what these tools can do for your
agency, increasing efficiency in time-consuming tasks so you can focus on relationships
and service. Get in touch
with us here, at [email protected],
or by calling us at 800.747.7005, Option 6.
With so many options and diverse needs, it can be challenging
to determine how to choose the best agency management system for your agency.
Are you looking for ease of use? Quality training? Integrated systems? Robust
marketing? Is it possible to find a system that meets all your varying agency
needs?
Chances are, there is a right system out there for your agency – if you know how to look for it. Narrow your options by starting with the base “must-haves” for any management system.
Your Management Systems Musts
Customization.
Find a system with the ability to create custom workflows, personalized
dashboards, and agency-unique data fields.
Ability
to upgrade. Tech moves fast, and you want your management system to be
malleable enough to keep up. Find a system with update-able tech.
Cloud-based.
You don’t want access tied to one physical location – give your team
flexibility with cloud-based access.
Security.
The data you store in your management systems is valuable, and you
want it to stay protected with top-of-the-line, disaster-proof storage.
Beyond these base elements, there are a few standard
additional capabilities your agency may need to fit your unique service.
Best Management System Capabilities to Improve Service
Integrated
website. You need a quality
website to stay competitive in today’s market and should have it integrated
with your management system to streamline service.
Client
Portal. Self-service
client portals are becoming a must-have across industries, including the
insurance market. Give your customers the best tools with an integrated client
portal to access and update their policy information.
Email integration. Use
integrated email to send messages right from your management system and
automatically attach all incoming and outgoing messages to each constituent
profile, streamlining processes and improving E & O coverage.
CRM
and Marketing Automation. These
essential prospecting tools can help you gain and leverage vital data,
empowering you to improve sales and marketing and grow your agency.
Find What You Need with Partner Platform
Our Partner Platform agency management suite starts
with the basics in access, security, and customization and offers all the
essential integrations to serve your agency’s unique needs. Our
dedicated team works with each Partner Platform agency to provide in-depth,
personalized training and a host of always-accessible resources to keep
agencies informed.
Let us bring you the tools to achieve exceptional
customer experiences, win more business, and grow your agency in the long term.
Get in touch at [email protected], 800.747.7005, Option 6, or fill out a simple contact form here
to find out more.
We work closely with all our independent
insurance agency clients to determine and create the best agency management
experience for their business. Over the years, we’ve tackled the highest needs
of the time, ranging from accounting integration to cloud-based
system security. Our Partner Platform agencies have made one need clear in
the past few years: insurance prospecting software.
As small businesses, our Partner Platform agencies are working to keep up with the sales and marketing advances big insurance provides wield. Thanks to our hard-working, innovative team, we’ve been able to equip our agencies with the tools they need to promote client growth and retention, all within one system.
The year 2020 brought transformation across all
industries, including insurance. Insurance agency software continues to evolve
in response to these transformations, prompting savvy agency owners to update
their tools and processes to respond to the needs of 2021.
A recent Chief Executive article pointed out several broad trends within the independent insurance agency: more digital interactions in the sales process, increased focus on digital customer experience, the convergence of sales and marketing, and the need to apply values in a new way.
Ken Branch echoed similar points in a recent PC360
article noting that in 2020 technology became more strategic, staffing and
communications shifted to digital, and customer service was heightened in
priority.
How can your agency respond to these changes and
apply your values in a new digital way?
The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the
digital shift, and it isn’t going away.
What does that mean for independent insurance agencies?
From both a sales and customer service
perspective, independent insurance agency software systems must support more
digital interactions. These digital interactions help agencies streamline sales
and customer support, including integrating digital tools into your agency
management system for one digital agency “ecosystem.”
Upgraded digital agency sales software includes:
Insurance CRM
Marketing Automation
Text Messaging
Quoting
Proposals
eSignature
Upgraded digital customer experience software
includes:
More digital interaction not only means you need
the right digital tools, but you also need to reimagine how you use them. The
increased focus on customer experience means you need to know more about your
customers. Much of that information comes from your sales and marketing tools which,
when integrated, maximize your data stream.
A management system with built-in insurance CRM helps
you improve prospect targeting, allows you to segment audiences, and empowers
your team to use management system data to initiate conversation in informed
ways. For example, you can craft an upsell/cross-sell campaign offering clients
with active Auto and Home policies but no Umbrella policy information,
emphasizing why they might consider Umbrella and a link to schedule a conversation.
Better coordination like this improves outreach at
all levels, including helping you target the appropriate number of calls and
emails to reach a prospect without the producer having to do it all manually. Embedded
CRM and marketing allow you to schedule and send emails, texts, and letters in
bulk while simultaneously prompting producers to call at the appropriate time.
This integration of processes increases your effectiveness and decreases time
spent.
The move to digital requires new ways to support
clients and a rethinking of the customer experience through the digital lens. Ask
yourself:
How could our agency use technology such as a
client portal, agency mobile app, and agency website in a way that enhances our
unique relationship with our clients?
How do these tools offer our clients ways to
conduct business seamlessly in the digital world?
