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You want to launch a digital marketing campaign for your insurance agency because you  need to get your brand in front of as many eyes as possible.  It can seem overwhelming! Where do you start?  First, you need find a full time Marketing Coordinator for your agency. Second, you need to find a digital marketing system that works for your agency. And third, you need to create a digital marketing strategy.

It’s important to realize that you’re not only competing with other insurance agencies and direct writers – you’re competing with the millions of other marketing messages that consumers are being bombarded with every single day.

Let’s dig into several very affordable digital marketing tactics for your insurance agency:

Let’s get social

Social media is one of the most cost effective ways to market your agency.  In addition to providing a platform for growing your agency’s brand, it offers an easy medium for promotion and customer service opportunities, at a very low cost.  Most of your cost will come from the salary of your in-house Marketing Coordinator.

Let’s talk strategy.

• Frequency & Consistence: Leveraging social media is a great way for you to build your agency brand’s voice. You should not only post regularly, but there should be a consistent tone and voice to your posts. Success will not come without proper planning and strategy. Additionally, do not over post or deviate from your brand’s message.  Over posting can cause your message to be ignored. In a report released by Buffer App, I recently read that the optimal number of Facebook posts should be between 5 and 10 per week. Other reports have suggested as high as 15 posts per week. With that being said, let’s remember that more isn’t always better. Don’t start posting 10 times per day – that would be over kill.
• Messaging:  It’s not about you, it’s about your audience (customers and prospects). Most brands use their social media accounts for promotional purposes only, which I personally feel is a bad idea. I feel that strategy will set you and your agency up for failure.  In my opinion, your agency need to provide VALUE to your followers and using social media for promotional purposes only will not do that.  Instead, you may want to find some great content that others have posted, maybe from your clients and/or prospects, and share that content along with your agency’s promotional content. Our agency uses the 90-10 rule which is 90% of our posts are unrelated to insurance and the 10% are about insurance.
• Engagement: Social media allows your agency to interact with your current and future customers. Your agency must put together a strategy to leverage your followers and make them feel like valuable members of your agency’s brand.

Whenever you open yourself up to communication, you’re also opening yourself up to criticism. Embrace it! Approach any complaint or disgruntled client as an opportunity to show your agency’s customer service capabilities. Do not run from the issue; instead face it head on because people are watching.

Lastly, do not hide from failures.  You are human and are bound to face some hurdles along the way. Strategically approach these as opportunities to win over customers with good customer service and express your agency brand’s long-term vision as frequently as possible.

• Investing: There are a number of different advertising opportunities that you and your agency can invest in, all of which have merit depending on the demographic that you’re targeting. Experiment with the below options and see what provides you with the best ROI.  Always remember to track each and every part of your marketing strategy:
• Facebook Advertising: Facebook is a pay-to-play platform for your insurance agency.  If you want to see any engagement, you will need to invest in promoting your Facebook posts. Before you start, you need to come up with a budget.

• Sponsored Tweets: While Twitter still provides a good amount of organic engagement, the micro-blogging platform also has paid advertising solutions that your agency can leverage. One of those options are “sponsored tweets.” By utilizing a sponsored tweet, a higher engagement will likely occur with your followers.  But remember, your content still has to be great.   Just because you pay does not mean you are promised success.

• LinkedIn’s Premium Services: LinkedIn has a number of extremely valuable paid features, such as Sales Navigator.  This makes finding leads and contacts seamless for you and your agency. Best of all, you can try the service free for a month, so why not take them up on it?

Content is still Critical to your Agency

Content marketing is one of the most overlooked investments in the independent insurance agency marketing space.  Why is content so important? It is the vehicle for conveying your agency brand’s message. If your content is not clear and concise and, if your message is not well formulated, you will undoubtedly struggle to succeed in having a positive ROI.

• Critically think about your agency’s message: Content marketing, along with your visual content, should not be a process of throwing messages against the wall and seeing what sticks. To effectively brand your agency, you should engage in industry research and formulate a unique selling proposition. Let’s remember one thing about our industry; everyone needs what we sell so the only question is who they are going to buy it from. Your message then needs to keep these USPs as the focal point. Avoid focusing on price and instead sell on benefits and value.
• Find creative content: Creative content does not have to be expensive. You can have content created for your agency very affordably by using sites like Elance and Fiverr. Although they may be affordable, they may not accurately portray your brand because they will not have a personal connection with your agency. However, if you have your Social Media Coordinator creating your content, your brand’s message should come through loud and clear.

If you don’t have a Social Media Coordinator, you can go on Fiverr and have an animated “explainer” video made from a top seller for a fraction of what a traditional marketing  agency’s would charge.  “Explainer” videos are perfect for insurance agencies because they can quickly and effectively convey your agency’s message to potential customers.

• Optimize internal pages for conversions: What do you want visitors to do when they land on your agency’s website? Your entire digital marketing strategy should be built with this one question in mind. Do you want the prospect to call your agency? Do you want that prospect to email your agency? Are you looking for your agency website to educate the prospect before they call? Once you know the action that you want your users to take, you can find affordable tools for facilitating those actions.
• Find free plug-ins for capturing emails and then leverage affordable services like Constant Contact or MailChimp to create and deliver drip campaigns for your agency.

• Use free tools like Google Analytics to monitor website traffic and engagement.  Once they are on it, find opportunities to create a more user-friendly experience. The key is to make sure your agency’s website is mobile responsive because a good majority of visits to your website are coming from mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

• Optimize the forms on your agency site to build a stronger inbound lead funnel.

Whatever your objective, there is an inexpensive, and often free, solution.

• Do your own outreach: One of the most important steps to an effective digital marketing strategy is content promotion. After you produce an incredible piece of branded content for your agency, you need to amplify that piece of content as much as possible. Leverage your social media profiles, reach out to LinkedIn groups or industry forums, and contribute to other popular websites that your prospects might visit. Invest a few hours a week to outreach or off-site optimization and your agency will begin to gain traction. The more traction you gain, the bigger your ROI will be.

There are 4 points that I hope you take away from this post.  First, your agency can’t afford not to have a full time Social Media Coordinator. Second, you must create a marketing budget. Third, you have to have a strategy and be willing to invest the time and energy into tracking your agency’s results. Forth, keep an open mind; you will make mistakes but you need to be willing to adapt and remain consistent.