Trust is a watchword that comes before business in the insurance world.
As an insurance agency, you must establish yourself as a trustworthy brand before a right-thinking individual will choose to trade with you.
It is one area that agencies need to capitalize on in all areas, both in real life and on social media.
LinkedIn has proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be the powerhouse for business-to-business (B2B) marketing in the digital world.
And because its focused atmosphere helps businesses grow, millions of insurance agencies worldwide have tilted towards that direction to develop their business, establish connections, generate leads, and build a reliable network.
Having a LinkedIn company page for your insurance agency is your chance to showcase to your prospects that you know what you are doing.
So, it would help if you never miss out on such an opportunity to convince a person to do business with you.
This LinkedIn for Insurance Agents Guide will help you learn how to take advantage of LinkedIn's distinct properties to market and generate leads.
In this business, content is king. So always ensure they are as professional as possible because it is your one-way ticket to generate leads and establish a successful online presence.
A well-organized insurance agency page will help your brand create awareness, extend its reach (target audience) and encourage your prospects to engage more often with your brand.
You must pay attention to what type of content you're sending out and how it portrays your agency.
It will either add value to the company or make it one that will be skipped by your visitors.
Endeavour to include all the relevant keywords in your insurance agency.
Don't forget that videos are more likely to attract, engage and retain your prospects on social media than photos.
So, try to upload videos that showcase your products and services in the right way.
While making them, make sure that they are short, clear, and concise.
The length of your video is another thing you need to consider when creating content for your industry.
It will help if you aim at having each video between two minutes and five minutes.
Also, transcribe your videos if you can. By doing that and adding a closed caption, it will help in search engine optimization.
By creating a blog for your agency, answering FAQs, posting informative pictures and videos, etc., you will start meaningful conversations that will help you build a relationship with your prospects.
When you can do this over time, your clients will trust you enough to do business with you.
Again, always try to ensure that you respond to all comments on each post to encourage your target audience to anticipate more.
For every post that you create, try to add a link to your insurance company's website.
It is vital that create awareness concerning your agency because if you don't, they will not know what you're offering.
By using backlinks, you can drive traffic to your website with LinkedIn content.
For a second, you might wonder why you need to create a LinkedIn company account.
After all, you don't sell business insurance.
But you might be getting it all wrong and missing out on an opportunity to expand your business.
We all know that LinkedIn is a powerful B2B tool, so creating an account following these marketing tips will help your agency generate more leads for personal lines.
Remember, everyone who decides to follow you and what you do expects some insurance, so your main goal should be to gain their trust.
Your next objective should also be to stay in sight of your potential clients.
When you can successfully do this and the time comes for them to choose an agency to do business with, yours will be on top of their mind.
Most agencies think that displaying contact phone lines are enough, but you should learn to take a step further by adding your links to your LinkedIn Company Pages for visitors to subscribe to your newsletters and email marketing.
Whenever you establish a connection with someone, send them a personalized message concerning your agency.
Another thing is to share your contact info with them and politely ask them to subscribe to your emails to stay up-to-date with your insurance activities.
Joining groups on LinkedIn is an excellent way to network with other agents. It will also help both parties share industry advice.
One fact remains that you might not get as many clients as expected from these groups, but then you can gain and also share valuable information that will grow your business.
These groups serve as a small hub for professionals to share ideas and marketing tips and discuss current trends in your industry.
They also act as a supportive community for all members of the group.
"Always be closing" is one slogan that salesmen have at their fingertips, but then, that's for salespeople.
So bringing it down to LinkedIn, to successfully market your business to prospects, the slogan that you need to have at your fingertips should be "Always be connecting.
The size of your network and the quality of the type of connections you will get depends on your ability to connect with new clients.
It does not mean you should go about starting a rapid connection with just anyone for the sake of expanding your network.
No! It is a wrong approach. Instead, it is best if you focus on developing real and trustworthy connections.
LinkedIn is one preferred advertising platform for business than social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
You should also know that while ads like the pay-per-click are useful, they can also be costly.
It almost drains what you have budgeted for marketing.
So instead of randomly dishing out ads, make out time to do research.
After that, you can start your first campaign with a small amount of money to test-run its outcome.
Now that we have shared some marketing tips that will help expand your business.
