“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” Charles Darwin.
Today’s business landscape is much changed from that of even a few years ago. The amount of information that is available to the average insurance broker today would fry the brain of some of their predecessors, but that doesn’t mean that modern-day brokers are making the most of the opportunities that are out there. Even some of the primary ways of utilising social media and search engines such as Google can play their part in capitalizing on the information opportunity. Here are some of the tips of the social media trade ranging from the “must haves” to the rarer, more unorthodox beasts in the guerrilla marketing jungle!
Increase your information flow
Keeping your ear to the ground has always been an essential skill for insurance brokers. These days though just using your ears isn’t nearly enough to give you a business advantage. You need more information and ideally you need it curated so that you don’t have to spend lots of time sifting through it to see what is useful.
Google Alerts is a fantastically powerful and free service that allows you to get emails containing the results from a Google search either as soon as the information becomes available, or on a daily basis or weekly basis. This is massively useful for keeping up to date about key clients or carriers.
Most people know about LinkedIn, but are you making the best use of the service? Make sure that you are following the people, companies and groups that are of interest to you or your company. Spending time in LinkedIn groups when you have a few minutes may pay you dividends, particularly if the groups are places where your clients and their peers go to ask questions. Being an insurance broker has always been about being knowledgeable about insurance. With tools like LinkedIn groups you’re now able to demonstrate your knowledge, attracting people to you and your firm from a far wider audience than ever before.
Guerilla marketing
Not all the information you gather might be about clients and carriers. You can also get information about your competition and in some cases might even be able to influence clients of your competition to consider your company.
An example of this approach is using Twitter to follow the name of a competitor preceded by a # (the company’s hashtag). Very often someone an unhappy customer will write a tweet about it followed by a hashtag (this adds context in a very concise way). Capturing this kind of information allows you to know what people are saying about your competition, allowing you to create guerilla marketing campaigns to draw attention to such feedback.
Some organisations might choose to reply to some of those tweets promoting your organization. Be careful with this approach though, it can backfire.
Facebook Live is making live streaming events an affordable and effective guerrilla marketing platform. It could help brokers to schedule important events, such as the launch of a new product or service or even something as simple as a Q&A session where policyholder and insurers can find out more about your business.
Reddit marketing can really pay off for smaller broker marketers as it is divided into countless sub-reddits, which are, essentially, online content sharing forums with niche communities. Sub-reddits can range in topics from classic muscle cars and High Net Worth individuals or holiday travel images to a country-specific political discussion such as Brexit. If you provide a service that you find innovative, there is almost certainly a sub-reddit for it.
Digital transformation
Digital transformation might sound like a something to do with video editing. It is actually about helping organizations transform to adapt and take advantage of the digital business environment that we operate in today. The broking world has adapted to the rise of the direct insurance model and the aggregators and will no doubt continue to thrive in the world of digital. The pace of change is speeding up, however, with the baby boomer generation flocking to Facebook in greater numbers while today’s younger Snapshot users are now making their first car insurance purchases. So, it is time to adapt to change by making use of the latest cost-effective guerrilla marketing, which are not as complex as you might think.
Fifth Step helps organisations implement their digital transformations, improving the efficiency and agility of businesses operating in the modern insurance environment.
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