The digital transformation has changed the way agents sell life insurance plans. While the dawning of the digital age hasn’t diminished the need for a reliable life insurance policy, it has altered the way agents sell and the way clients buy policies. With this burst of online advertising strategies, it can be challenging to establish a successful campaign — or even know where to start. With so many channels out there, you need life insurance marketing ideas that work, and it’s time to get creative.
The industry has never been more cut-throat, and any life insurance marketing plan must set your brand apart from the competition. Let’s examine insurance marketing options agents have at their disposal.
Why You Need a Solid Life Insurance Marketing Plan
Marketing life insurance is not how it used to be. Agents are no longer competing with agents in their local area or within their own state; they’re now competing with digital agents across the country. This level of competition means that agents need to get creative to stand out. It also means that selling life insurance policies has grown more complex, and without sales, agents have no income.
To accommodate the changing landscape and customers’ changing needs, agents must develop a plan to execute innovative life insurance advertising ideas. Begin making a plan by understanding the different types of marketing and the ones most relevant to the life insurance business and your company specifically.
Types of Marketing Life Insurance Agents Should Use
Not every type of insurance marketing is suited to the modern life insurance business. While different marketing categories remain important, life insurance agents need to know when and where to implement each type. Before discussing life insurance marketing ideas, lets first break down the different kinds of marketing that can help agents access a wider audience.
Traditional Marketing
Traditional marketing utilizes techniques like fliers, billboards, and paying for local TV and radio advertising spots. It’s easy to dismiss traditional marketing as a thing of the past, but insurance remains a highly traditional industry. Remember, the age group that’s likely to be considering a life insurance policy grew up with these traditional marketing methods.
Immediately investing thousands into traditional marketing may not be the right way forward, but highly focused traditional marketing strategies in a specific area still yields excellent returns.
Social Media
The simplest way to reach an audience is online. With most of the U.S. population having a presence on social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, it makes sense for agencies to also have a presence on these platforms. Each network’s advertising platforms enable agents to run highly targeted campaigns, spread awareness, and play a central role in branding.
Personalized Marketing
Personalized marketing is a relatively new form of marketing that has taken the world by storm. Driven by technology, personalized marketing requires large amounts of data to give customers what they want. In other words, everyone’s shopping experience is different. iLife’s predictive analysis tool, for example, utilizes data to accurately predict which life insurance policies fit each customer.
While a distinctive type of marketing, we also consider email marketing a part of this category, as it’s an agent’s opportunity to communicate directly with different clients.
Content Marketing
Content is king. The value of content comes from its ability to educate an audience, build trust, and promote an agent’s brand all at the same time. Not to mention it plays into SEO (search engine optimization). Content ranking for targeted keywords makes it much more likely that a digital insurance agent will reach their target market.
Despite the rise of social media, most customers continue to access brands across every industry via a Google search query. Content marketing, therefore, must play a pivotal role in the marketing plans of any insurance agency.
Brand Marketing
Finally, there’s brand marketing. Life insurance is all about elevating your brand above the rest. Insurance is a cut-throat industry, with tens of thousands of agencies all selling essentially the same product.
The only way to stand out is to shape public perception. Life insurance agents must demonstrate themselves to be an authority in their industry and showcase their expertise online. They must not only grab the attention of their target audience but show that they can be trusted as well. Brand marketing is all about telling your story and telling it in a way that will make people want to know more.
8 Life Insurance Marketing Ideas to Bring in Clients
Coming up with marketing ideas for insurance agents is easier said than done. It requires thinking outside the box to stand above the rest. All good marketing ideas for insurance agency campaigns need to give customers what they want without getting lost in the mix of competitors nationwide.
Let’s examine how some of the proven marketing methods we mentioned above can work with insurance marketing ideas to deliver results.
- Traditional Marketing – Get Involved in Your Local Community
In an increasingly globalized world, ordinary people continue to find comfort in staying local. While an agent may be tempted to conquer the industry, the easiest place to find new clients is in their local areas. Get involved in the local community to spread awareness. Some traditional life insurance advertising ideas include:
- Sponsor a local soccer team
- Sponsor a charity event
- Volunteer at local events that matter to your audience
With so many people looking to support local businesses, these relatively low-cost investments could make all the difference.