Are we giving away that relationship by using
generic versus company-branded tools?
Texting with clients has become a commonplace form
of digital communication.
Do you support texting with your clients?
Can you easily document text conversations for
E&O purposes?
Can you text clients automated policy renewal
reminders?
Your quoting and onboarding process can be
improved with digital tools as well.
How are you using digital proposals &
eSignature to improve and streamline the quoting process?
Are you sharing proposals with the client in a
secure client portal integrated into the agency website?
And you can improve your quality of service
through digital systems.
How can you use your VOIP phone system with your
agency management system to save CSRs time?
Do you provide CSRs with pop-up client
information when they receive a call?
Can CSRs click to call within your agency
management system?
Do you have easy recording and attaching phone
conversations within your system?
These small improvements lead to an overall smoother
and more fulfilling customer experience, leading to higher conversion and
retention rates.
4. Find a partner to equip you for 2021 and beyond
Need an experienced partner to help you implement
and manage your agency software and digital tools? The Partner Platform team is
equipped to bring a top-of-the-line agency management system embedded with powerful
tools such as an insurance CRM, marketing automation, client portal, agency
mobile app, and agency website into your ecosystem.
Among the many insurance marketing strategies out there, blogging continues to be a popular and useful tool across the years. We consider blogging an effective method and have the facts to back it up: websites with blogs have over 400% more pages indexed in Google than those without a blog, and more than 60% of consumers made a purchase based on a blog post.
As with any new process or strategy, start small
with your blogging and scale as you go. Begin with one or two posts a month and
slowly build as you get your footing. It takes time to establish your blog
presence, but the wait is worth it. Focus on the quality of your content
rather than the quantity to start.
2. Designate a point person/people
Ideas may flow freely, but action can be sparse.
Ensure you have a team or a team member heading up the blogging process.
Ideally, you should have a few individuals devoting time to your blog to
diversify ideas and spread-out responsibility. Still, there should be one point
person dedicated to moving things forward.
3. Generate ideas
The first place to look for ideas is other blogs in
the industry. Check out their topics and determine if any would resonate with
your audience. Check-in with your larger agency team, too. Discover the common
questions team members get from customers and ask what topics they think are relevant.
No idea is a bad idea at the start – this is the time to throw everything at
the wall and see what sticks.
4. Determine your keywords
To make your blog an effective marketing tool, you
want to use relevant search words reasonably often in your posts. Your locality
name plus “insurance,” or “insurance agency,” and other variations are an
excellent place to start for most independent agencies. Another great
combination is adding in your specialty for something, like “small business
insurance Houston.” These key phrases have a lower competition since they focus
on your local city or county, but they have a relatively high search volume.
Once you have a few phrases, you can discover more
using tools like Google’s keyword planner to
identify similar search phrases and rank your current terms by competition and
search volume.
Before you start churning out posts, determine how
you will categorize them. Take a look at your topic ideas and determine how you
should group them (i.e., Auto insurance, Life insurance, Tips and Tricks,
etc.). Organizing posts makes it easier for someone to continue diving into
topics of interest, keeping them on your site longer, and increasing their
engagement.
6. Spread the word
A blog without readers is like a tree falling in
the woods – does it make an impact? The answer is no. Once you have a few posts
up, begin sharing the news of your blog on your social media and via your
regular newsletters. Add a “share” button on each post so readers can let
others know about posts they enjoyed.
7. Make your website attractive to get your blog seen
No matter how great your blog content, if the site
it’s hosted on is out-of-date or difficult to navigate, it won’t succeed. Ensure
your agency has a professional, secure, and attractive landing place before implementing
your blog strategy.
You know data is valuable. It’s what we use daily to make decisions, and it’s what we use to measure our successes. But are you using data effectively in your agency?
A wealth of insurance tech is available to capture and manage data, and the coronavirus pandemic accelerated data use in the insurance industry. According to a survey from Insurity, over 80% of agencies plan to “invest more heavily in data and analytics” following the 2020 pandemic outbreak. And with good reason – Willis Towers Watson found that over 66% of agencies say data analytics helped them reduce expenses, and 60% say it helped increase sales.
There are many ways to improve your insurance agency management, but one of the most impactful is hiring the right people. When you have the right people for the right job, you start from an optimal point.
But how do you know who to hire? We’ve got your answers in our latest eGuide, Who You Hire Matters: The How and Why of Hiring Great Producers and Leaders.
“We all need somebody to lean on,” as Bill Withers said in his famous song Lean on Me. Yet, it can be challenging to know when and how to ask for help. Working in an independent agency, you likely need more help than you know. With a small team, everyone is usually tackling more than one job at a time, making it easy for something to fall through the cracks.
Though you may intend to put effort and thought into something, invariably other time-sensative matters comes up. For many agencies, that something is insurance agency marketing. Whether it’s a customer request, an uptick in claims, or another important measure, marketing gets put on the back burner again.
So how do you know when it’s been too long since you paid attention to your insurance marketing? There are a few signs that it’s time to get help.
