Modern consumers live online – spending much of the day on computers or phones. What does this mean for insurance agencies like yours? You must meet these customers where they are with strategies to promote your brand across the most popular digital channels. When you have a plan to reach insureds that encompasses a variety of online forums, you can leverage the advantages of different channels to promote brand awareness and authority and build trust with clients for agency success.
In this blog post, we’ll go over seven effective digital channels for promoting your agency’s brand and the best way to use each, including:
- Creating a Professional Website
- Offering Online Service Through a Customer Portal
- Tapping into the Power of Texting
- Leveraging User-Generated Review Sites
- Building Relationships via Email Marketing
- Harnessing the Power of PPC and SEO
- Implementing Effective Social Media Marketing
1. Creating a Professional Website
Your agency website is one of the first representations of your business that customers see, which means having a sleek, attractive, and highly functional site is critical to your success. Your site should have a branded layout that represents your agency’s aesthetic and be easy to navigate so that insureds can enjoy a seamless experience that reassures them of your business’s competence at every level. Clients expect your site to offer the services other companies offer at the same level or higher. This means having a mobile-optimized website so customers can effectively use your site even when on mobile devices. A site that loads quickly, is easy to navigate by touch, and displays correctly on phones and tablets is a must-have for clients who spend much of their time on these smaller devices. Get started creating your website today and make sure you have the professional, modern website your agency needs to succeed in the digital world.
2. Offering Online Service Through a Customer Portal
Win over customers’ loyalty with a branded online portal that gives clients instant access to your agency any time, day or night. Customer service portals let insureds access your services in from their phones, tablets, laptops or PCs. When setting up your portal, customize it with your agency’s colors and logo for a cohesive branding experience between your website and portal. You should also make sure that your clients are aware of the portal and how it can help them – with immediate online service that offers 24/7 access to policy documents and ID cards and the ability to request policy changes at any time. With a customer service portal, insureds no longer have to wait to get their needs met, and your agency saves hours by minimizing time spent responding to customer calls. Provide a customer portal that offers all of these benefits to help grow your agency and keep clients happy with your services.
3. Tapping into the Power of Texting
Text messaging is another effective way to meet your customers where they are. This mode of communication gives clients a convenient way to communicate with your agency from anywhere on the device they’re most comfortable with – their phones. Text messaging also offers your business enormous benefits by eliminating errors and omissions claims – allowing you to save every message to keep a clear audit trail. Even better, texts have a 97% open rate, meaning clients are likely to respond quickly so agents can get the information they need immediately. Want to learn more about the benefits of text messaging and other client outreach methods? Check out EZLynx Communication Center™.
4. Leveraging User-Generated Review Sites
Having excellent online reviews is critical to standing out in a competitive market. In our always plugged-in world, potential clients look online to find the best products and services. Often, the first place they look online is a testimonial site like Google Reviews. When you have software that automatically prompts satisfied customers to leave five-star ratings on Google Reviews or other referral sites, potential customers searching online can immediately see evidence of your brand’s quality and reputation. EZLynx Automation Center™ has the capability to automatically request Google Reviews during specific events, including when new customers are added, or policies are renewed. In addition to requesting reviews, you’ll also want to have a plan for regularly responding to reviews to show customers you care about their input. Excellent reviews and timely, well-managed responses help drive traffic to your website, establish client trust, build brand awareness and give clients insight into your services.
5. Building Relationships via Email Marketing
Email is an essential mode of communication for modern customers, so it should be a central part of your marketing efforts. You can use email marketing campaigns to reinforce your agency’s value with prospective customers and existing customers by sending newsletters, event invitations and promotions. You can set more targeted emails for important dates like birthdays or renewal time for current customers. These personalized messages let your clients know that they’re top of mind and help you establish the kind of close customer relationships that foster brand loyalty. EZLynx Communication Center™ provides an easy way to send these tailored messages with automation that lets you set and forget communication for client milestones like birthdays and anniversaries.
6. Harnessing the Power of PPC and SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click (PPC) ads are powerful tools for raising awareness of your brand on websites like Google that customers use the most. Both methods require you to identify highly-searched keywords that your clients might type in when looking for the services you offer. With PPC advertising, once you identify the right keywords, you place a bid on them so that your ads will display first when those words are searched. PPC ads also allow you to select the audience you want to reach using the demographics, locations and profiles of the prospects most likely to be interested in your products, which is especially important for agencies operating in a specific geographic area or catering to a very specific clientele. These targeted campaigns on Google, X, formerly known as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook are a great way to boost visibility immediately with the prospects who need your services.
Producing blogs, articles and other search engine-optimized content for your website is also a good way to reach customers by expanding your online presence. High-quality, informative content helps you earn customer trust as it demonstrates your knowledge and authority in the industry. As with PPC ads, to reach the highest number of consumers with your content, you’ll need to research the keywords that are most popular with your audience. Using these keywords in your blogs and articles will help your content rank higher in searches for a wider reach that leads more clients to your website.
7. Implementing Effective Social Media Marketing
Using social media platforms to raise brand awareness is a cost-effective way to promote customer engagement on social media outlets consumers use most without spending money on paid ads. To fully take advantage of social media’s benefits for your agency, you’ll need to set up an agency business page on each platform and create content for each platform with social media posts that match its specific aesthetics – on Facebook, videos and photo albums are likely to get the best responses, while content that has a more serious and professional tone works best for LinkedIn. Short videos and company culture pictures with corresponding hashtags tend to be most effective on Instagram. The ultimate goal is to have the largest (but also most tailored) social media presence possible. As you tailor your content to each platform, make sure you’re also tying your promotions with consistent colors, logos, and tone so that customers can immediately identify your brand wherever they come across it.
Conclusion
We hope this blog post has been helpful as you build out your agency’s marketing strategy. Before you go, let’s recap some of the main ideas. With consumers spending so much time online, creating a strong digital marketing plan is essential to your insurance business’s success. For the best results, your online approach should encompass multiple channels to meet clients on the platforms that they’re most comfortable with. You can establish your brand as a trusted advisor with an attractive mobile-optimized website, positive online reviews, and helpful blogs and articles to answer customers’ most pressing questions. In terms of customer outreach, it’s best to have a couple of methods for communicating with clients, including text, email, and an online client service portal. When you combine all of these marketing tools, you’ll have a solid strategy for winning new customers and retaining old ones in the digital sphere.
Now that you’ve got a good idea about how to start meeting customers where they are with digital marketing, here are some resources to help you form the best digital marketing strategy possible:
