Beyond these tools, we also provided a wealth of information on how agencies can build their brand and grow their business on our blog. As we start a new year, we hope you’ll benefit from some of the tips and tricks we’ve captured.
Finding Your Niche for Insurance Agency Marketing: Finding your agency niche means discovering a customer segment where you have an advantage. Use your individual agency expertise to strengthen your brand and grow your customer base.
Making Your Agency Website Your Own with Partner Connect: In our digitally-driven market, your agency website is your best and most prominent marketing tool. Discover how to make it modern, branded, and poised for sales enablement.
Gain Outreach Power: Marketing Automation and Your Insurance CRM: If you’re looking to increase lead qualification by more than 450%, the CRM and marketing automation combo is your answer. See what each tool brings to the table and why they’re on our “must-have” list.
It’s challenging to make a business stand out in any market. When it comes to insurance agency marketing, this can be particularly challenging due to the industry’s nature. How can you differentiate your agency when all agencies provide such similar services? While quality customer care, price, and ease of service are helpful, they can only so far.
How can you make your agency stand out? Consider
finding your niche.
Why Finding Your Agency Niche Matters
A recent
McKinsey & Co survey found agencies should focus on “well-articulated
value propositions targeted at a small number of customer segments…that require
more specific advice, tailored products and a greater degree of service.” Another
survey showed close to 50% of “middle-market insurance agencies”
specialized in products or industries, and that number is expected to rise to
two-thirds by 2022.
Why have so many agencies turned to specialization?
To make themselves stand out in a saturated market. When you’re known as “the
agency that does ‘X'” you have something that makes you known.
Specialization helps agency branding and Google ranking, too.
Targeting a niche market also improves service. With
a niche market, you can focus more time on one area, learning the ins and outs
of that product or industry. Greater expertise allows you to be nimbler so you
can see what’s coming and adjust your coverage and services faster than others.
And, it’ll speed up your workflow as you get to know client needs, processing
coverage and claims quicker.
For specialization to be effective, you need to be
methodical in identifying and leveraging your niche. The steps are relatively
straightforward:
Identify your agency niche. Look at your book of business and determine specializations. Target a service or product in which you have a relatively high amount of business and one in which you see growth potential. Niche areas include:
Emergency vehicles fleets
Online commerce businesses
School districts
Family farms
Active military members
Learn how to serve your niche. Analyze
data from your CRM, marketing automation, or other data tools to identify
marketing tools and methods that resonate with your niche market. You may also
consider hiring an outside agency to conduct market research.
Adapt your website. This is where
your Google ranking comes into play. Add keywords associated with your niche to
your website URL, include it in the homepage name, and create pages and posts devoted
to your niche. The more related keywords you have on your site, the higher you’ll
climb in Google.
Market your niche. The final step is
getting the word out about your specialty—leverage marketing
automation to post on social media and create email campaigns around your
niche. Get in touch with clients and ask them for referrals in your niche area
and testimonies about your service. The more you can spread the word, the
better.
Whether it’s an integrated
CRM, marketing
automation, or website
upgrade, the Partner Platform team has the tools you need to identify and
leverage your niche for maximum market impact. With custom
dashboards and reporting and targeted training and customer support, the
Partner Platform team and system can help you understand your agency niche and
help you better serve your customers.
Find out more about how our team can help your
agency succeed. Get in
touch at [email protected] or 800.747.7005,
Option 6.
For many independent agencies, sales and marketing
are a continual sticking point. Excellent service and friendly faces are
abundant, but teams struggle to bring the same enthusiasm they have for service
to their insurance agency marketing and sales.
As customer
expectations adapt in all industries, insurance is no exception. Customers seek
a more personalized experience, based on rapid digitization. Companies are gathering
information on client preferences and adjusting quickly to meet their needs.
Yet, many independent agencies find it difficult to capture and analyze the
wealth of data needed to meet these expectations.
