6 Marketing Strategies for Independent Insurance Agents to Get More Revenue
By: Coverwallet For Agents
Tags: Insurance Brokers, Insurance, Independent Insurance, Insurance Sales, Insurance Marketing

The most important thing to consider when working as an independent agent is that you will not get paid unless you put in the work and collect those commissions. Now, marketing is not easy when it comes to being an insurance agent in a brokerage, let alone as an independent insurance agent. This is why small changes in your marketing strategy can greatly improve your chance of obtaining a new client or making a sale.

Create a marketing budget

Spending money on marketing doesn’t always seem ideal. It can be expensive, overwhelming, and you might not see results immediately. Despite this, it is essential to create a marketing budget.

If you do absolutely no marketing then you will not grow as an independent agent. Your business will only grow as much as you put into it. This means that picking the right channel to market starts with creating a proper budget.

The best way to create a marketing budget is to look at what you have already done in terms of marketing. What channels worked well for you, and which did not? This can tell you where your dollars are best spent.

If you have yet to do any sort of marketing, then you need to outline your sales funnel. This means you will need to look at three key features:

Where do your current clients find your information? What do your clients need to know before they execute their deal? What factors contribute to your clients choosing to work with you?

These will help you understand your client’s needs, which you can then compare to your own goals and revenue, then finally create a market budget that makes sense.

Set clear goals

Before you begin spending money and putting time into your marketing strategy, you need to set goals for yourself. What do you want to achieve from your marketing?

It is essential you set goals that are specific to what you want to achieve, but that are actually achievable. Making big goals is great, but you might bite off more than you can chew resulting in failure. On the alternate side, you also do not want to make goals that are too easy to achieve so that you are not pushing yourself.

Your insurance marketing strategy should contain different time-oriented goals. Examples of goals that you might want to focus on setting for yourself include:

A specific amount of clients achieved in a certain period of time

Sales production goals for the year

A specified number of cross-sold accounts

Write down your goals but, more importantly, write down how you plan to achieve them, and when you plan to do so. You can look at this every week, or keep them posted at your desk for motivation.

Track your KPIs

It is easy enough to employ a marketing strategy, then sit back, relax, and hope you gain clients. Unfortunately, this passive method of marketing is not going to cut it if you want to be successful. The best way to continue to grow, and to achieve more, is to track your marketing metrics. These are called Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs.

Essentially, your KPIs will teach you what is working well and what is not. You do not want your marketing efforts going to waste when you could have been attracting a potential customer.

Tracking your KPIs allows you to avoid spending money on marketing that does not work, and make changes to your strategy if necessary.

Encourage customer reviews

For many years word by mouth was the best form of marketing, and some people will tell you that it still is. If you provided services for a client, they might go and tell all of their friends about you, who would then become new clients.

Now, we rely more on the internet than ever. It is easy to pull up a Google browser to look for reviews for any industry that exists. This means that it is essential that you not only have customer reviews available but that they are positive as well.

It can be hard to obtain a customer base who is willing to help with your lead generation by leaving reviews. That is why using social media for small businesses is one of the best ways to get reviews.

Most people are on social media and it can be simple to link from your local community Facebook business page to request that a client reviews you. Also be sure to respond to reviews whether they are positive or negative, to show that you care about your clients.

Another great way to get your name out there using social media is through Facebook ads. Simply target people or create community events where you can share a discount code. This is a great option to get your name out there, and a better idea than leaving your business card everywhere.

Create a referral program

Referrals are the process of one person recommending a service or business to another person. This is somewhat of the old-fashioned “word of mouth” form of marketing, but most people do not go out of their way to do this anymore without some type of incentive.

Obtaining the contact information of a new client through referrals is not always easy, but one way to do this is by starting a referral program. Not only does a referral program benefit your current clients, but it provides your new clients with a sense of security and trust.

Typically, a referral program needs to have some type of incentive for either the party doing the referral or both parties. Whether this is a discount or a raffle ticket to enter to draw for a prize, there needs to be something appealing about referring to your agency.

Create an email marketing campaign

Now that you have decided on your marketing budget and allocated funds, it is time to do a form of marketing that won’t cost you an arm or leg — email marketing campaigns.

An email marketing campaign allows you to keep in touch with your clients consistently. It might be as simple as saying “Happy Holidays,” or reminding them of new services or renewal dates. This is one of the best ways to preserve the business-client relationship.

This form of marketing helps to build your credibility and creates personalized messages that come directly from your agency. This will keep you at the top of mind for your current clients needing cross-selling services or clients you have not yet acquired yet. Best of all, typically an email marketing campaign is automatically sent out by a CRM tool.

But, these campaigns only work if you obtain email addresses from either current clients or new prospects. The best way to get these emails is by having a contact form or gated content on your landing pages on your website.