Creating a brand isn’t just for large corporations. Businesses of all sizes need to build a strong brand identity to showcase strengths, build trust among clients, and help prospects to find them. Yet creating a strong corporate brand often isn’t enough for an insurance agency. Potential clients want to know who their agent is and what they’re good at. Agents need to know how to create your own brand that reflects your specialties.
Think about how different professionals are known for their specialties – the real estate agent who sells luxury condos, a doctor who only treats children, or a contractor who builds new suburban homes. Having these personal brands helps differentiate their services, attracts clients, and builds loyalty.
For insurance agents, similar strategies apply. You may want to figure out how to create your own brand name so when prospective clients look for a certain type of service, they turn to you. Yet personal branding requires more than just advertising your services or building up a big email list. While these can be important aspects of developing brand awareness, determining how to create your own brand means zeroing in on what you do best, establishing consistent messaging around what you offer, and implementing a marketing plan to develop your audience.
Define Your Unique Selling Proposition
When creating a brand identity you need to determine your unique selling proposition (USP), which helps set you apart from other insurance agents.
As online advertising platform Wordstream explains, “The best USPs directly address a specific need experienced by a company’s ideal customer.”
For example, if you specialize in selling liability insurance that provides comprehensive coverage, you can make your USP about helping companies limit risk. Or, if you sell a wide range of policies but pride yourself on helping entrepreneurs gain the insurance they need as they start their businesses, you can make that your USP.
As you figure out how to create your own personal brand, keep in mind you need to get specific about what makes you unique and how your expertise applies to the types of customers you serve.
“Remember – it’s not enough to merely target a rough demographic. You need to know exactly who you want to sell to and why,” advises Wordstream.
Develop Consistent Messaging
With a strong USP, you can start to develop consistent messaging. When prospective customers think of an issue like workers’ comp insurance for mid-size businesses, they’ll know to turn to you. If you don’t have consistent messaging it can be difficult to build a business identity for yourself. Think about how confusing it would be to potential clients if you talk about some selling points on your website and others on your business cards. The wording doesn’t need to be the same, but the message should be consistent.
That’s not to say you can never alter your messaging or adapt it to fit different audiences, but in general, insurance agents figuring out how to create a brand identity need to start with a consistent message. As such, you may want to leverage your USP and turn it into a tagline you can promote.
For example, if your USP involves helping entrepreneurs get the business insurance they need to start their businesses, your tagline could be something along the lines of “Grow Your Startup, Not Your Risk.”
Even if you don’t specifically promote your tagline, you can use it as a guide along the way. Whether it’s on your own website or a bio on your company’s site, your social media channels, business cards, or other marketing channels, make sure this messaging sits at the core of what you communicate. Not only should your messaging include language around helping startups get off the ground without worrying as much about risk (or whatever your USP/tagline is), but you should also be sure to talk about topics that matter to this audience.
As graphic design platform Canva notes in its personal branding guide, “While following the beat of your own drum is important, you must keep your audience in mind—with any luck, if you’ve carved your niche correctly, your audience will be the kind who’s interested in what makes you, you.”
Developing consistent messaging as you figure out how to create your own brand name also requires sticking with a specific tone in alignment with the audience and business you’re trying to build.
“Sophisticated brands aren’t going to send out emails with ‘Hey, what’s up?’ as a greeting, and likewise, you can’t establish a fun, casual, friendly tone if you apply language that’s overly formal,” explains Canva.
Either type of tone can work for your business, as long as you remain consistent.
Market Your Personal Brand
While figuring out your USP and messaging is a crucial backdrop to tackling your brand identity, marketing your personal brand is the next step in developing the name recognition to help you become the go-to resource for clients in your niche. At the very least, you want to ensure any prospective clients you share marketing materials with or who search for you online come across content that fits with what they are looking for in an agent.
If you haven’t yet, consider which marketing channels might work best for you as well as where and how your clients and prospects like to communicate. For example, you can create a personal brand via email marketing by creating a newsletter that speaks directly to your target audience, using the tone you want to convey. As you look to build up your email list, be sure to prioritize adding those who fit with your personal brand, rather than spending unnecessary resources adding those outside your niche.
Another way you can market your brand is by creating an online presence and cultivating followers that match your target audience. Social media requires time and effort, but when you’re able to harness its power to market your brand effectively, the time you invest will pay dividends to both the growth and management of your business.
Online advertising is another great way to market your personal brand. However, it’s important to use this method wisely when it comes to generating brand awareness. While effective when done well and managed efficiently, there isn’t a clean line from ad spend on brand awareness to revenue. A brand awareness advertising campaign can go a long way to building name recognition among your target audience.
Take Your Personal Brand With You
While you may work for a great company, the beauty of creating your own personal brand is how it belongs to you. If you change firms, or if you start your own business, that wouldn’t necessarily change how you’re perceived as, say, an expert on entrepreneurship and startup issues. Meanwhile, agents with strong personal brands can expand the ways they reach potential customers.
Using technology like our Wheelhouse platform can also help agents who have figured out how to create their own brand. You can leverage the solution’s ability to provide instant quotes for small business policies, which can otherwise be time-intensive. Yet the branding always remains your own, rather than directing clients to another platform with different branding, which can take away from the consistent messaging you’ve worked hard to build.
By having your personal brand in place everywhere from your website, social media, online ads, and email newsletters to the policy-writing phrase, you can create a trustworthy customer experience, where clients will know who turn to for future purchases and who they can refer others to that fit with your brand.