Marketing
automation + an insurance CRM are building blocks to capture this meaningful
information and turn it into relevant action and communication. Each has its
own benefits, but agencies need both to make a real impact. Studies show
businesses that combine these tools increase lead qualification by more than 450% and sales productivity by close to 15%.
The combo of
marketing automation and an insurance CRM allows agencies to see data at a
granular level, revealing customer insights and new market opportunities. Each
works on a different end of the sales funnel to help agencies bring in more
customers, improve service, and expand business.
Marketing
automation software is designed to streamline and automate marketing
tasks. Leverage marketing automation to get to know customer habits and launch
targeted outreach campaigns. Schedule and track each campaign and use the data acquired
to identify new markets and dial in on winning marketing techniques.
Some of
marketing automation’s main benefits include:
Segmented marketing lists by interactions, interests, preferences, etc.
Automated content distribution based on list segmentation
Scheduled drip campaigns based on actions such as website visits or email response
One
system for lists, content, and distribution to clients
Integrated
email, texting, and letter campaigns
A
library of professionally written marketing content
High-impact
templates that can be customized for any agency
Marketing
automation allows agencies to program high-impact client communication tasks so
they can do more in less time. Though the beauty of automation is powerful,
it’s missing one critical element: the human touch.
CRMs
(Customer Relationship Management systems) bring that human touch. The
human connection brings the personalization prospects need to become customers,
and customers need to become long-term clients. While marketing automation
provides context on where a lead came from and what they’re interested in, a
CRM helps producers implement a targeted outreach strategy to bring the
lead home.
Critical
CRM uses include using it to:
See the
complete prospect journey, including the last contact
Understand
a particular individual’s or segment’s interest and concerns
Receive
daily reminders to stay in touch and follow-up at a determined pace
Send
alerts to remind of scheduled calls, meetings, renewal dates, or other
important events in the prospect or customer’s life
Get the Sales and Service Solutions You need with Partner Platform
Partner
Platform brings the power of the CRM and marketing automation combo, along with
a connected Client Portal, Agency-Branded
Mobile App, and website, providing
all the data agencies need to customize interactions for their prospects and
customers.
And, we
continue to add tools to grease the wheels of the CRM-marketing automation
machine to meet the growing demands of our Partner Platform agency family. See
for yourself – view a demo or contact us at [email protected].
As the way we do business changes, so, too, does
the way we market. If you’re looking for ways to up your marketing, try these
insurance marketing strategies to help your agency bring in business and grow
your base
The insurance industry – like others today – is understaffed. In late 2021, an insurance labor market study showed that 53% of agencies planned to “aggressively hire” within 12 months to fill vacancies. The same study also showed that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to fill open positions. As an owner, your insurance agency management relies on knowledgeable staff, but it can be challenging to fill positions in today’s market.
With hiring season just around the corner, your agency needs to focus on how to recruit new talent for your team. Past tactics may no longer work on a younger, more tech-driven workforce. It’s time to expand your outreach, position insurance differently, and look for diverse qualities to keep your agency growing.
Mike Maranda has been in the insurance business for over 40 years. He’s guided his agency through many seasons, but his recent journey to find the right agency management system for his team was one of the most painful.
After many years with a system they loved, Quality Insurance Service was forced to make a change when one of the big-name providers acquired their original system. Mike and his business partner decided to pick one of the big-name systems to avoid needing to make a change again anytime soon.
Yet, after selecting one of the dominant providers, they were frustrated to move through a cumbersome system with unresponsive service. After four years, they’d had enough and started searching for a new system, eventually joining the Partner Platform community.
As the insurance industry grows more competitive, the particulars of your specific insurance agency management will make your business stand out. Those particulars could be location proximity, ease of doing business, or even something as simple as how your website looks. Though price still matters, changes in cost can only go so far.
The true test of what makes your agency the best choice is the overall customer experience. Seemingly small touches that make each interaction easier, more personable, and leave each customer with a positive feeling have a real impact. Today it’s about more than the best price and the latest tech; it’s how you use these tools to empower, differentiate, and create the best experience in your agency.
