Business Insurance Advice

First Line of the Email

  Second line and some more stuff about the email

  Stuart Mackenzie

[email protected]

    The Business Insurance Bureau

‘Wits End’

7 Queens Crescent

Glasgow

G4 9BW

Tel: 0141 332 7076

Fax: 0141 331 1776

Email: [email protected]

  The Business Insurance Bureau is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

    This email and any attachments are confidential to the intended recipient and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient please delete it from your system and notify the sender. You should not copy it or use it for any purpose nor disclose or distribute its contents to any other person.

A recent study conducted by Track Social looked at how often brands should be tweeting in order to get desired results. 

When reevaluating your insurance marketing strategy, have you thought about this factor? The amount of influence you have on your followers and community may be more than you realize. In order to engage and interact with them, you should be following best practices at all times.

The research followed the activity of major brands on Twitter to determine how the frequency of their tweets affected the amount of retweets they received in a given day. The results from the study indicated that tweeting strong and often is the best way to get your name out there. 

This is because the data collected showed that brands who tweeted 2-5 times per day got more retweets per tweet, up to 300%, compared to when they tweeted only once a day. Twitter is a fast moving social media outlet that is constantly evolving. This is why you must be committed to tweeting enough to get noticed by your audience, or your account may suffer.

Furthermore, after 5 tweets per day, the response per tweet decreased, suggesting that going higher than 5 may not benefit your insurance agency. Response per tweet is important to consider because it impacts engagement levels, the visibility of your agency and your message, and your overall reputation. 

Keep in mind that it is the response per day, rather than per tweet, that represents the total amount of interaction you are having with your consumers.

When you decide to tweet, make sure your message is worthwhile and interesting to your audience. It is important as an insurance agency to be saying something relevant and not tweeting for the sake of tweeting. 

 It is possible to increase tweet frequency by managing your time well and altering your insurance marketing strategy. Taking these necessary steps will allow your agency to connect with your community on a whole new level!

Learning the ins and outs of Facebook takes time. However, patience is key in the process of strengthening this portion of your insurance marketing strategy. Your customers rely on your services to protect them from unpredictable risks. Just like in the real world, the virtual world is constantly changing as well. 

Keeping up to date with the latest news and trends in social media is the best way for you to manage your Facebook page for maximum engagement.

Growing your Facebook following goes hand in hand with engagement. If you are able to grasp the concept of adopting a company voice and personality, then you can reach out to your audience effectively. Having your community “like” your page is only half the battle. 

After they are connected with your insurance agency, you must then keep them interested in what you have to say. This in turn will help you increase your following to your satisfaction. Here are some tips on how you can then grow your community:

Share Original, Unique Content

Think of new ways you can get your audience interested in insurance. Perhaps you can add original photos as part of your content. Or you can add an inspirational or thought-provoking quote that represents how you feel about your customers. Always keep it positive, and your fans will respond!

Add Facebook into Your Email Signature

A blended insurance strategy is the best way to reach out to your clients. Combining your social media efforts with your email marketing is a great way to engage your audience further. Try to customize your email signature so that it includes a link to your agency’s Facebook page. This way, you will always be on the mind of your customers!

Comment on Other Pages

Commenting thoughtfully on other pages that relate to your industry or interests your customers will help you gain more exposure with the target audience. Find complementary Facebook Pages and like them, then watch your Page home feed and comment on the posts. Remember to add to the conversation and authentically build relationships. That will lead to meaningful connections!

Run a Contest

Did you ever think about running a contest? This is a great way for your agency to get new likes on your Business Page. You could ask people to like your page to help with a charity cause, or you could give away a prize to your 100th fan. Whatever you choose, running a contest will promote your product or service in a fun way.

It is important to establish a company voice on your Facebook page. Get your entire agency involved so you can add variety and fresh content to the page all the time. Establishing a personable environment will help your customers feel comfortable in trusting the information you provide as well as in your overall services. 

Remember, gaining new Facebook followers will mean you are gaining the loyalty of your community as well!

As you work on building your insurance marketing strategy, it is important to reflect on what you have done so far. 

Increasing your visibility online and reaching out to your audience is a daily job. However, you should be using the tools and resources you have available to your advantage. This will help you understand the perspective of your community and what they want from your insurance agency.

Reflection of your strategy can allow you to see the positives and negatives of your methods. In addition, you can change your results and create more satisfaction amongst your agency and customers. 

This will help you move towards your desired goals. You should always make time for reflection because it will allow your company to learn and grow for the better.

One way to reflect more effectively is by asking yourself questions. Consider applying the following list to your marketing and social strategy so you can find out what you can improve on:

What worked? Why?

What didn’t work? Why?

How can I use this experience?

How does this experience relate to other situations and what can I learn?

Knowing what I know now, what would I do differently next time?

When you think more broadly, your reflection time will become much more beneficial. You can even have your team participate in a brainstorming session. 

As a leader, learning and reflection provides you with the powerful opportunity to create a more effective, productive, and successful insurance marketing strategy that you and your community can rely on.

Social media is an ever evolving tool that many people of all ages utilize now a days. Most likely, your insurance agents use different social accounts to keep updated with family, friends, colleagues, and others. 

