Hey Hey It’s Linda Rey – Marketing Your Independent Insurance Agency in 2022
Marketing an independent insurance agency is one of the most egregious problems an agency can have. It’s such a big umbrella term and everyone does it their own way, there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution.
At APP, we run into a lot of agencies that try to do something that’s for agents only, like this industry is immune to woes that other small businesses face. But just as other businesses face marketing issues, so do agencies. And no one knows that better than our guest today.
In this episode of the Ridiculously Amazing Insurance Agent Podcast, we talked to Linda Rey of Aurora Consulting, a well-known figure in this industry working to change the way we view the mystery we call marketing. Here’s how Linda and Kelly are working together to change the way you look at all of this.
Linda’s Story: From Broker to Entrepreneur
Linda became an insurance agent marketing expert through her own experience in the industry. In her own words, Linda tried to get out of the insurance business twice before finally exiting as an agency owner in 2017. After starting a brokerage business with her partner Trevor, Linda was forced to reinvent her work during the COVID-19 pandemic. “The serial entrepreneur is continuously pivoting,” she said.
That’s when Linda started working on SBA EIDL loans for small businesses, and from there, she started a YouTube channel letting people know how to apply for specific loans. “Our YouTube channel blew up and we had about 500 clients, and we’ve gotten about $70 million of disaster financing for small businesses in the United States,” Linda said.
The Issues Independent Insurance Agency Owners Face
Insurance and marketing don’t always go hand-in-hand, and in fact, there are often a lot of myths and disconnects between the two. Of course, the “old school” way of marketing was for an agency to buy out an ad in the Yellow Pages. What would happen after that?
The phone would ring, and leads would come in. And this isn’t something that was for agents only, but was uniform across the business landscape.
But today, in the era of social media and websites, the game has completely changed. And because of these changes, many independent agents and agency owners struggle with their marketing practices.
Agencies are frustrated with marketing, and with knowing what to spend, and how to spend it. Agencies also face issues not only finding leads, but then converting them.
Linda helped us break down these issues, so you know exactly how to tackle them.
The Difference Between Leads and Marketing
To start, in the insurance world, the words “leads” and “marketing” are often used interchangeably. But we say those are two very different terms and concepts.
What are the differences? With marketing, you can market to your current customers to keep them. Marketing is your brand awareness and your conversion strategy. With marketing, you can tell your story.
On the other hand, leads simply address the initial interest in your agency. At the end of the day, you can buy leads from lead providers, and you might even get leads from your social media marketing. But as we mentioned, you then need to get those leads to convert.
With marketing, you can also create different personas that hit your target markets directly. Especially with social media marketing, you can share with people in a very short amount of time, with just some characters and posts.
While many people in insurance might think of marketing as a challenge with no uniform solution, there are ways to get marketing to work in your favor, especially when it comes to social media marketing.
The Perks of the Target Market
One of the best parts about social media marketing is that you can reach your target markets with ease.
Here’s the truth: you’re not going to be everybody’s cup of tea. It’s just a fact.
With targeted social media marketing, you can weed through people who already were not going to be your client, and you don’t need to waste money on trying to market to people who were never going to buy from you. Instead, you can set boundaries, and focus on the people who actually want to work with your agency.
When you’re developing your target audience, you can also look to address certain pain points with that audience, enhancing your value. For example, if you want to write growing families, maybe you need a scholarship at the high school, or you need to sponsor the high school football team. Whatever pain point you want to solve, you can write your marketing with those communities in mind. At the end of the day, you can craft your marketing strategy to be in your communities, and to solve the problems your community members are facing.
Sales Process
Linda also has some thoughts on the sales process, and how social media marketing comes into play. With social media marketing and other marketing techniques, the sales process doesn’t have to be a long, arduous scenario.
Of course, many agents may not find the sales process to be the most enticing, and you definitely don’t have to be a sleazy salesperson. But agents do need to have skills, training and development to understand that when they’re talking to a customer, client, or prospect, that’s their moment to shine. “You don’t have to look at it as a sales process,” Linda said, “The customer journey, and the experience, but that’s really what it is.”
Mythbusting: Agencies & Marketing
Here are some of the tops myths that Linda sees, when it comes to insurance agencies and marketing.
- Overnight Success
One of the biggest misconceptions? “There’s no overnight success,” Linda said. “It’s not, you put a Facebook post and now you’re gonna get a thousand likes and 2,000 new subscribers, and 50 new clients. It doesn’t work that way.”
- Inherent Hesitation
It may be the case that insurance agencies have an inherent hesitation in marketing, especially because renewals are an integral part of the industry. When you get paid every month anyway, it’s easy to get complacent and feel hesitant towards additional investment in marketing.
- Marketing Person
Another big myth? Just because you have a marketing person doesn’t mean you’re all covered. You might have a great marketing peron, but they might not also be a video editor, email expert, and extremely knowledgeable SEO pro, all at the same time. Marketing is a team sport when it comes to small businesses, depending on how many employees you have.
- Too small for reports
No matter your agency size, you’re never too small for marketing reports. When you run marketing reports, you can see exactly how many dollars are going into different avenues, and how your marketing streams are performing.
- Growing vs Not Getting More Business vs Shrinking
If your business is shrinking and you don’t know why you need to start employing some new marketing strategies.
- Perfectionism
Perfectionism can be dangerous, because it keeps people from thinking that if they don’t know everything or it’s not perfect, then there’s no point in doing it. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if you don’t know everything, or even anything: you learn, and you learn from doing. “If you don’t do it, you can’t learn it,” Linda said.
What You Need to Know
Here are some things you need to know when it comes to marketing and insurance, according to Linda. Spending money on marketing can be uncomfortable, and you might have questions about how you’re going to profit on the investment. But the good news is that marketing is a vast landscape, you can go out there and try it, and there are many ways to succeed.
“Embrace it, because then you’ll learn from it,” Linda said. And the best part? “Then you can delete stuff too. The possibilities are endless, but you can’t learn if you’re not doing it.”
The Overwhelming Question
Social media marketing can be overwhelming in many ways, but one of those ways is with the question “Which platform?”
Our advice? You can try all of them. You can also survey your customers to see where they are.
By trying different platforms, you can see where you have the most fun, and you can see what actually works for you. You also really never know what’s going to “hit,” because algorithms change. And what works now, very well might not work two years from now.
Parting Advice
At the end of the day, putting out content is like planting a seed. Some of your top-performing content might end up being some of your oldest content, and you might see it bring in top traffic month after month, but it might not happen for a little while.
“Just like if you’re planting apple trees, you’re not gonna get apples for three to five years.”
As for her parting advice, Linda has two tips. First, she says that you should definitely survey your clients to see where they’re looking for information. Second, she says you should spend one or two hours a week trying something new with marketing. “It has to happen if you’re looking to grow.”
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