The Marketing Countdown: Five Tips to Transform your Agency in 2016

Are you looking to ramp up your agency’s marketing? I sure am, and all the time. Improvement (which can sometimes be a form of change) is the driving force of agency growth, whether it’s through tracking metrics and figuring out what does and doesn’t work, or if it’s just coming up with a new game plan on how you’d like to approach the work itself. Our agency at Paradiso Insurance is constantly looking to grow, and I wanted to briefly discuss some of our strategy that we focused on going into SEO that could seriously help any agency’s digital presence with all of their marketing strategy online. Here’s your agency’s countdown to the top five ways you can transform your marketing moving forward!

5. Your Brand is Your Everything

When it comes to marketing, your brand should be present in all aspects from start to finish. Now, we are not just talking about establishing a brand and calling it a day. You need to have a brand that is well thought out, and easy to connect with, meaning it’s personable. Without a strong brand in place, your marketing efforts may have a strong initial impact or good first impression to your audience, but you will lack the ability to actually have a message resonate with that same audience.

Branding is what takes your agency’s marketing efforts from good to great. It turns out that (according to the Direct Marketing Association) if your audience believes in your agency’s brand, they will be more apt to connect with you, it will improve their overall customer experience, and it will increase your engagement or interaction rates online. When your customers are consistently interacting with your agency, they’ll be more apt to talk about your agency when a friend or family is in need of insurance products and/or services, and we all know that growth of a business starts with word-of-mouth referrals.

4. What’s SEO anyway?

Haven’t heard of SEO before? We’re talking about search engine optimization here. An easy way to describe search optimization is to lay out a simple scenario that will help you understand both SEO and its importance: suppose a prospect has just purchased a new vehicle and they are looking for auto insurance. As we all know, word-of-mouth referrals still remain the number one source of new business in any industry, so this prospect is likely to ask their friends and family for some feasible options as a starting point in their process. Let’s say this customer didn’t find the information they were looking for through word-of-mouth referrals though…now what? This is the time when they turn to Google, because according to a recent report from Fleishman-Hillard, 89% of consumers use search engines to help make purchasing decisions, and that’s a serious amount of people.

So essentially the prospect sits down to Google their location and some keywords involving insurance, and they are likely going to click links that are toward the top of the search. Your agency should be competing to reach the top of Google’s search results, and always be striving to be the #1 result in the search rankings for insurance products and services in your area. To get to the top, you have to optimize your agency’s online presence, or do some search engine optimization. When it came to writing our agency’s website, we had a professional SEO writer take care of a lot of the verbiage, and when our marketing team pushes out new content, we have an SEO specialist proofread and make minor changes to our content to help our SEO online. If you haven’t already taken a second look at your agency’s SEO, I would suggest hiring a professional SEO specialist and getting optimized as soon as possible!

3. Engaging Content

Content is huge for you and your agency, because what is marketing without content marketing? Content can take on many forms, but it’s important that you carefully craft your agency’s content in a way that speaks to your brand, gets your message across to your audience, and most importantly, your content needs to be engaging.

There are many forms of content, such as written, graphics and visuals, video content marketing, and more. Visual content is king though, as I like to say. Visual content is content such as branded agency visuals, organic photos of you and your staff, and videos that your marketing team puts together. It is very important to brand your visual content because your brand will establish you as a professional within your niche markets, and that’s going to be huge for your customer retention and word-of-mouth referrals. It’s important that you create and post content that your audience will be interested in though, or else you won’t see the traction or engagement you’re looking for in the world of digital marketing. Our agency takes the time to post about our products and services, but we also post helpful tips or advice for our clients through blogs, and we post organic photos of our staff and agency to make our social media more personable and easier to connect with.

2. Speaking of Social Media…

Your agency most certainly needs to be making use of social media. In a world where everything is going digital, you have to reach out to and communicate with your customers and clients in a way that they can appreciate the most. Social media is a great way to connect with your customers and clients as well as move their overall customer experience with your agency in the right, positive direction. In today’s world, I say that social media is a necessity for any company or small business, but that’s because most companies are already taking advantage of this powerful platform for marketing.

Social media isn’t simply a way to generate new leads though. While it’s great to push out messages, content, and posts about your insurance products and/or services, it’s more important to make sure you’re connectable and personable by having balance in your posts. It’s more so about making yourself easy to connect with, building trust with your audience, building your agency’s brand, and nurturing your existing client base. By communicating with our customers through social media, we will be able to connect with them on a personal level, not just as their insurance agent.

1. The World is Going Mobile

Mobile is taking over, and if you don’t believe me, trying going the rest of the afternoon without your smartphone to see for yourself. Our customers and clients are no different; they are reaching out to us via social media, or visiting our website, or even checking their emails right from their mobile device. Now’s the time where we capitalize on change instead of ignoring it. If you’re in the world of social media already, that’s great! Social media has mobile apps and all sorts of mobile accessibility, so your clients and customers can easily connect with you there right from their smartphones.

Let’s talk about your agency’s website for a moment though…have you taken the time to optimize your website for a mobile user? If not, I would highly recommend talking with a website design professional about making sure your website is hands-on and easy to use for your mobile users as well. In 2013, the number of mobile users skyrocketed compared to those of us still using a computer or desktop, and the number will only continue to grow from here. Part of your agency’s overall customer experience is making things easily accessible for your agency online, which includes optimizing your website for mobile. If your website is not optimized, the desktop version of your website will try to fit on your audience’s mobile device screens, and everything will be crammed, small, or difficult to click or tap in some cases. By optimizing your website, your customers can find what they are looking for with relative ease, and on the go!

This is only the beginning of improvement for your agency. Part of the battle is realizing that growth should never stop, improving should always be in the forefront of your mind, and the moment you forget these concepts, your agency will remain stagnant. Happy marketing everyone, and here’s to a successful rest of the year!