- Traditional Marketing – Hold an Event for Your Prospects
The major challenge digital life insurance agents must overcome is the lack of a physical, human relationship. Experiences matter, and an in-person experience makes a larger impact than any online communication. Hosting an event at the office or a specially chosen venue with invites sent to local community figures, friends, and family can help form these in-person relationships.
Holding a get-together for existing and potential clients doesn’t have to be expensive, particularly if held in your office or even in your own backyard for a truly personalized event. Budget for the cost of wine and some basic refreshments and start getting to know your prospects.
- Traditional Marketing – Collaborate with Local Businesses
Collaboration has long been a fixture of doing business successfully. An easy way to collaborate with local businesses is to offer to leave brochures at the other’s office and return the favor. While this can be effective, agents must remember that not every local business collaboration will drive new clientele. Life insurance agencies must know their target audience and target companies their clientele frequents; otherwise, it’s a waste of time.
- Traditional Marketing – Send Out Postcards
The prevalence of physical mail has decreased in recent years, which is why life insurance agents have a tremendous opportunity. Postcards are more likely to get noticed and are relatively cheap to print. When printed in bulk, postcards featuring a business can come with a unit cost of mere cents. Blanketing a local area with postcards spreads awareness, and a single new client could instantly repay the cost of printing. Not to mention, postcards are likely to elicit feelings of nostalgia from your target audience.
- Social Media – Create an Agency Mascot
While some may argue that this insurance marketing strategy is a product of traditional marketing, it’s an easy way of telling a story via social media. Life insurance agents have a challenge when it comes to standing out on social media. Most people find talk of policies boring, so a man in a suit is more likely to catch people’s attention on Facebook or elsewhere. An agency mascot could become a mainstay of any agency. Just think of the Geico gecko. Using a mascot as a focal point for a social media marketing campaign can help any agency to stand out in the minds of its target market.
- Social Media – Invest in Paid Advertising
Paid social media advertising is the single most effective way of reaching millions of people at the click of a button. While not all of them will buy, the wealth of data you can extract from these campaigns can refine future campaigns.
Different social media networks have advertising platforms of varying effectiveness. For example, Facebook offers one of the most advanced platforms in the world for launching and evaluating campaigns. It can take time to get social media advertising off the ground, so test, test, test!
- Social Media – Join Industry Groups
Part of being successful is building online authority. Become a mainstay in the life insurance business by joining industry groups and answering questions. Never march into a group and start throwing up random sales posts. Not only will this go unappreciated, but most social media groups will also instantly ban the offending agency. Whether on Facebook or LinkedIn, spend at least one hour per day demonstrating the authority of your agency.
- Personalized Marketing – Create an Email Newsletter
One of the best insurance marketing ideas is to create an email newsletter. The insurance business can often feel cold and impersonal, but an email newsletter enables agents to build relationships with their clients.
Take the time to harvest emails via content and other offers. Build targeted email campaigns and respond to queries promptly. The number one tip is to avoid buying lists of leads. Mostly, these are dead email accounts and, even if that isn’t the case, people generally won’t respond well to unsolicited marketing pitches.
- Personalized Marketing – Give Customers What they Want
The essence of personalized marketing is giving customers what they want. Enhance the shopping experience, so the products a client cares about are in front of their faces immediately.
Amazon is the flagbearer for how beneficial predictive analytics can be. Based on the shopping history of their clients, the products they’re likely to be interested in are front and center on the homepage, and this differs for everybody. With iLife’s predictive analysis tool, life insurance agencies can implement the same strategy to a high standard.
- Personalized Marketing – Stay Away from Templated Responses
While most life insurance agents dream of fully automating their agencies, automation has its limits. The average person can easily tell when they’re receiving a templated response to a query.
Avoid sending out default responses. Taking the time to send a personalized reply shows each client that they matter. It makes a strong impact and makes it more likely that someone will make a purchase.
- Personalized Marketing – Offer Personalized Deals
Everyone loves a discount, but what everyone loves more is a deal personalized to their needs. Using the power of data, agents can deliver sales and offers relevant to each individual. iLife’s automated agency platform provides support in personalization. One of the best life insurance sale ideas agents can execute is to offer discounts to customers who have spent a significant amount of time viewing a specific policy or those clients who have added a policy to their cart but haven’t checked out yet. Chances are they’re debating the cost or comparing with other agencies’ offerings, so providing a deal on that policy can quickly lead to a sale.
