Brand Guide

You’re a family insurance agency that gives back to the community. You can’t fake love for your community. Document your 20+ years serving first responders, charities, and coaching youth sports. How did your teams place? Can you post pictures of them? Blog about the 14+ organizations to which you donate and interview who you give scholarships to show what they’re doing with their life.

I bet few insurance agencies have ALL of their employees spend time volunteering.

Personalize as much as you can. When you send quotes, show the value, not the cost. Use pictures of the exact make, model, and color of car you’re insuring. Humans fall prey to the endowment bias, which makes you value things you own more than things you don’t. A picture of the car they love will lure them to insure it more than a vehicle for which they don’t care.

5 ways to increase your Search Engine Optimization:

  1. Business profile on Google
    Input business info to Google — make sure it’s uniform across the internet.
  2. Your website and info on it Your website reaches customers who will never visit your store. This is an untapped market, which is why it’s critical for your website to stun visitors on the first visit. – – Use keywords for SEO. Include town location, business name, address, and the phone number that matches google business info. Add personal video messages when you send quotes. -Video testimonials of people of similar ages, ethnicities to your client market. -Video of business owner explaining why you’re better than competitors. -Post picture of your business since its inception and family pictures ranging back as far as possible, especially of landmarks like the Arch, Busch Stadium, and the City Museum. This builds community pride to differentiate you over newer agencies. -List all products you sell on your website because each provides an opportunity for your website to fight for the top spots. -Add a “Testimonial” tab in your website where you can conglomerate in your incredible Yelp, Facebook and other reviews.
  3. Things online about your business (not your website) -Mentions of your business across the internet build your SEO. If people are talking about your business, it will raise your ranking.
  4. Online Reviews -This will soon be weighted one of the heaviest. The more inbound links and reviews to your website the better. Google will analyze commonly used words in your review to order your ranking. You have a 4.8 star ranking on Google from 5 reviews, so you’re off to a great start. -Reviews are vital for several reasons. First, consumers trust other consumers more than a company because it’s in a company’s interest to mislead potential buyers. Before you buy a product off Amazon, you always check reviews to see if the product is trash. The more reviews you have, the more opportunities you create for acquiring new customers. -Reviews are rare. Even 20 reviews differentiate you from the competition. Clients will pick a company with 100 reviews over a business with one. -No matter how well you run your business, you’ll always have angry customers who want to ruin your online reputation. Two bad Yelp reviews can wreck you. Good reviews boost your SEO and averages out the bad ones. Clients will usually write reviews when they are angry than when they are satisfied. -Although review quality matters, numbers always win. Google (and most customers) will prefer the company with 100 mediocre reviews to the other with 10 incredible reviews. Google ranks quantity over quality.

How to Get More Reviews

  1. Ask when customers are most thankful
  2. Make a list of target customers to ask and Incentivize them through giveaways, gift cards, pizza, city museum tickets, etc. Ask on social media.
  3. Print a sign to place on your secretary’s desk
  4. Add a link in your email signature (but delete if you’re breaking bad news)

5. Social Media

Growing your social media following isn’t easy, but neither is providing incredible insurance service. You could jumpstart your presence by raffling off Cardinals or Blues tickets to one of your followers as long as they share your page on Facebook or refer clients to you.

Facebook

You have a 5-star Facebook review from 11 people. The words speak even highly of your business: you work with people even on the weekends, you find people cheaper rates, and bend over backward to serve.

Your Facebook page has 128 likes. We could ramp up your likes and client interaction through simple steps of showing what your business already does.

You were getting around two likes per post in 2014 when you posted more regularly. I would start posting at least once a day.

  1. Explain why people should follow your page– do you offer educational resources and interesting content?
  2. Take pictures at community events
  3. Share your website
  4. Ask friends and family to like your page
  5. Use Likalyzer, which analyzes your posts, followers, and suggests improvements.
  6. Tag employees to expand your reach
  7. Pay commission per like or give free water bottles bearing your agency name

Youtube

Make FAQ videos. This clones yourself and focuses your time on customers. It’s the same concept as installing self-checkouts so workers can spend their time helping customers. Give a detailed answer to everyone, so you don’t have to answer the same question 1000 times.

  1. Interview clients after a claim.
  3. Record each one of your agent’s mission statement
  4. Record video for prospective clients
  5. Record seminars and educational information
  6. Make a slideshow of your clients (put this in your office as well)

Recording videos seem like extra work, but it’s scalable. You can send the same videos to almost all clients (but include their name). People trust agents they can see. It’s easier to delete words rather than a video; it feels like throwing someone away.

Overview

These aren’t quick fixes but will drive new customers online and in person. You can use technology to compete with big insurance agencies while maintaining you family-oriented business style.