However, once you allow them to make a workplace profile or page, it is important to give them the freedom to express themselves, but in a professional manner.

Your customers want to connect with your insurance agency, but they also don’t want to be exposed to inappropriate posts, videos, links, and more. 

This is why setting clear expectations for an insurance social networking strategy in your agency is a good approach to take. Here are some tips on getting the conversation started:

Before approaching your employees, make sure you understand why you want to set these expectations. Social media is an important factor in growing your customer base as well as exposing your services to the community. If you cannot clearly articulate what you expect from your team or from the strategy verbally, you are not ready for this conversation yet.

Make it your goal to help your employees understand the bigger picture. Establishing different social outlets and creating a voice for your insurance agency to influence the lives of your customers will have a huge impact on your business. Painting a bigger picture will help your agents feel better about the initiative and commit more easily.

Sit down with the other people that will help design the social media strategy to discuss your expectations. If you are not prepared enough, you risk being unclear.

As a leader, you have expectations of others that they need to know so they can succeed. This is why the conversation about expectations needs to be honest and open to input.

Once you have written down a plan, read it over to make sure it is understood and agreed upon. Then make sure everyone involved commits to the strategy now and in the future.

You do not want to cause confusion, conflicts, or dissatisfaction from customers due to disorganization within your insurance company. 

As a leader, you must strive to build clear expectations throughout your agency. Without an agreed upon insurance social networking strategy that both appeals to and engages your audience, you will not be able to continue growing positively. 

Therefore, make every effort to communicate fully and clearly with your team to encourage their personal talents and skills in the social media world.

You may have a thorough understanding of your customers on a face to face level, but what about your community online? This may be a bit more difficult to tackle, especially if you have a large number of followers. 

As an insurance agent, you rely on your customer service skills to interact and connect honestly with your clients. Having this experience will allow you to transition easily into the digital sphere, where you can apply what you know in order to engage and learn more about your customers.

Some important goals to keep in mind when it comes to your insurance social media strategy include learning more about your audience so you are able to better direct your products and services. 

Also, allow your customers to get to know you better, not just as a business, but the people behind your business as well. Did you ever think about whether you not your audience has an idea of who you are and what your values are?

The reason social media should be utilized fully in your agency is so you can really get to know your customers, as if you are reading their minds. Notice that those you follow are always on their social accounts, sharing their every thought, preference, and desires. Use this to your advantage so you can get more in touch with who your audience is.

As for your agency, the more you open up, the better the response will be. What you put into your social efforts is exactly what you will get out of it, so remain dedicated to the community that relies on you the most. 

If you think about it from a customer’s perspective, you would agree that when you know about the people behind the business, you feel more comfortable and therefore, more likely to buy. Try creating posts about employee spotlights and even have agents post on the business page wall.

All of these suggestions are meant to help you work on engaging your audience more fully. Give your customers what they want in an authentic fashion. This will help you create an online presence that is inviting and friendly, which is exactly what you need to boost your agency upwards on the social ladder!

You may be actively using Facebook and Twitter to connect with your insurance customers, but did you ever think about using Pinterest? This tool has recently become extremely popular. It is important for your agency to be up to date on insurance marketing strategies so you can understand and communicate better with your audience. What better way to appeal to them than through pictures!

The way to use Pinterest to your advantage is by finding images that relate to your agency and its values and getting them repinned on other users’ boards. 

The fascination with this outlet is it can provide a user and their followers with great ideas for content, social posts, and other marketing sparks. If you are interested in using this tool, here are some ways to attract attention to your agency and spread the word about relevant news:

Invest Time into Your Account

Like any other social network, Pinterest requires an investment of time. The results you will see are based on the dedication you put towards growing your following. One key to building relationships is to find those in your community who are known for quality “pins”. All of the repins and likes shared you receive show a common interest, making it easier for you to take the conversation to Twitter or Facebook, where you can continue to expand your target audience.

Stay Organized with Simplicity

Since this site is easy to use, you must keep it organized so your viewers understand your intentions. Simplicity is key if you want to attract new customers. It is best to adopt an uncluttered aesthetic, so creates boards that are clean and elegant looking.

Connect with Your Location

As you know, having the mindset of staying “local” will help you appeal to your insurance customers. The same goes for your Pinterest boards. It is important to show you care about your community by pinning images that pertain to local events or landmarks in your town. This may increase your visibility, and even having a Pinterest button on your website couldn’t hurt.

Have a Daily Pin Theme

Get creative with your boards by initiating a daily pin theme. This idea can attract comments and likes, as well as a conversation to promote your agency. Come up with a catchy slogan that is memorable enough so that the images get re-pinned. The daily themed pins usually lead to repeat visitors as well.

Remember, as you engage your audience on Pinterest, you should always stay true to yourself. Being honest and authentic with your customers is extremely important, especially if you want to build a positive reputation for your insurance agency online. 

Although there is always the temptation to post only about the products you sell, you should be thinking outside of the box. Try posting interesting news, tips, and happenings in your company. This will help you gain and retain customers, as well as spark new initiatives for your insurance marketing strategy!

