5 Easy Insurance Digital Marketing Strategies for Amateurs

Developing an insurance digital marketing strategy can seem overwhelming for newcomers, but in reality, there are many easy steps to take. In some respects, being an amateur marketer can be an advantage, as you can potentially connect with customers more authentically, rather than getting too caught up in a formal insurance digital marketing strategy.

As marketing platform Marketo explains when describing a new era of marketing: “The way marketers communicate with each other, other businesses and even their audiences often sound like unintelligible nonsense. It’s a sure-fire method of distancing themselves from everyone else, even if that’s not the idea. The new marketers use natural language, not business language.”

In other words, you don’t have to learn the perfect way to phrase a social media post or your website copy so much as you need to be yourself. Yes, there are more advanced insurance marketing tips and tricks you can learn along the way, but much of what works offline also works in digital marketing.

You might be good at networking with people in your community, offering non-salesy business advice, and generally being helpful and friendly when you see them around town. The same natural, helpful style can work in digital marketing too, whether you’re writing a blog post about how business owners can grow or you’re building up a positive presence on a review site like Yelp.

In this guide, we’ll explore five easy strategies that you can start with to build and enhance your insurance digital marketing strategy.

Strategy #1: Build an Informative Website

If you’ve yet to establish your own website, that could be a good starting point for your insurance digital marketing strategy. For some agents, your site might be managed through your parent company, whereas others can easily create their own through a site like Squarespace.

If you already have a website, you should still prioritize reviewing all of your content and making sure that it conveys the right message. You don’t have to get too complex. Just make sure your website:

• Clearly states who you are and what you do: Your homepage should make it clear in just a few words what type of insurance agent you are. 
• Is intuitive to navigate: Don’t make customers dig around to find the right section of your website. Your pages should be clearly labeled, like having a “Why Work With Us” page and a “Contact” page. An easy-to-navigate website can even help improve your SEO.
• Allows visitors to dive in at their own pace: Don’t bother your leads with a million pop-ups, flashy animations, etc. Just as you wouldn’t want to bombard a prospect with too much information if talking offline, you wouldn’t want your website to try to do too much at once.
  

Strategy #2: Establish a Social Media Presence 

In addition to customers finding you through your website, social media can also be a good source of insurance lead generation. So, like with your website, you want to establish a social media presence that’s informative, and you want to communicate clearly on these channels.

Some initial steps to take as you establish your insurance digital marketing strategy include:

• Creating clear social media profiles: Even if you’ve already signed up for platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter, take the time to review the information you’ve shared on your profiles. If someone visits your channel, they should quickly and clearly understand what you do. On LinkedIn, for example, you can create a headline that shows up right after your name. You could use something descriptive like “commercial insurance agent specializing in liability insurance” rather than just “insurance agent.”
• Sharing conversational content: If you saw a prospect at a local coffee shop, you probably wouldn’t hound them with offers to buy a policy from you. Instead, you might ask them how they’re doing and generally be conversational. That same sort of slow-build marketing approach applies to digital marketing on social media. So, when you share content, don’t expect every post to lead directly to policy sales. Create content with the idea of being conversational and helpful to your audience.
• Engaging with others’ content: You wouldn’t just talk about yourself offline, and the same applies to digital marketing. Make sure you spend some time engaging with what other people have to say, such as by commenting on customers’ posts in a way that adds to the conversation.

Strategy #3: Develop Blog Content

Once you have your website built out in a way that’s easy for visitors to get a strong sense of what you do, you can try to draw in more leads by developing a blog. However, it’s important to set realistic goals for what you want your content to achieve. 

You might not have a huge audience, but maybe you can generate a few solid leads by drawing visitors in through search engines. In that case, you may want to learn some basic SEO tips for your insurance digital marketing strategy, such as incorporating keywords into your blog posts. You can identify relevant keywords through a site such as Ubersuggest or Moz. Or, maybe you can send out your blog content to existing customers to help build trust and loyalty.

With your goals in mind, consider developing blog content such as:

• How-to articles that provide actionable advice related to the types of businesses you serve
• Q&A’s with customers or other business professionals about how they’ve built their businesses or dealt with certain challenges. Doing so can help you expand your reach if they share this content too.
• Guest posts to share on other business professionals’ blogs, relevant news publications, industry associations’ blogs, etc. If you can share content through these channels, that could help you gain exposure to new audiences and therefore generate new leads.

If you’re not sure what to write, keep the same types of tactics in mind as with social media: create content that’s conversational and helpful to your audience, rather than just trying to sell yourself.

Strategy #4: Launch Ad Campaigns

While there are many easy insurance digital marketing strategies that are free, you might find that ads help you go further or at least get you there faster. Ads might help you with insurance lead generation by getting in front of audiences that you wouldn’t be able to reach organically, such as if you have a long way to go on SEO but can use an ad to show up on the first page of Google results.

Some types of ad campaigns to consider launching as part of your digital marketing strategy include:

• Search ads that help your site show atop rankings when someone searches for the types of services you offer
• Social media ads to be seen by a wider audience without having to spend so much time organically building connections
• Digital event sponsorships such as for a webinar. Doing so can grow awareness among new audiences and potentially help associate your brand with a certain level of prestige, depending on factors like the type of event and your visibility at it.

Strategy #5: Leverage Reviews

Another insurance digital marketing strategy to try is seeking out reviews and building up your presence on sites like Yelp. This approach may require a bit more effort than some of these other areas, but the results can be highly effective and within an amateur’s reach.

Those who excel at word-of-mouth marketing know that it often still requires some effort to set into motion, even if it seems like automatic marketing. For example, you might periodically remind professional acquaintances that you’re looking to meet small business owners, which prompts them to recommend you and your services next time they hear of a new entrepreneur looking for help.

With online reviews, your insurance digital marketing strategy might similarly include checking in with past customers, asking them if they could leave a review if they had a good experience. Still, you don’t want to be too pushy in this regard. Keep the ask simple, and see if you can do anything else to support their business meanwhile. 

To get more reviews and improve how others see you online, you might also consider:

• Claiming your business profile on review sites like Yelp so you can gain access to certain business owner tools, like being able to adjust your business information and photos.
• Including links to review sites in your email signature with a short description about how you’d love to receive reviews from customers.
• Commenting on your existing reviews to thank the reviewers and show that you’re engaged with customers.

Elevate Your Insurance Digital Marketing Strategy

Building out a digital marketing strategy doesn’t have to be too complex for insurance agents. If you’re new to marketing, you can still be highly effective by communicating clearly and openly, rather than trying too hard to seem like an advanced marketer. You know your customers and what they respond well to. Think about any offline strategies that helped you land your customers and see how you can apply those to your digital marketing presence.

Using digital InsurTech tools like Wheelhouse can help too. The platform helps you create a more informative website, such as by being able to offer bindable policy quoting from your site, rather than requiring leads to call for pricing. And as you get more advanced with your digital marketing, you can even create custom landing pages to draw in more customers.