- Content Marketing – Create a Power Page
Every life insurance agent has written articles on the average cost of life insurance and the benefits of owning a life insurance policy. The reality is these are pieces of recycled content and are unlikely to rank highly on Google’s search engine. Instead, create what is known as a “power page.” These are huge guides of 2,000-3,000 words minimum and incorporate everything people need to know on a subject. By driving traffic to a power page packed with value, an agency has a higher chance of ranking.
- Content Marketing – Mix Up Your Content
Appeal to different tastes by mixing up different types of content. Not everyone wants to read blog after blog. Likewise, not everyone wants to watch video after video. Here are some ideas for different content types:
- Podcasts
- Infographics
- Email campaigns
- Ebooks
- Blogs
- Videos
- Inspirational quotes
- Curated articles
- Content Marketing – Listen to Your Audience
Successful content marketing is less about what’s written and more about whether it fulfills the needs of the target market. Insurance agents’ marketing campaigns must adapt to the changing times. Gather feedback from previous content pieces and monitor social media pages to determine what your audience responds to and what they’re not engaging with.
If a change in the law leads to lots of chatter and confusion, why not write an article on it? You’ll be educating your audience, gaining online traction and exposure, and building authority and trust around your brand all at the same time.
- Content Marketing – Be Consistent
A common problem insurance agencies have is believing that posting a few articles per year counts as a content marketing campaign. With so much competition, agents must ensure they remain at the forefront of their client’s minds. The only way to do that is consistency.
Establish a schedule and stick to it. Whether this is daily, weekly, or monthly, agents must train their clients to expect new content on a specific date. Fail to stick to the schedule, and people will forget about your company and go elsewhere.
- Brand Marketing – Tell Your Story
Life insurance marketing ideas mostly focus on reaching an audience. However, brand marketing must form a core role in any insurance marketing plan if an agent wants to stand out. Agents can’t afford to rely solely on the policies they offer. Instead, they should tell a unique and personal story. Life insurance sellers must offer insights into their brands and show the person behind the agency. Demonstrate who you are and your deep commitment to helping others realize the benefits of a comprehensive life insurance policy. This is particularly important within the realms of social media, where a personalized presence can do wonders for your brand.
- Brand Marketing – Invest in Better Web Design
Web design is a subconscious form of brand marketing. If a website is clunky, unorganized, and awkward to use, visitors will assume the agency also embraces those characteristics.
Luckily online life insurance platforms that are simple to use and professional subtly communicate those same characteristics about the agency. Here are some essential points to remember when designing an online platform:
- Quick Loading – People are not willing to wait. A slow website increases the risk of experiencing “bounces” and will cause people to give up and move on.
- Color Theory – Understand color theory and how different schemes work together. Any good website must be catchy and modern, while staying easy on the eyes.
- Avoid Interactive Graphics – While businesses in traditional industries favor them, they often get in the way. They can slow down a website, particularly if the website is being accessed from an older device.
- Create a Clear Journey – Every web visit is a journey from landing on a page to making a purchase. The layout of a website must lend itself to this journey. In other words, visitors should never have to search to make it to the next stage of the buying journey. Make sure the layout of your site is intuitive and easy to navigate.
- Look Professional – Insurance is a professional, white-collar business. This is one area where agents must not reinvent the wheel. Professional images, logos, and correct tones are the order of the day.
- Brand Marketing – Gather Online Reviews
How does a life insurance agent craft a brand that generates authority and trustworthiness? The words of ordinary people are far more powerful than anything an agent can come up with. Spend time asking customers to leave online reviews on social media, Yelp, and Google. These reviews boost an agency’s SEO profile, social media reputation, and make it much more likely that people will not look elsewhere. People trust online reviews because they’re real people who use real services and offer their opinions and experiences. Never resort to buying fake reviews. Real people can see right through them, and your brand will immediately lose credibility.
Conclusion
These life insurance marketing ideas can help you to elevate yourself in a notoriously cut-throat industry. Take action and create your insurance marketing plan today. If you’re starting your life insurance agency for the first time or you’ve been in business for ages, save time and make the process a breeze with the help of iLife. And, if you enjoyed this article, you may want to check out iLife’s Marketing Hub which is specifically designed to help agents connect and engage confidently with clients.
Harness the power of a digital platform that makes customer management, policy management, and claims easy. Contact iLife to learn more about setting up your agency now.
