Whether you’re new to the insurance field or a veteran agent with years of experience, the lifeblood of your business is the customer. You can never have too many. However, finding them isn’t as easy as it used to be. Today, there’s more competition, technological advancement, more transparency, and more specialties in the industry. To help your business grow and thrive, you need to be on top of yourself, your business and your advertising game.
Realize Not Everyone is a Potential Customer
While all adults need insurance of some kind, they may not need the kind that you’re selling. It’s important to know exactly who your target audience is and how to reach them. Do you want to sell corporate insurance policies to small businesses? Then you need to reach them on their level at local networking events and through small business forums. Maybe you want to sell to large corporations. In that case, you need to have the resources to find the people in charge of making those decisions. LinkedIn will probably be your new best friend.
Make the decision early about what products you want to sell and focus your time and energy there.
Selling to Individuals
What if you want to be an independent agent and sell insurance to individual customers? In that case, there are decisions to make regarding your products. Diversity is great, and carrying many products from a variety of carriers will help you become an all-around agent. That way, people can come to you for all their insurance needs. However, the risk here is over-extending yourself. There’s an old expression: Jack of all trades, master of none. If you offer too many items, you may not be knowledgeable enough about each to pitch them to a prospective customer. If you look uncertain, you can pretty much count on not getting a sale.
So, what can you do to be successful in the private insurance sector?
Always Be Professional
What people want most from an insurance agent is someone they can trust. To gain their trust, you need to look and act professionally at all times, not just when you’re in the office. That doesn’t mean you need formal business attire at the grocery store, but you should dress appropriately for any function where you represent your business. If you sponsor a table at the county fair, business casual attire is important, and that could vary depending on your location. Office attire could also be different if you’re in NYC vs. Houston, for example. Know your community and know what it expects.
Of course, how you look is just part of building trust with potential clients. You also have to behave professionally. That means all your correspondence, phone calls, and even online advertising needs to be on point. Poor grammar and spelling mistakes are surefire ways to kill your credibility. Being above reproach in your personal and professional life is important as well. Take everything you learn in your licensing classes to heart, and the confidence people have in you will grow.
Advertise
It should be obvious to you that, to grow your business, you need to tell people about it. It’s not enough to build a better mousetrap; you need people to hear about it. Here, again, is where it’s important to know your target demographics. You don’t want to waste precious time and money telling people who don’t have mice about your mousetrap. You want to focus on the people who need your services.
Let’s just look at one category. Here are some important statistics on life insurance that can help you make your advertising decisions.
- Over 254 million life insurance policies were in force in 2021.
- Approximately 63 percent of individuals think they can’t afford life insurance
- 50 percent of people overestimate the cost of term life insurance. Millennials, in particular, overestimate the cost by 213 percent.
What these numbers tell you is that there’s a market out there, but people need to be educated before they will buy. They need to see the value; they don’t want to think about needing it; they think it’s more expensive than it really is. They know they need it; they just don’t want to deal with it.
Where to Advertise
Your digital presence needs to shine — it’s that simple. Today, people are going to find you online. This means having a professional-looking website with content that educates. Visitors will want information on all the products and companies you represent. Keeping your content fresh and current will also help you rank higher with search engines like Google and Bing.
Social media is also important. Posting regularly is vital, but what you post matters too. Posts should be a mix of informative and fun. Just a hint, fun ones tend to get shared more. Here again, you need to be professional and talk to your target demographics. If you want to reach millennials, you probably want to concentrate on Instagram or Snapchat. YouTube is a great vehicle for longer, informative videos you can then promote elsewhere. In fact, according to video production service Lemonlight, YouTube is the top social platform for influencing consumer behavior. Statista data states that YouTube has 1.86 billion users worldwide in 2021. Be sure your profile is accurate and informative and that you’re posting regularly.
When it comes right down to it, getting more customers hinges on three things; getting people to trust you, knowing your product, and getting in front of the right people. If you can master these, the rest is easy.
