Recent research shows that, on average, Americans spend more than two hours a day on social media. That’s a lot of time to have a captive audience, which is why savvy agencies know social media is a key element in a successful digital insurance marketing campaign. These agencies leverage social media to 1) build brand awareness, 2) drive leads, and 3) serve their customers better.

And, according to Property Casualty 360, social media marketing is meeting these goals. Agencies leveraging social media marketing saw a decrease in lead generation costs and an increase in revenue directly related to social media. Your agency can’t afford to miss out on this low-risk, high-reward marketing tactic. Take these steps to get up to speed:

Find out more on how to gain prospects with social media on the SIS blog

Essential Social Media Marketing Campaign Steps

1. Gain a following (more tips below)

Before you can market, you need to have an audience. Gain a following on the top social sites: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

2. Segment your audience

As with all marketing and sales strategies, you need to create smaller niches within your larger marketing audience. The more targeted and specialized the groups, the higher chance you’ll reach them.

3. Establish your goals

Define why you’re leveraging social. Is it to connect better with customers? Gain new leads? Further brand awareness? Be clear on what you want to achieve and craft your strategy around those goals.

4. Create content

You need to have something to say and share. Blog posts, relevant news stories, and helpful tips for customers are a few quick pieces of content to post. Include a peek into your agency as well. Share customer testimonial videos and photos of staff volunteering in the local community to get a flavor of who you are and what you offer.

See how to match content with the sales journey from our parent company, NuGrowth Solutions

5. Make an engagement plan

Determine how often you’ll post to which platforms and what type of content you’ll use to engage each audience segment. Create a content calendar to keep you on track.

6. Automate your activities

Once you have an established content calendar, automate publishing with marketing automation or another social planning tool. You can always adjust sequences later, but adding automation means you have one less of the “one more things” to do each day.

7. Track your results

As with any quality marketing and sales strategy, you need to gain feedback on how things are going. Track your outreach results, noting where you’re experiencing success and where you need to improve.

Read more on how data can drive your agency marketing successes

Engagement Ideas to Get You Started

Gaining followers is typically the most challenging hurdle for agencies getting started in social media marketing. Many fear they don’t have an online audience, or it’s too difficult to break into a new space. Both are false – as of 2018, 2.65 billion people actively used social media, and it’s projected 3.1 billion will be online by 2021. Odds are your agency has an audience member or two in those over 2.65 billion! And, breaking into social media isn’t as hard as it seems. Here are some tips to get you started:

• Hold a giveaway: Offer free lunch for an office or an Amazon gift card for those who follow you online.
• Use a popular hashtag: Create posts using an oft searched hashtags to gain impressions.
• Buy location-targeted ads: Invest in a few ads on the big players like Facebook and Twitter to get yourself started,
• Answer customer questions: Promote your social media as a tool to address customer questions and concerns.
• Ask a question: Get responses by asking something like, “What do you protect with [agency name] insurance? Show us a picture!”

Get the Support You need with Partner Platform

We’ve worked closely with our Partner Platform community to equip each Partner agency with the tools and support necessary to start or improve their social media marketing. With tools like our Marketing Automation Manager, Producer Results CRM, and our marketing and technology expert partners, our Partner Platform community is ready to take on all aspects of insurtech. Find out more about the Partner Platform community and our all-in-one agency support tool Partner Platform: contact us at 800.747.7005, Option 6 or [email protected].