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.
Get to know more insurance marketing strategies to gain website traffic here
How to Identify and Leverage Your Niche
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.
See how to leverage marketing automation and your CRM to gain more business
Get the Tools You Need with Partner Platform
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.
Sarah Deak has been contributing to the SIS team since 2013, covering topics like agency perpetuation, workflow improvements, data security, and marketing. She has a background in small business, working with organizations to improve their online presence and client engagement. Sarah also writes for the SIS newsletters and website, and counts herself lucky to hear from our many passionate, hard-working clients for our client stories. Her favorite part about working for SIS are the dedicated, service-minded people.