Trying to figure out how to market insurance products doesn’t need to be overly complex. There are many ways to go about insurance marketing, so it’s often a matter of putting your insurance agency out there and seeing what works.
That said, because there are so many marketing strategies and tactics your insurance agency could potentially deploy, it can be overwhelming at times to know what route to take. So, to simplify things a bit, we’ve put together this list of five ways to market your insurance products.
These are far from the only ways to go about building a marketing strategy for your insurance agency, but they provide a good mix of options that might ultimately help when it comes to selling insurance more effectively.
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#1 Create Case Studies
If you’re wondering how to market insurance products, a great place to start is by spreading the word about how others have benefitted from buying your policies. One way to do so is to create case studies as part of your content marketing.
At their core, case studies as an insurance agency marketing tool exemplify how your insurance products can benefit your target audience. For example, suppose you sell property & casualty insurance policies to specific types of business owners, including small retail stores, restaurants, and hair/beauty salons. You could then create a case study for each of these customer segments, explaining how your insurance products helped these businesses. Ideally, your prospects can then picture themselves in these scenarios and feel motivated to purchase from you.
Oftentimes, a case study format includes information regarding:
- The company: Explain a little bit about the company included in the case study so that others can relate.
- The challenge: Describe the challenge the company was having that led them to your insurance agency, such as if they hired their first few employees, prompting them to then need to find workers’ comp policies that balance quality with price.
- The solution: Explain how you provided a solution, such as matching the client’s workers’ comp needs with a policy from a certain carrier, balancing premium costs with coverage limits.
- The results: Cover how buying your insurance product has helped this customer, whether that’s giving them greater peace of mind or explaining how it may have come in handy for a particular claims incident.
If you’ve yet to create case studies, you may find that current clients are more willing to participate than you’d think, as that can give them good exposure too. Case studies also have the benefit of giving you more website content. If you take steps such as optimizing case studies for SEO purposes, you could increase traffic to your insurance website.
#2 Solicit Reviews
Similar to creating case studies, soliciting reviews can be a great way to solve how to market insurance products and how to market your insurance agency as a whole. Like with case studies, customers may be willing to provide reviews in part to publicize their own names, but they also may be willing to help out as an appreciative gesture. That’s part of why it’s important to deliver a great customer experience and form strong relationships, as clients may then be willing to help you out more often.
From there, having more reviews, ideally positive ones, can be helpful in several ways, such as:
- Increasing your likelihood of being discovered: While soliciting reviews may not seem like you’re doing much to market to potential customers, oftentimes potential clients do their own research before reaching out to insurance agents. So, if a prospect is searching a reviews site like Yelp for local insurance agents and sorts by highest rated, for example, then you want to be in a position where you show up near the top based on all the reviews you’ve solicited.
Although you don’t know exactly how clients will rate you, you can take an educated guess based on how their experience seemed to go. Ideally, these reviews are coming from clients you’ve had good experiences with, whereas it wouldn’t make much sense to proactively seek out reviews from people who didn’t seem satisfied with your insurance services. - Improving your reputation: Not only can reviews help you get discovered, but they can also increase prospects’ perception of you. If they see lots of great reviews and read specifics about how your insurance products help, they may hold your insurance agency in high regard before they even begin to work with you.
- Enhancing your website: In addition to soliciting reviews for review-specific websites, you also might ask a few of your top clients for testimonial-type reviews that you can include on your website. That can be a good marketing tactic to gain prospects’ trust when they view your website and improve the overall quality of your website.
#3 Build a Referral Engine
In addition to getting reviews, another solution as to how to market insurance products is to get more referrals. Word of mouth can still be one of the best insurance agency marketing tactics. If you can get clients and others in your network to refer you to others who might benefit from your insurance products, you’re often a lot closer to closing the deal than if you started from scratch, like with cold calling.
Ideally, you can build what’s often called a referral engine, where the referrals keep coming in, seemingly like marketing magic. A few ways to build a referral engine include:
- Writing out a simple ask that you include as a standard part of onboarding documents, e.g., “If you enjoyed your purchasing experience and know someone who would benefit from obtaining a policy, please let me know or pass on my information.”
- Sharing periodically (e.g, once per year) on your social media channels that you’re open to new clients and would appreciate referrals
- Offering referral rewards, assuming you follow proper regulations and protocols if applicable, which you can then mention in channels such as your email marketing newsletters
- Adding a referral link in your email signature, such as one that goes to a landing page where the referrer can input the details on who they’re referring
#4 Find Your Lane on Social Media
If you’re trying to figure out how to market insurance products, one of the first places you might turn is to social media. But it’s often not easy to find success just by sharing posts across every social network touting the benefits of your insurance products. You need to figure out what works for you on social media, as there’s a lot of competition, not just among other insurers but among all the other people and brands sharing content.
Some ways you might find social media success in terms of insurance agency marketing include:
- Creating social media ads: If you’re not finding organic success, you might want to experiment with social media advertising, such as with Facebook ads. You could invest a little bit at a time to learn what works and what doesn’t on social, as opposed to spending a big chunk at once like with a TV ad campaign.
- Joining groups: For organic social media marketing success, you might find that joining groups on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn works for your insurance agency. Try contributing to relevant conversations without being too promotional (or not promotional at all, depending on the group) and see if that leads to benefits, like those group members then checking out your website on their own to learn about your insurance products.
- Sharing helpful advice on a niche topic: Since it can be hard to stand out on social media, you might find that your posts get more traction when you tap into more niche areas, rather than going too wide and not resonating with anyone. So, you might primarily focus on sharing content about entrepreneurship in your state, for example, or sharing your own marketing tips for small businesses.
#5 Launch a Direct Mail Campaign
Digital marketing channels like social media and email can be great, but don’t discount physical mail. Some insurance agents have figured out how to market insurance products by launching direct mail campaigns. Whether you send letters, postcards, flyers, etc., you may be able to stand out by showing up in a prospect’s physical mailbox.
A U.S. Postal Service study finds that around two-thirds of consumers think physical mail is more personal than the internet. The study also finds that one thing they want commercial mail messages to help with is overseeing finances. So, that could create an opening for insurance agencies to use direct mail as a way to position their brands as ones that can help financially, such as in terms of managing budget risk.
See What Works for Your Insurance Agency Marketing
All of these insurance agency marketing ideas can potentially help you sell insurance products more easily, but some might work better for some insurance agents than others. Consider trying these out to see if you can find some success, and if a couple stands out, then you can dedicate more resources to use these as the base of your marketing plan. Figuring out how to market insurance products can differ a bit from one insurance business to another, but focusing on these areas can be a good place to start.