Managing a blog for your insurance agency may be difficult to do at first. You are dealing with clients all day, bettering your business practices, and working to build a great team of employees. The last thing you may be thinking about is updating your blogging strategy. 

However, in order to attract and preserve your community, you must pay attention to the content you post each week.

The information and stories you include within your blog posts will help determine whether a client of yours wants to spend more time reading, listening, or viewing your entire website, and perhaps fill out a quote. This is why creating unique, interesting content is the best way to catch their eye and get ahead of your competition. 

You have to be willing to challenge yourself while also remaining memorable to your customers. Some ways to spark ideas so you can have a more focused approach to writing blog content include:

Reading and conducting research on your industry with relevant publications. If you find a topic of interest, you can summarize your reading and take down your ideas.

Brainstorm with others you trust in your agency. Having people to bounce your ideas off of will be beneficial to your creativity. It can also help you improve your strategy overall.

Ask yourself question about your topic of choice. Put yourself in the place of your audience and think about what they would like to learn about. This will help you gain new insights to arrive to a more focused post.

Interview others to learn more about your industry and gain new ideas. This strategy can also help you network and develop improved content strategies for your blog.

Social networking is a great way to share your content after it is finished. You can get a reaction from your community on whether they are interested in what you are talking about. Based on comments, you can narrow your topics or target a certain group for more business.

Remember that whatever content you decide to post on your blog, you must own it. Your goal is to inspire and inform your insurance customers through multiple avenues of your insurance marketing strategy. 

To accomplish this, strong and unique content on your blog should be developed. As you agency constantly changes and grows, your blogging practices should be evolving as well!

The mistake many insurance agencies make on Facebook is that they expect their fans to look and interact with their brand’s posts. Well, it’d be great if this was true, but unfortunately it takes a little more strategy than that! In order to get your audience to interact with your postings, you must engage them. Engagement can be in the form of likes, shares and comments. As a starting point, get creative with one of these 6 types of posts to engage your audience!

Photos. A post with a photo is likely to catch your fans’ attention due to the visual factor. To increase familiarity, tie in your logo. In the text, include a link to your site that is related to your photo and provides a way to for viewers to get more information (a way to increase website traffic as well).

Fill in the Blanks. These types of posts allow your fans to get creative with their own ideas, as well as comment on other people’s ideas. Typically, you’ll find more people commenting than liking these posts!

Photo Captions. With this post, you get photos & fill in the blanks in one! Again, people can come up with their own captions, or comment about those already suggested.

Questions. A statement post doesn’t always spark a conversation. However, by adding a question at the end, you can turn a blog link share or other post into an area for engagement. If you want to make it even easier on viewers, you could post a “Would you rather…” or “Which do you prefer…” This type of question could yield a greater return since people do not need to spend a lot of time generating a comment.

Tips. These posts provide value to your audience, which often generates a response. You can post them in a step-by-step process, or give one and ask them to click on a link to your blog to read more.

Quotes. Quotes typically get shares and likes, but you can use them to inspire your audience!

The key to engagement is giving your audience something to engage with. 

These six prompts are sure to get the spark going! The Encharter Insurance eMarketing team has more information on their blog, Whale of a Blog, and are available for questions through Facebook & Twitter.

Have you been using email to help your customers when they have questions? This form of customer service can become tedious, especially if there is a long chain of messages as a result. 

Also, it is usually only helpful for technical questions and not ones involving deeper or personal issues. So how can you give your customers access to your services quickly and efficiently? Why not try live chat?

The tool of live chat can be used on different outlets, such as your insurance webpage or even through Facebook. When using live chat for customer service, this is an ideal way to provide multi-step answers to those needing help. It is important for you to also learn to communicate effectively with the person on the other end. 

Since most of your insurance customers are using the Internet regularly, it only makes sense to solve their issues online rather than having them pick up the phone or email, especially if the problem needs an immediate solution.

The following are some reasons why a live chat system should become your main customer service option:

Interaction with a Real Person: Although this happens on email or on the phone, live chat is different. Since the conversation occurs in real time, it is easy for the customer to tell they are not talking to a robot. Instead, it is a real discussion with the goal of solving the customer’s issues immediately and efficiently.

Easy to Use: This tool is simple to use, even if the customer is not internet savvy. Opening up a dialogue box is all that has to be done, and then you can start typing. Or your agency can initiate the chat by having a dialogue box appear asking if the customer would like to engage. This offering will show customers you are a reliable source and dedicated to serving them.

Makes Multi-Tasking Possible: Live chat gives your customers a chance to deal with other important issues or tasks at hand. Your customers can start a chat session, ask some questions, and while your agents are searching for the answers, your client can get other things done.

Immediate Help and Solutions: Rather than sitting on hold or waiting hours for an email response, your customers can receive instant answers to their questions. Also, you can show customers expected wait times and their position “in line” if there are multiple users online.

Your customers may find that live chat is a more comfortable way to interact. Taking advantage of this user friendly tool could help boost your agency’s insurance website rankings as well as your customer service reputation. The goal is to serve your community through interactive, reliable, and informational methods, and live chat could be your way towards success!