How Independent Insurance Agents Can Benefit from Content Marketing

At first blush, insurance and content marketing may seem like odd bedfellows. Insurance is not the same as, say, retail: Consumers know that they need insurance, and in many cases have no real choice but to purchase it. What’s more, to many lay people, all insurance products seem more or less the same, which means the biggest deciding factor in which insurance product to choose is likely going to be price. In this scheme, content marketing would seem to be without a place.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Independent insurance agents can benefit greatly from content marketing. They can achieve greater customer loyalty, more customer referrals, and more prestige among their peers.

What’s the Point of Content Marketing?

To understand how insurance agents can utilize content marketing, it is important to understand what content marketing really is—and what it’s not. The conventional wisdom is that it’s basically a form of advertising, but that’s not really true. It’s more accurate to think of content marketing as a tool for establishing relationships—which is really something that savvy insurance pros have been doing for decades.

This doesn’t mean that content marketing is a replacement for direct, face-to-face interaction with clients. What it does mean is that content marketing can open the doors for those conversations, and help those conversations to be more fruitful and productive. Through content marketing, you can inform your clients and potential clients as to why they need insurance, what questions they should be asking about different insurance products, and how they can most effectively save money on their coverage. This establishes you, the insurance agent, as someone who is both knowledgeable and trustworthy—just the position you want to be in!

The Marks of a Content Marketing Campaign

So what does a content marketing campaign look like for insurance professionals? In terms of the nuts and bolts, it could (and probably should) encompass blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social components. As far as the broader thrust of it, though, there are three goals that every insurance agent or insurance marketer should have:

• To be educational. You want to make sure that whatever content you are producing—whether a blog, a tweet, or a video—is educational in its nature. People use the Web to find answers, solutions to their problems—and your task is to position yourself as the solutions person, the insurance agent who has all the answers.
• To entertain. This one may seem surprising—and it’s probably fair to say that most insurance-based content marketing is going to end up being less than Hollywood-caliber entertainment. A blog post about liability clauses may not be a laugh a minute, but you can at least refrain from taking yourself too seriously, perhaps poking fun at yourself or incorporating some playful examples.
• To be actionable. More than anything, your job is to provoke action. You want to prompt your readers to pick up the phone and call you when they’re done—or at the very least, to pass your information along to their friends!

Remember, content marketing isn’t really about promoting. It’s about building relationships and cultivating trust—two things that are invaluable to insurance professionals.