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Reviews and testimonials are nothing new when it comes to marketing, and that goes for any space, not just the insurance industry. But let me ask you this, is your agency making the most of your strategy when it comes to capitalizing on obtaining reviews? When it comes to your agency’s bottom line or measure of ROI, reviews are an important piece of the puzzle, and testimonials (specifically in the form of video) are critical to your agency’s success. Why is that though?
Well, first let’s take a step back. The point of marketing is to create more brand awareness for your agency, create rewarding and long-lasting customer/client relationships, and of course, develop more new business for you and your agency. When we consider this, we have to think about the strongest form of newly developed business, which time and time again circles around to word of mouth referrals. With our marketing strategies, we shouldn’t be entirely re-inventing the wheel, but pushing the envelope on what is already working well to make it bigger and better. If word of mouth referrals is already very effective, we should be using our marketing efforts to influence our loyal customers to generate more word of mouth referrals for our agencies. Of course, this is where reviews and testimonials comes into the picture.
In order to keep steadily developing new business, we want to shoot for outstanding reviews and testimonials, so let’s talk a little bit about our agency’s strategy.
Asking for Reviews
Asking for reviews from your customers and clients should be a part of your agency’s every day regular tasks. In fact, asking for a review or testimonial should be capitalized on a specific time, in which I like to refer to as “marketing moments.” Marketing moments are the perfect time to request something of your customers. The best time, we find, to ask for a review is right after a customer has been helped by your agency and seen a great result. We also find that we can receive great reviews from customers who are considered “raving fans” of our agency – these are the folks who stop in just to greet our rescue dog max and say hi to our agents, or frequently interact with our agency’s social media pages to let us know they appreciate our content.
When asking for reviews, be sure to just have your customers be real and authentic, and simply ask for their honesty. If they give your agency a poor review, you can speak with them about it and fix a problem that you may not know needed to be resolved, and in turn get them from a 2 or 3 star review to a 5 star review instead. If they had a great experience though, which your agency should always push to have the best customer experience, then you’ll see a great review in return and that will generate more referrals for your agency.
Our Video Testimonial Strategy
We wanted to talk a little bit about video testimonials specifically, because we find these get the most traction and engagement online, which reaches a large number of prospects in the digital arena. If someone is considered a raving fan or a loyal follower of your agency, and you know they are more than likely comfortable with doing your agency a favor, then now is a perfect time to ask for a video testimonial. There are a few key concepts that should be included in each video testimonial that your agency conducts:
- Who they are – As part of your interview for your testimonial, simply ask for their name and where they work or what they do for a living.
- Their challenges or problems – Ask your customers why they originally sought out your agency in the first place. Try to get them to share their emotions or feelings about their situation, because this will allow for more prospects to relate to their situation and see themselves becoming a customer or client of yours as well.
- Why they chose your agency – Ask them about their past experiences, and how your agency was able to help them with their individual needs.
- The end result – This is perfect to include, especially if your agency exceeded their expectations, which you should always shoot for in your customer/client interactions.
When conducting a video testimonial, it is absolutely critical that you do not give your customers or clients a script to read, or even have them write their own for that matter. The video needs to be authentic, or your prospects will realize they are reading a script almost immediately. It’s alright to script your interview questions so that they are ready to ask, but your customers should not know what they are going to be asked until the camera is actually rolling.
When we conduct interviews, we try to make it conversational with our customers. Instead of having them stare down the camera, we put the camera off to the side and then have them focus on the interviewer. We ask a few “mach questions” to get them to warm up to the interview, then we start asking for the important details of the testimonial that we mentioned in the bullets above once they are in a more comfortable and conversational flow. To see an example of one of our agency’s video testimonials, check out the video below.
What are other ways you can think of to obtain outstanding reviews for your insurance agency? Be sure to let us know in the comments section below, because we are always interested in hearing about innovative ideas or discovering thought leaders in our space. To all agents and brokers out there, good luck in obtaining more reviews and testimonials, and Happy Marketing!
