Tips for Developing An Insurance Marketing Plan
Whether you are an independent producer, an agency, or an insurance agent looking to grow, it all starts with a marketing plan! This will serve as your roadmap to success, allowing you to formulate strategies to address your marketing needs for the weeks, months, or even years ahead.
Writing a marketing plan doesn’t have to be a difficult task, nor does it need to follow any formal style. The important part of this process is that you need to be as thorough as possible and write down all information that will be relevant to your ever-changing marketing needs. Once you have a marketing plan in place, it will become your navigation system from which you can always revise and review as needed. If you already have a plan, revisit it as your business objectives may have changed since its creation.
As a leading insurance FMO, we’ve been helping agents thrive in the insurance landscape for more than 25 years. We’ve worked with thousands of agents to formulate and implement strategies that generate leads and close sales.
Let’s start our deep dive into creating an insurance marketing plan for your business!
Insurance Marketing Plan Formative Questions
Before you can start planning, it’s important to lay some groundwork first. You’ll need to identify your goals – both short term and long term – before you can start building strategies to meet these goals.
Your marketing plan should answer the following questions.
Who is your client?
In other words, what do your ideal clients look like? Try to think about a number of factors; age, income, gender, marital status, number of children, location, etc. This information is foundational when building a customer persona.
What are your clients looking for?
Once you have the basis of your customer persona, it’s time to start thinking about your clients’ actual needs. It can often be helpful to consider their pain points. In other words, what issues are they currently experiencing that you can resolve with your services? What services or coverage are you offering, and how can you frame these products to make them appealing to your target audience? It’s important to consider the needs of your clients and how they relate to your products.
What differentiates you from your competition?
You are probably already aware of your competitors at a local and national level, but you should do some research to understand them further. What products are they offering that you aren’t? What products are you offering that they aren’t? Are there any gaps in their geographical coverage that you can take advantage of? Do they have a web presence, and if so, what can you emulate in order to
What marketing techniques have you used that have worked?
Think critically about what you’ve already tried. Which strategies worked, and which ones did not? How long did you implement these techniques before abandoning them? What was your budget for these strategies? What kind of successes did you reap from implementing these strategies, and how long did it take to achieve these benefits? Which products did you market, and on what channels did you market them?
What are your short-term and long-term goals?
Your marketing plan should tie directly to your production goals. How many new clients would you like to gain in the next 6, 12, 18 or 24 months? How many renewals would you like to receive over those same periods? Try to make your goals as realistic as possible considering your current budget, availability, and offerings. Going beyond sales, consider alternate goals: how can you grow your online visibility or enter into new markets?
Creating Your Insurance Marketing Plan
Once you’ve done the footwork of understanding your target audience and your goals, then it’s time to start creating a marketing plan. You may even want to consider creating multiple plans – individual plans for promoting each of your products, and one overarching plan that takes all of these marketing needs into account.
Create a promotion hierarchy
If you are only promoting a single insurance product, then this step is easy. If you offer a diverse selection of coverage options, then you will want to choose which products you want to prioritize. Each product likely has its own intended audience with their own unique needs, so identifying these products will help you know when and where to market them.
Formulate a value proposition
Once you have your product lineup identified, you should create a value proposition for each of them. Take into account your audience’s needs and any fears they might have that can be resolved through your services. Some examples might be, “I help seniors Medicare without confusion or costly mistakes,” or, “We work with our clients to demystify final expense insurance.”
Choose your marketing channels
If you have an insurance website design, you’re already one step ahead – this is going to serve as the hub of all of your marketing efforts. Ads, brochures, business cards, etc. can all point back to your website, which should contain relevant information to your potential clients while also offering them a way to turn from a prospect into a lead. If you’ve used marketing strategies in the past, you may already know what works (or what doesn’t work), which can help point you in the right direction when it comes to future promotions.
Here are a few promotional strategies that are popular and effective for lead generation:
- Networking
- Strategic Alliances
- Referrals
- Mailings or Other Lead Appointments
- Trade Shows
- Seminars (Educational & Sales)
- Media
- Digital Advertising
Choosing tactics is the final step, and where most agents start when it comes to thinking about marketing. Your objectives should dictate what activities you engage in when looking for new customers or markets.
Example Insurance Marketing Plan
If you need an example of what a real-world insurance marketing plan would look like, take a look at the following:
Set a Goal
Increase Medicare Advantage sales by 10% for AEP.
Establish a Target
Existing and new customers who are 65 and older, and live or work within a 15-mile radius.
Decide on Strategies
Print fliers, postcards, social media ads, and schedule meetings.
Choose Your Channels
Print marketing collateral. Digital ads on Meta (Facebook and Instagram). Schedule meetings with qualified leads.
Build Your Messaging
The theme of the campaign is “Navigating the Medicare Maze.” Create educational materials on your blog and promote on organic social media. Reach potential new customers via social media, also promoting via websites, list servers, and publications.
Make a Calendar
Use a digital platform to automate social media posting over the duration of the campaign. Create a weekly promotion schedule. Distribute postcards or fliers at least once a month.
Measure Success
Total sales in a time period. Additional expenses (if any). Total number of customers. Average sales per customer. Test which times/days during the week get the most engagement leading to sales.
Pinnacle Is Your Partner in Insurance Marketing
If you feel like creating and implementing a marketing plan is a daunting task, fear not – Pinnacle is here to help. We offer a variety of services to support our agent partners. Whether you need assistance with quality insurance lead generation or you have been curious about the benefits of using a CRM for insurance agents, our support team is here to answer your questions and point you in the right direction.
Reach out to a member of our team or get contracted with Pinnacle Financial Services today!
Bob Brzyski
Vice President, Marketing
x7742 | bbrzyski@pfsinsurance.com