Marketing
HOW TO MARKET YOUR INSURANCE AGENCY
WITHOUT LOSING MONEY
Introduction
Marketing is a core part of running a growing business, however, for many agencies, no one has given them a clear plan to help them market their agency. In previous decades you could buy your way into getting awareness through newspaper ads or Yellow Page ads. Today you have to work your way into getting awareness. Our challenge remains that the big national direct writers are spending billions of dollars to alert your customers that they exist and they are open for business. How will your agency compete against those kind of budgets? Through a consistent and strong marketing strategy.
Many agents follow the trends they see posted in online groups and end up frustrated with little to no ROI. The reason many of these strategies fall flat is that marketing isn’t a campaign; it’s a consistent strategy for your agency to embrace and work on. Marketing is also not just doing one thing with a limited budget where you hope for leads. Many agencies miss focusing on the low hanging fruit they may have right in front of them. We want to break down how agencies should think about marketing and the best plan to start marketing to your biggest and simplest opportunities.
agency goals
LEAD TO MARKETING SUCCESS
One mistake we see too often is that insurance agencies try to chase campaigns rather than tie marketing into agency goals. In order to have success and not chase shiny objects, your marketing strategy needs to be tied very closely to the agency’s initiatives and objectives. You can see quickly how when marketing is chasing new business but the agency needs to boost retention, the team can be out of sync.
Here are a few considerations for your agency when setting agency goals:
- Agency Retention Rate
- Agency Policies Per Client
- Sales Closing Ratio
- New Business Quotes
- Launch of new agency technology (mobile app, client portal, etc.)
In order to create goals you need to identify where you are now, and then set a target to where you want to be. This is important to consider now. When we get to the budget and ROI section of this page, you will see how you can more confidently make an investment in marketing when you tie it into a direct goal. Every agency should have these goals outlined so that not only your marketing team, but your entire team can have access to them. Marketing can bring the opportunity to the door, but someone on the team has to be there to answer when they knock!
who is your
DREAM CLIENT?
In order to effectively market, your agency needs to identify who you want to attract. Your agency most likely does not have an unlimited budget. When you can narrow and target which key clients you want to attract, you can get more bang for your marketing dollar.
By identifying who you want to attract, you can structure your services to meet their specific demands. For example, if you want to serve contractors, you may want to have someone available to do big bonds and certificates starting at 7 a.m. as a consideration to them.
Think about this: imagine if Home Depot or Lowe’s didn’t open until 9 a.m. It would crush work for contractors. Another example is if you want to write growing families, you can use technology to aid communication and have options for internships and scholarships. Knowing who you want to target allows you to speak specifically to them.
One note: you have to get specific. You can’t say good payers in a 10 mile radius with no claims who value you as their insurance agent. That is exactly who everyone wants. Instead, you want to drill down into specifics such as:
- Age Range
- Educations
- Preferred Social Networks
- Industry (either job type or industries for commercial)
- Employee Size (CL)
- Preferred Communication Methods
- What is the number one thing they want to protect?
- What do they struggle with in regards to insurance?
- How do they find information?
- What are their biggest insurance challenges?
Your agency should have 3-5 target personas per department. You may have even more. But you can see how changing your message for an empty nester vs. a growing family would be a benefit. Identifying who they are and what their beliefs and challenges are means that you can come to them as a solution provider for their insurance needs.
how to become
ATTRACTIVE TO YOUR DREAM CLIENT
Your agency’s brand is its swagger and power of attraction to your dream insurance client. Just as people have identities, your agency should as well. This brand needs to take into consideration a few key and very important items:
- Is it unique to you or is it similar to your main competition?
- Is it appealing to your dream customer?
- Does it speak about how you serve your dream clients OR is it all about you and your experience?
- Is it in trend for the times or is it dated and old?
- Do you have a call to action color that draws your attention?
Your agency should work with a professional firm that can help align what looks, reads and appeals to your target markets. Once complete, your agency will have a brand guide that clearly outlines who you are and what you stand for! In addition, your marketing can get into the fast lane because you already have the major agreements all set! How much time is spent in your agency going back and forth on marketing initiatives? This can all be solved with a brand guide.
BUILDING THE STRATEGY TO HIT YOUR AGENCY’S GOALS
If you are following along, by now you should have your agency’s goals and the people you are looking to target. The next step is to build strategies to assist the agency in hitting their goals. In a future section we review tools that agencies should consider, but here are a few strategies that agencies can easily enact to help hit goals:
- Agency Retention Rate
- Monthly emails to clients around holidays
- Recognizing life changing events (baby, marriage, moving, new car)
- Thank you notes
- Birthday recognition
- Agency Policies Per Client
- Email, mail, text and phone campaigns to monoline customers
- Educational pieces on the need for non-essential policies
- Sales Closing Ratio
- Nurturing clients while in a sales cycle
- Custom proposals
- Video content
- New Business Quotes
- Search Engine Optimization
- Online reviews
- Referral program
- Launch of new agency technology (mobile app, client portal, etc.)
- Email, mail, text and phone campaigns to launch new agency technology
Your strategies should be outlined with a timeframe, goals, timeline and messaging. Each strategy should be tracked and monitored.
how to create
AN INSURANCE AGENCY MARKETING BUDGET
Many times we have been asked how much an agency should spend on marketing. The question is really how much time can you devote to marketing?
Marketing is very labor intensive today. Most marketing tools are low cost or free but require time and energy. To get started on a marketing budget, you have to first answer which bucket you want to fall into:
- Aggressive
- Moderate
- Conservative
| Premium | ||
|---|---|---|
|
Current Premium |
$13,725,253.85 |
$13,725,253.85 |
|
Retention |
87.49% |
90.00% |
|
Retained Premium |
$12,008,224.59 |
$12,352,728.46 |
|
Difference in Premium Growth |
$344,503.87 |
|
|
13% Commission Rate |
$44,785.50 |
|
We recommend investing 25% as a moderate investment of the targeted growth into marketing efforts. You still have a 75% increase in your investment! This will help you determine what you can afford and what you may have to get creative on. If 33% is an aggressive investment, conservative would be an 18% investment. You need to repeat this for each goal to get your target investment. This will very easily allow you to create your ROI.
what tools do we need
TO BE SUCCESSFUL?
As we have indicated, you may need some tools to help you get the marketing job done. Plan for these tools based on your budget, but here are some considerations:
- Agency Brand Guide
- Email marketing tool — We recommend Hubspot
- Social media scheduling tool
- Agency swag
- SEO optimized website
- Video equipment & editing software
- Canva or other simple graphic design tool
- Dedicated marketing person or people for the agency
What's Next?
If your agency needs some hand holding to make your brand ridiculously amazing, let’s help you get started with an agency brand guide!
