How Social Media Helps Insurance Agents Make More Sales

[Aaron_4SIGHT]

Social media is a great marketing channel... if you know how to use it. Many agents I talk to aren't clear on what they should be doing with their social media accounts. We've decided to create a super simple presentation that explains how social media helps agents make more sales. You can see it at:

How Social Media Helps You Make More Sales | AgentMethods

It's short and sweet - take a few minutes to click through. Hope it helps some of you!

Aaron

 

[somarco]

Good stuff Aaron. Thanks for sharing.

Social media sharing takes a different approach from Adwords. Has to be less direct, less "salesy". Some agents find it hard to get beyond "Hey, you wanna buy something?".

 

[stuy119]

Great article. Slide #10 really encapsulates any type of social media or email marketing - you need to provide INTERESTING AND VALUABLE CONTENT, not try to overtly sell.

 

[Dave_RF]

The internet is a new tool to build relationship and in that regard, not much has changed. Social is(or should) be building relationships - great point and great slideshare.

Here's what has changed though.
If you're using a business profile on Facebook, i'm sure you're frustrated with low reach (how many people see your post) and little engagement (how many people interact with your post).

Well it turns out this is intentional.

The organic reach of your business profile is about 2%... seriously 2% on average.
The average engagement is .73%.
Meaning that 99.9% of your fans don't actually engage with your posts on average on Facebook.

So specifically with Facebook, you're goals with social media need to align with their business practices.

Facebook is intentionally pushing business profiles toward paid ads. Since darkpost have gone away, you're now able to sponsor unpublished ads directly from the power editor which gives you a much better conversion.

However - if you really want to get the most out of your social engagement on facebook, retarget your leads!!!
If you're getting traffic to your website, put a Facebook pixel on your page that will track that person online. When that person gets on facebook (& they will) they'll be hit with your specific ads.
If you really want to be a ninja, track people that go to specific pages with specific ads - so powerful!

I'm realizing now that this post turned into a rant, sorry - the point was that it is a good article. Thanks for posting.

 

[Aaron_4SIGHT]

Good stuff Aaron. Thanks for sharing.

Social media sharing takes a different approach from Adwords. Has to be less direct, less "salesy". Some agents find it hard to get beyond "Hey, you wanna buy something?".

I'm glad you found it useful. You're exactly right - with social media you need to focus on relationships and not transactions.

----------

Great article. Slide #10 really encapsulates any type of social media or email marketing - you need to provide INTERESTING AND VALUABLE CONTENT, not try to overtly sell.

Thanks. Yep, interesting and valuable content. The funny thing is that what content fits these conditions is 100% dependent on who your audience is. I talked to one agent who put the high school football schedule on his blog and then was complaining because it was the most trafficked page to his site by far. The page had nothing to do with what he was selling but everything to do with the people that he sold to.

----------

The organic reach of your business profile is about 2%... seriously 2% on average...

So specifically with Facebook, you're goals with social media need to align with their business practices.

Facebook is intentionally pushing business profiles toward paid ads. Since darkpost have gone away, you're now able to sponsor unpublished ads directly from the power editor which gives you a much better conversion...

However - if you really want to get the most out of your social engagement on facebook, retarget your leads!!!

Thanks for the comment. I'm glad you liked the slideshare.

You are right about the artificially low reach of posts on business profiles. LinkedIn too. They want to sell ads. Independent agents can post to their personal page, they just need to walk the very fine balance between keeping things interesting for their audience (remember, you are competing with pictures of grandkids!) and making sure people know you sell insurance (if they don't know that, none of this well help).

Facebook ads are still relatively cheap, though you really need to make sure you have a well thought through campaign. Paid exposure on social media is a different topic entirely.

Retargeting is a great suggestion, though again you need to have a well defined campaign. (In case anybody wants to see it in action, click through to Insurance Websites | Insurance Website Design | AgentMethods and then watch our ads show up elsewhere on the web).

Aaron

 

[coomesinsurance]

Good stuff. Thanks for sharing! How much content are you posting that is subject relevant/interesting but not necessarily directed to your website? Is there a good rule of thumb of how many posts should be directing viewers towards my site/quoting tool/etc, compared to posts that provide links to non original (but subject relevant)content/local happenings/etc?

Thanks again for taking the time to share this.

 

[somarco]

80% relevant to your market, 20% directed at lead generation

 

[coomesinsurance]

80% relevant to your market, 20% directed at lead generation

thanks. Guess that means I need to start making 5 posts/day

 

[Dave_RF]

Good stuff. Thanks for sharing! How much content are you posting that is subject relevant/interesting but not necessarily directed to your website? Is there a good rule of thumb of how many posts should be directing viewers towards my site/quoting tool/etc, compared to posts that provide links to non original (but subject relevant)content/local happenings/etc?

Thanks again for taking the time to share this.

The rule of thumb is don't ask for anything until you've given more.
Social is less of a sales pitch than it is an invite to talk.
For example, the dress pic that everyone's talking about (black/blue vs white/gold) - no where is there a reference to who made it but their sales have exploded just because everyone is talking about their line. I'm not saying your goal is viral content, but it is to get people talking -you want your followers talking about you.
Billboards just don't work like they did.

 

[Aaron_4SIGHT]

Good stuff. Thanks for sharing! How much content are you posting that is subject relevant/interesting but not necessarily directed to your website? Is there a good rule of thumb of how many posts should be directing viewers towards my site/quoting tool/etc, compared to posts that provide links to non original (but subject relevant)content/local happenings/etc?

Thanks again for taking the time to share this.

I'm glad you found it useful. The link below goes to the deck from a webinar I did a while ago. In the webinar I talked about a framework I call the "3/2/1" rule will give you some guidelines in what to post. In a nutshell, you want to to strike a balance of:

1x What you sell
2x Why your customers need it
3x What your customers care about and have in common

It starts on slide 21.

Insurance Agent's Primer to Social Media

All the best,

Aaron