7 Digital Marketing Best Practices for Insurers

It’s a highly connected world out there, knowing the digital marketing best practices will keep you part of it. Offline marketing practices can’t be relied upon to be the only tool for insurance agents and brokers. For more leads and deeper relationships with customers you need Digital Marketing in your tool kit.

Customers have high expectations. Insurers with a strong digital marketing presence can help exceed them. The ability to obtain quotes, conduct research and finalize policies online appeal to customers. They can easily and comfortably navigate an insurance transaction. With a click, prospects can instantly obtain a quote by going from a Facebook ad to a landing page.

“The secular trend towards online shopping for insurance – driven by changing consumer preferences, expanding digitization of insurance products and workflows and new distribution models – is pressuring insurance market participants to rethink their marketing strategies and allocation of their distribution resources,” notes a study commissioned by EverQuote and conducted by Stax.

Achieving a place where you can deliver a strong online experience for customers is a good step in digital marketing best practices. We’ll explore these overarching principles. These tips can help hone your digital marketing tactics to create dynamic social media copy and website content.

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#1 Create Content That Delivers Value

The effectiveness of digital marketing has led many businesses to turn to content. Blog articles and videos distributed online with their brand in mind. The first digital marketing best practice is that this content should deliver something of value to your audience. Not just promote your product. 

For example, your insurance agency blog content could have sales tips for small business owners rather than just the policy line you want to promote. The sales tips are valuable to prospects. This encourages them to read your blog and become familiar with your brand. If they read a salesy article that doesn’t resonate with them, they may not come back.

“A whopping 88% of organizations that are successful with content marketing say that it’s helped create brand awareness while also establishing credibility and trust. Only 47% say it’s helped support the launch of a new product,” according to a Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs survey, sponsored by ON24.

In other words, your content marketing shouldn’t be pushing products or services. It should draw prospects in by providing them with content they value. This can boost brand awareness and build trust.

#2 Use Social Media to Connect, Not Just Sell

Insurance agents and brokers should use social media to genuinely connect with prospects and customers.

“The one thing you want to avoid on social media is overt sales pitches. Instead, ensure your content informs and engages to spike curiosity and direct people to your services,” advises the Digital Marketing Institute.

This digital marketing best practice can help you grow your organic reach on social media. Customers are more likely to engage with conversational content rather than pitches. Though good to be direct when it comes to paid social media ads, with regular content, try to connect more organically.

#3 Make Data-Driven Decisions

The Three D’s. Data-driven decisions. For example, if you’re running social media ads, it’s important to analyze the results to see what’s leading to the best return on investment. This will help make choices like running ads on one social network over another.

Many areas of digital marketing naturally provide an abundance of data. Email marketing platforms can show you metrics like open rates and click-through rates. That can inform how you send out email newsletters in the future.

“With data-driven marketing, you can identify which channel performs the best, and which message evokes the desired user behavior. You can also identify which content format works the best at any given time in any marketing channel—be it email, social media, or blog posts,” says Marketing Insider Group.

#4 Optimize Your Website

Optimizing your website content with relevant keywords is another best practice for digital marketing. Adding local keywords related to the geographical area where you sell insurance can help more prospective customers find you online.

Insurers should aim to optimize their website’s page-loading speeds and intuitive navigation. An unreliable website host or excessively large images can slow down your site, notes Marketo. Poor user experience will negate the hard work you’ve done implementing other digital marketing best practices. This runs the danger of keeping customers away from your site.

“As new technology and new methods come along for content marketing and lead generation, try to avoid cramming too much onto one page…Simple, clean, and easy to understand is the best approach,” adds Marketo. 

#5 Prioritize Online Reviews

You may not think of online reviews as part of digital marketing, but public feedback can go a long way. It can build up your digital presence and help you find more customers.

“First, you can continue to build a rapport and interact with existing customers, and second, you can use their reviews to attract and influence other potential customers to visit or purchase from your business,” says Fundera.  

Be sure to publicize that you’re on review sites like Yelp. Include a link to your business page in your email signature. You can also directly ask clients for reviews after you sign them up for new policies.

#6 Don’t Try to Be Everywhere at Once Right Away

There are many aspects to digital marketing. One of the best practices is to remember that you can’t be everywhere at once. It’s unreasonable to expect to excel across all channels, especially when you’re first starting to ramp up your digital marketing.

If you want to make more connections on social media, you don’t necessarily need to be on every single platform. Instead, focus on the ones where your target customers primarily are, and start with one or two networks that you can commit to being active on regularly. Otherwise, you could stretch yourself too thin and be ineffective on all platforms.

In addition to social media, also keep in mind that not every digital marketing channel and tactic needs to be a priority for your business. 

You might see other insurance agencies hosting webinars, and while that certainly can work for many businesses, maybe it’s not a good fit for yours at this time. You might only have the resources to develop an email marketing newsletter. Over time you can expand into webinars, but you don’t need to be everywhere at once right from the outset.

#7 Develop a Cohesive Marketing Strategy

Lastly, insurance agents and brokers should aim to develop a cohesive marketing strategy across all the channels that they choose to use. This digital marketing best practice means coming up with a plan to get the most out of all your marketing work and find synergies where possible.

Your cohesive strategy might involve funneling social media contacts toward your email marketing list, where you can be a bit more direct with talking about insurance policy options. Making choices like repurposing blog content as social media posts, so separate resources aren’t coming up with essentially the same content for both channels. 

Plus, you may find ways to integrate your digital and offline marketing together. Your direct mail campaigns could include a link to a unique landing page that helps you convert those mail recipients into email subscribers.

Putting It All Together

These digital marketing best practices can help your insurance agency or brokerage find more success in reaching new prospects online. You can also form deeper ties with existing customers. by creating content that they value and that makes them trust your brand, rather than feeling like you’re still selling to them after you’ve already closed the deal. 

You can implement all of these digital marketing best practices, even if it means taking a step back from your current marketing activities so you can recalibrate. Doing so can lead to more long-term growth.