Now that you know more about influencer marketing, the biggest question is how can insurance agents use it to their advantage?. Influencer marketing can change the way people view insurance by allowing consumers to get an inside look at the more personal aspect of the business. The most important thing for insurance agents is building and maintaining relationships with clients, but contact often ends when the phone call or meeting is over. By using influencer marketing, you can continuously engage with clients anytime, anywhere.
What Are Your Goals?
The first step in creating an influencer marketing strategy is setting a goal to be accomplished with the campaign. The goal will be your focal point so you can strategize consistently. An example would be to build brand awareness, getting people to know, recognize and like your brand. In the case of an insurance agent, you would want people to be aware of you, so whenever it’s time to sign up for insurance or switch, you’re the first person they think about. You might also want to build credibility and have your audience perceive you as someone they can trust. Credibility can be built by building your audience and focusing on retaining the loyalty of current clients.
Who Is Your Audience?
Now that you have your goal(s) set, it’s time to think about who your potential clients are. Don’t focus on how many followers your influencer has. Focus on the type of audience instead. Seek out influencers who will help you reach your goals and connect you with your target market. If you’re targeting families for health insurance or life insurance, you might want to think about reaching out to popular mommy blogs or mom accounts on Instagram. You also have to figure out if you want a general audience or if you want to target more niche markets. For example, car insurance covers a whole range of market segments. A more general audience will probably not be rich with car enthusiasts. As for niche markets, you can look for luxury car pages since their audience will care a lot more about the condition of their cars and cars in general.
Are Your Influencers Qualified?
After you define your target market and come up with a list of potential partners, do some research to make sure the influencers are a good fit for your brand. It’s better to work with one with a smaller audience that best match your ideal consumer than one with a huge following but has a completely different audience. Also, make sure the influencer has a reach wide enough to help you accomplish your goals. Target those that have an engaged audience and who frequently like and comment on their posts. That’s one way to figure out if their following is real or if they bought their followers. Finally, their content needs to align with what you are trying to portray. What they post has to be relevant, high quality, and representative of your beliefs. Sometimes, you don’t even need to look very far. Your current clients can be great influencers because they already have a relationship with you. Pay attention to who is active on your social media accounts or reach out to influential insurance professionals.
How Should You Reach Out?
Focus on building a lasting relationship with the influencers and form a more personal connection first. Don’t immediately ask them to represent you. How can if they don’t even know who you are? Reach out to them first by starting an informal conversation with them either in person (if they are your current clients) or online. Ask them about their interests and see if you can create a bond based on those. Continue to develop the relationship by helping them out like offer advice or think of ways to add value to their lives. By forming a personal connection with influencers first, they can better understand who you are as a person and their content will be more genuine. Even if you have little or no control over what they post about you, having a positive relationship will ensure they will leave a positive impression.
What Kind of Content Works?
After all the research and connection building, it’s time to push content onto your target market. That’s where the fun, creative part of the influencer marketing campaign comes in! Help your influencers by working together to develop ideas that target top keywords and fill gaps they have in their content. Some influencer marketing strategies include:
- Gifting - Give free products or in this case, your services, in exchange for a mention or a review. It will let your influencers engage in a risk free experience which will most likely end up positive.
- Guest posting - You can even offer to help them create the content so you have some control in what they post. It will also help deepen your relationship with the influencer as they get to know more about you.
- Sponsored content - Of course, the traditional route in celebrity endorsement, paid advertising, is another option. Just be aware of the disadvantages that come with it, like losing credibility.
- Contests and giveaways - Run a contest and ask an influencer to share your giveaway event with their followers or readers. It can help increase your following and also your influencers’ engagement with their audience. Who doesn’t want to win free stuff?
- Brand ambassadors - Form relationships with your influencers in a way that they can mention or promote your services in exchange for exclusive offers, free products, or for being featured by you. As an insurance agent, this strategy may seem irrelevant, but keep in mind you are still selling a product along with providing the best customer service possible.
What Are the Results?
Throughout your entire influencer marketing campaign, it’s important to track and analyze your results. Use metrics to measure your success depending on the initial marketing objectives you set. These can include brand awareness metrics like website traffic, page views, social mentions, time on site and site users. This will come in handy if you have a personal website where your customers can learn more about you and get in contact. Also keep track of metrics that are relevant to an insurance agent such as audience building, engagement, lead generation, and customer loyalty. Use the numbers to make your campaign more dynamic to increase its effectiveness.
Conclusion: Is Influencer Marketing Right for Me?
The insurance industry is affected by new technologies that change consumer behaviors. People have become reliant on having a plethora of information at the palm of their hands and have more control over what they want to be exposed to. Influencer marketing will allow you to expand your presence and create more opportunities to engage with your clients. It can also help generate new clients as you continue to build your network. Influencer marketing takes a more personal approach which can be difficult to start, but the result will be worth it.