It is time to share some dos and don'ts you need to follow to maximize your chances of success as an insurance agency on LinkedIn.
Most agencies are a little bit reluctant to use the cold outreach on LinkedIn for fear of rejection.
And also, most agents believe you must know a client well enough before reaching out to them.
While this may be true to some point, there is no laid down rule that says you must know all your clients before implementing the cold outreach strategy.
If used well, LinkedIn can be a powerful outreach tool that will help you network with prospects.
It also allows you to connect with your potential customers personally, and most experts that have tried this approach can even agree to it.
To make things easier when implementing the cold outreach strategy, try to find common ground between you and your prospect.
Doing this will help you create a well-targeted message that will pique their interest
You can check their LinkedIn profile and look out for things like their skills, country, and post that they share.
It will give you an idea to go about your personalized message.
Note that there is no rule to follow when searching for common ground, and whatever angle you may choose to come from does not matter.
All that matters is that you discover a commonality that you both can understand.
Also, when using this approach, your aim should be to build a strong rapport first. The sales can come later on.
While directly connecting with your prospective is useful, you must not reach them directly to achieve your goal.
Another smart step you can take is to connect with other professionals in your industry to help you get them.
If you are familiar with a professional on LinkedIn, you can discuss them to create a list from both connections of people you will both like to meet.
Both of you can then make an introduction that will be forwarded to those connections.
This LinkedIn for Insurance Agents Strategy is a complete win-win for both parties who leveraged on existing relationships to generate leads.
To succeed on LinkedIn as an insurance agency, you need to create a robust online presence.
It shouldn't be overwhelming because it is not different from what you have been doing on other social media platforms.
It would surely help if you were consistent with quality posts.
While doing this, ensure they are fresh, informative, and engaging.
And those are the building blocks that will help you get noticed.
It will equally help you build and establish a good rapport with your followers.
If you are perplexed on what type of content to share with LinkedIn users that follow you, you can try posting:
After trying a couple of topics in the industry, please note how they flow more and post more.
Experts advise that you check your account at least three times every day.
Doing this will help both old and new users stay up to date with recent discussions and updates in the industry.
One crucial way to go about this is to ask questions on posts and have other users answer them.
To boost each post, try to add pictures. Researchers over time have proved that it is 98 percent effective in generating comments.
We also suggest you include it as a LinkedIn for Insurance Agents Strategy as it will you build a robust online presence
Do you know that there are thousands of independent agents out there on LinkedIn that are vying for customer's attention like you?
Well, now that you know, make sure your profile is as professional and as appealing as possible.
Try always to include keywords that relate to your industry in your profile.
Also, add your values, interests, the certifications that you have acquired over time, and other experiences.
Earlier on, we advised that consistently reaching out to people is one of the keys to success as an insurance agency on LinkedIn.
But you should also know that this is only part of the equation.
After a client has agreed to establish a connection, it is still up to you to nurture it so that a cold lead won't freeze to death.
While it is essential to reach out to your prospects to keep the conversation alive and active, you should not go overboard with your follow-up messages concerning insurance policies that can cause the lead to be dead on arrival.
You must understand that everyone is different, as while some may find this move and ignore your messages, others may even block you entirely.
The key here is to learn to strike a balance between them.
Suppose you have joined groups on other social media platforms.
In that case, I'm sure you have had any idea of annoying this is to read a couple of valuable comments and then get bombed with advertorial comment.
People often make this mistake, but you should never join the bandwagon because it is considered poor etiquette.
Doing this is will significantly diminish your chances of establishing trust with other users.
If you aren't ready to do all it takes to make your profile stand out, don't create one.
Else it will just be another account that potential clients will come across and skip like it doesn't exist.
Ensure it is appealing enough to encourage users to patronize your agency.
Ensure you have a professional photo with the standard 1,584 x 396 pixels measurement and recommendations from clients you have worked it including those from your colleagues and managers.
CONCLUSION
LinkedIn is not one of the social media sites where you can do almost anything and get away with it.
It is a place where serious-minded professionals come to do business.
If you want to establish your insurance agency as a trustworthy and reliable brand, you need to follow and put all that we have said in this LinkedIn for Insurance Agents Article into practice.
And then step back and watch your agency grow.
Thanks for reading!