How Insurance Agents Can Help First-Time Business Owners

Starting a business is never easy. To be successful, first-time business owners often need to find everything from financial resources to networking opportunities to educational information. Yet entrepreneurs don’t have to shoulder this burden alone. Support can come from surprising places, including from insurance agents.

If you want to win over first-time business owners as insurance clients, you can go beyond pitching them policies. While they may need your services, you may be able to more easily get your foot in the door and form strong client relationships by also focusing on helping first-time business owners solve challenges they face when starting their companies. For example, creating blog posts on how first-time business owners can find new clients could help you attract a larger audience than if you just wrote about why business owners need insurance.

As your network of first-time business owners grows, you can become a valuable resource, such as by being able to connect a new retailer with a client of yours who works in marketing. Or you may have recommendations for lenders that can help with financing. That in turn can lead to first-time business owners recommending you to others within their networks. In other words, helping first-time business owners grow their companies can be win-win, as it can help you grow your own insurance business too.

In this guide, we’ll look more closely into how insurance agents can help first-time business owners, both in terms of getting them the insurance coverage they need and helping new companies gain their footing.

Creating dedicated landing pages can help you sell more policies to first-time business owners. See how Wheelhouse makes it easy to create branded and targeted pages.

Create Dedicated Marketing Materials

If you want to gain first-time business owners as clients, it helps to create dedicated marketing materials for this audience. Considering the vast amount of marketing content that already exists in the world, it’s hard to capture your audience’s attention unless the materials are specific to their needs. Some of the ways to tailor your marketing content include using:

Landing Pages:

If you want prospects to click through to a site, such as within an ad or a social media post, you don’t have to send them to your main website. Instead of new leads landing on a page that gives an overview of your services for small, medium and large businesses, rather than just new ones, you can create dedicated landing pages that specifically speak to each audience you’re trying to reach.

“Too many companies send their email, social media, and search traffic to their homepages. This is the equivalent of throwing leads away. You could capture these leads at a much higher rate simply by sending them to targeted landing pages.”

Hubspot

So, if you want to target first-time business owners, you could create a landing page that discusses issues like hiring your first employees or finding your first store location. Then, you could suggest relevant insurance policies to protect against the risks these activities create. By using a tool like Wheelhouse, an InsurTech platform powered by Talage, you can easily create branded and targeted landing pages. On these pages, you can then integrate the tool’s capability to provide instant, bindable quotes.

Blog Posts:

You don’t need to direct your entire blog toward first-time business owners, but if you include some articles specifically aimed at this audience (and promote it to them) you can potentially draw in more prospects. While you may not be able to write about every specific issue that first-time business owners face, you can still create valuable, targeted blog content. For example, you could write about the challenges new business owners face in growing their professional networks or managing budgets. 

“Instead of making highly tailored recommendations to owners, you might instead message that “other businesses like you ask these questions…other businesses like you often find they need these products,”’ explains Gartner. 

Then, you can include a call-to-action at the end of the blog that takes readers to a targeted landing page. From there, the prospect may decide to set up a meeting with you to discuss their challenges on a more specific basis and you can explain more about how your insurance policies can help.

E-Newsletters:

Similar to creating targeted landing pages, you can customize your email marketing by sending out different e-newsletters to different audience segments. For example, if you send out e-newsletters that include your recent blog posts, you could easily adjust the message for first-time business owners by linking to your articles tailored to this audience.

Most email marketing platforms such as Mailchimp and Constant Contact allow you to easily create segmented lists. Dividing your contacts into groups like “first-time business owners,” “large businesses” and “industry professionals” and then altering your e-newsletters accordingly can help you get more mileage out of your email marketing.

Facilitate Networking

To attract first-time business owners as leads for your own insurance business, while also helping these new entrepreneurs grow, you can offer networking opportunities. Lending a helping hand to introduce new business owners to one another and to other key contacts doesn’t have to take up much time on your behalf. Yet doing so can pay significant dividends, as you can earn clients’ trust and encourage them to spread the word about your business.

“Developing brand ambassadors who will take on some of the marketing work for you and become some of your strongest allies out in the world is key to growing your business,” explains email marketing platform Campaign Monitor.

Some of the ways you can facilitate networking to earn the trust and word-of-mouth power of new business owners include:

Hosting Events:

From in-person seminars to low-key online gatherings like Twitter chats, hosting events for first-time business owners can be a great way to attract new leads. These prospects can meet other key contacts and gain important business knowledge at these events, which is likely more appealing than, say, attending a webinar that only explains your insurance offerings.

Exchanging Business Cards:

Another way to help first-time business owners without requiring too much effort on your behalf is to set up a business card exchange. For example, if you have a new client who recently started a business and you see some synergy with them, you could display their cards in your office and ask them to display your cards in their office. That way, you can both gain exposure to each other’s networks.

Similarly, you may have two clients whose businesses complement each other, and you can recommend they exchange cards. For example, you may have one client who recently started a dog walking business and another who started a pet store. Naturally, exchanging cards could help them both grow their businesses without cannibalizing each other’s sales.

Offer Referrals:

You can also help out first-time business owners by making direct referrals. Similar to pairing clients with one another for business card exchanges, you could refer leads and clients to one another directly for business opportunities. For example, one of your larger clients might be looking for IT support, and if you have a new prospect or client that’s a first-time business owner in that space, you can help them get their feet wet by introducing them to your other client.

Hopefully, by making these types of efforts, prospects and clients would also be more likely to refer their contacts to you who need insurance.

Make Yourself Available

Since first-time business owners may need a little bit more assistance than established companies, you can help them by making yourself available for support. Instead of only offering clients help in terms of selling them policies, you can:

Offer Consultations:

Taking the time to meet with prospects and discuss their business needs could help close more deals, especially for first-time business owners that may need a little more support. You can also offer consultations to existing clients, such as if they want to set up an hour meeting once per year to discuss their renewal options, rather than being left to their own devices to assess their choices. 

Ask Questions:

It may sound obvious, but taking the time to ask prospects and clients detailed questions about their businesses can help demonstrate that you’re available to address their concerns. Plus, doing so can help you understand the needs of first-time business owners on a deeper level, so you can then more effectively tailor your sales and marketing efforts.

“Many businesses stumble because they fail to understand their target market. And when you’re ready to expand, don’t assume new customers in different areas will have the same tastes and priorities — get to know them, too,” writes journalist Janet Alvarez in an article for CNBC.

Build an Online Presence: 

You can’t always be physically available for clients, but you can help first-time business owners gain the support they need by building a strong online presence. For example, building out your blog to address challenges new business owners face allows new prospects to learn from your agency at any time. Similarly, using tools like Wheelhouse can allow first-time business owners to easily access bindable quotes 24/7. 

Overall, making yourself available to first-time business owners and providing them with dedicated marketing and networking opportunities can help you expand your own insurance business too.