4 Marketing Strategies That Will Ignite Success for Your Insurance Agency in 2019

Each year, the consumer audience for your insurance agency becomes more digital. In 2019, we're at the point where a significant portion of consumer engagement happens online. Knowing how to reach out to this digital audience has become increasingly important for smaller, independent insurance agencies. The internet provides a somewhat level playing field for insurance marketing, but you have to know how to optimize your strategy for success.

The start of the new year is always a great time to look at your agency's approach to digital marketing and strategize how you're going to reach out and capture new insurance leads in the coming year. To accomplish this, you need a couple of things - an understanding of the current digital marketing trends and a solid helping of inspiration to get you moving in the right direction. To help you along the way, here are four strategies to add some spark to your insurance marketing in 2019.

Go All In With Localized Content:

In 2019 it's important to think about the overall experience of the person visiting your website. Assuming that each visitor is only looking for quotes or contact information is a huge mistake. Your customers know that they can find these things easily, often without visiting your website at all.

What you need is a strategy to not only attract visitors and encourage them to linger on your website, but that also shows them that no other agency compares to what you can offer in terms of experience. Content is the most effective vehicle you have for delivering this message.

Now is the time to move past typical content that only touches the surface of topics and lacks any specialized appeal. One of the best moves you can make for insurance marketing is investing in super targeted content that appeals to a very specific audience.

For example, if you're a local agency that sells homeowners insurance, you're going to be most successful at appealing to customers in your community. Instead of the general themed blog posts that everyone else is doing, get specific to your local market in your topics. Think along the lines of "5 Things Homeowners Can Do To Protect Their Property From a Brutal Syracuse Winter". Bonus points for narrowing down the geographic target to specific suburbs or neighborhoods.

Results Driven Email Marketing:

With such a focus on digital strategies like social media outreach in recent years, some of the tried and true performers of insurance marketing have taken a backseat.

Like email marketing.

While email marketing has remained a consistent strong performer for growing insurance businesses, this is the year that you'll want to direct some serious energy in its direction.

To understand why you should invest in an email campaign, let's turn our attention to social media for a minute. 2018 brought some significant changes to how consumers and businesses interact on social platforms. New privacy and security standards have made it more difficult to reach out to audiences and the average social media user has lost some of their trust in social platforms.

This isn't to say that social media marketing isn't still valuable, because it is. However, email marketing will become more important for fostering the type of personalized engagement that is becoming harder to access through social platforms.

This year focus on email marketing campaigns built on personalization and consumer touch points. An email campaign directed at bringing in new customers should look entirely different than one designed for current policy holders. For instance, an email strategy for existing policy holders might include a specialized message on their birthday or anniversary of their policy date and messages tailored to their changing needs - like a child graduating high school or the importance of regular maintenance for a newly purchased vehicle.

Expanded Social Media Marketing:

Speaking of social media, even with the aforementioned changes, it's still one of the most effective ways to reach out to and engage with a broader target audience. If you want to maximize your reach and visibility, branching out and creating a social presence across multiple networks is the way to go.

When a lot of insurance agencies think about social media marketing, the first and only network that pops into their mind is Facebook. The reality is that you can be equally, if not more, successful on other networks like Instagram or Twitter.

Millennials make up a significant portion of the market for many insurance agencies, with GenXers not far behind. Generation Z is also on their way to establishing a firm footing in the insurance consumer market, so now is the time to build a presence on the social networks where you're more likely to find them. In 2019, one social media account on Facebook isn't enough.

Become More Visual

If we're being completely honest, we can say that the insurance business isn't the most exciting in the world - at least from the consumer perspective. Insurance coverage is something your customers need, not want. This image has perpetuated itself and becomes obvious when you visit insurance agency websites that are flat and lifeless.

Just because you're in a serious business doesn't mean that you have to sacrifice personality or emotional appeal. In fact, these things can work tremendously in your favor.

Today's digital audience has become bored by blocks of text and has developed a strong preference for visual elements - like video, animations and strong, impactful images.

From marketing perspective, video is a great tool for capturing attention and raising awareness of your agency. Vlogging, video of customer testimonials or content that sparks an emotional response will perform well for your insurance agency in 2019. You can use video on your website and incorporate it throughout your social media and email marketing strategies.

Are you ready to help your insurance agency bust through its goals for 2019? We offer a full range of digital services, including helping you formulate an insurance marketing strategy for success. Contact Confluency Solutions and speak directly with someone from our team of insurance marketing experts today.