Managing business expenses at your insurance agency is complex during a typical year. However, bring a pandemic into the mix and your business becomes a lot more complex.

During stressful times, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, how can you secure your insurance business? While you may have organizational strategies that work well for your insurance office when you're there in person, once you are all working from home you need to revise those strategies.

In this difficult time for many of your insurance clients, they are counting on your insurance agency to be a guiding force in communication and leadership. They may feel frustrated, angry, and confused, and this can be reflected in their interactions with insurance providers. 

The changes to our way of life have substantially changed (at least temporarily) due to Covid-19. But how does that affect agency value and your plans to buy or sell an agency? While the insurance industry is relatively recession proof, Covid-19 can and will have an impact on insurance industry M&A in addition to how we currently run our agencies.

How can you transition smoothly to work at home? Suddenly, much of the world is working from home. With the advent of Covid-19 and the need to distance physically from co-workers and clients, insurance agencies are experiencing an abrupt shift in the way that they work. 

Go phish? This is something that you don't want your employees to play when they are on the job at your insurance agency. Phishing scams are an ongoing and insidious way of damaging businesses, and unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has spawned a new generation of these scams. 

What will technology bring to the insurance industry this year and this decade? The tech trends in insurance jobs are consistent in the changes that they bring to the industry. What is shifting the insurance field right now? How might the COVID-19 pandemic affect technology adoption?

How can you improve your How do you juggle all of the demands of an independent insurance agency? Time management can be particularly difficult in agencies where there are few insurance employees and everyone plays multiple roles. office workflow and be of better assistance to your customers?

Imagine if you could just sit back and have other people do your insurance marketing for you. 

Changes come with challenges, and when you're trying to purchase or sell an insurance agency, that is a large change indeed. 

Position Zero is also called a Featured Snippet in Google. With voice search on devices like Apple and Google Home becoming more common, the featured snippet has literally risen to the top.

It’s not just poor leadership or a down economy that can trip off a financial disaster within your agency.

The so-called soft skills are your secret superpower when it comes to insurance marketing.

In the past, economists have predicted that agents and broker distribution will decrease. The opposite is actually true.

Going into networking events with a good attitude will help you succeed in your quest to build a quality network. When you're networking, attend diverse events that are relevant to your field, and seek to build relationships. 

Do you feel like you have peers in the insurance world you can connect with regularly? Being the leader of any business can be a challenging and lonely job.

​Be honest: do you ever feel awkward about business networking? Many people do, and it can keep them from working on improving their businesses.

Is improving your insurance marketing on your agency's to-do list?

Reading your online reviews can make you feel terrific - or it can make you feel terrible. After all, if your insurance company gets a poor review online, it can affect whether or not new clients choose to come to your business.

​In this new decade, where will the insurance industry grow, and how could it change? The insurance industry is a reflection of the risks and changes in society as a whole. 

​Is LinkedIn just for stodgy business people? While it is a business platform, LinkedIn is actually experiencing a renaissance of sorts.

Do your clients know that your agency has insurance agents' E&O insurance? If so, do they value it?

Details matter. They especially matter in this era of overwhelming data and digital connections.

In a world that's awash in marketing messages, is your insurance marketing noteworthy, or does it play the same tune over and over again? 

Here comes another generation of insurance clients: Generation Z. Believe it or not, those who were born in the mid-1990s into the 2000s are your newest insurance clients.

Think of your insurance agency as a restaurant for a moment. Generally, your favorite restaurants have a variety of dishes, but not so many choices as to be overwhelming.

What is your job as an insurance agency? Naturally, your job is to provide your clients with insurance, but how you get to that point is also significant.

​A new year, a new approach to insurance marketing: every year, online marketing changes. 

​How do your employees act around your insurance clients? As you work to improve your insurance agency, look inward.

Building professional expertise happens through the day to day activities of insurance jobs.

While it might seem like finding new clients is the aim of your marketing department, the really valuable clients are the ones who stick with you over time.

How can your insurance agency reach more people, more effectively? This is the point of your marketing team's insurance jobs, and it's a prominent goal of your business. 

How can you create a more flexible work environment for your employees? How can this raise your agency's productivity?

What are the best jobs in insurance? That depends on how you define "the best." For some people, the best insurance job is one that provides the most financial security. 

Do your current clients like you? When you're considering how to improve your insurance marketing, start with the basics. 

How can your insurance company be the best? Customer service is key, and that service comes from your company culture. 

When you think about wildfires, the images that come to mind are images of roaring flames, burning trees, and firefighters doing all they can to contain the blaze. 

When you're working on insurance marketing, demographic data is probably your marketing strategy mainstay. How old are your clients? Where do they live?

How is a website like a turtle? Hopefully, your website is defined by its strong shell and not by its extremely slow speed.

You may know that your insurance agency is making money, but do you really understand your profitability or what you need to do to make your business more profitable? 

Your retirement plan might involve sitting on a beach, renovating your house, or spending a lot of time with the grandkids, but does your business have a retirement plan? 

Your small insurance business needs to stay in touch with your clients. What is the best way to do this?

Sometimes, the most boring work is ultimately the most rewarding. According to Forbes, "57% of data scientists state that cleaning and organizing data is the least enjoyable part of their work." 

Are you worried that you're missing something? While errors and omissions insurance will help cover you if you have made a mistake, it's far better for your reputation and financial security to avoid making those omissions in the first place. 

In the fall of 2018, the Camp Fire, the deadliest fire in California's history, devastated a California community, leading to 85 deaths.

If you think that networking is about attending conferences and workshops, you're only partly right. Networking isn't just about attending events.

Your marketing funds are likely not infinite, so you need to be strategic about how you manage those funds. As an insurance agency, how much should you spend on marketing? 

Your insurance company wants to be known as one that cares. This is especially important at a time when social media news travels quickly. 

What insurance should your insurance company provide to your employees? As an insurance company, you know how valuable insurance is for peoples' peace of mind. 

What should you be doing on social media? Since social media became essential for business promotion, this has been the perennial question.

What is insurance drip marketing? A drip doesn't sound very positive; it sounds like what you'd get if your faucet was leaking. 

What will insurance agencies get out of this year's American Agents Alliance conference? 

How do social media marketing and your insurance agency connect to each other? While you may use social media as part of your personal life, using social media marketing for your business requires another level of expertise altogether.

Does your insurance business have E&O insurance? If not, you should. E&O insurance gives you some protection against legal costs if your staff make errors or omissions that cause problems for your clients.

Time, effort, and money: you spend all of these when you head to a conference. 

Should an insurance agent join a professional association? Whether you're just starting out in the job or you've been an insurance agent for years, a professional association can be valuable to your career development.

What is the benefit of insurance marketing? Does it simply drive business to your agency, or is there something more? Marketing is about much more than the immediate return on investment.

How is climate change altering society? This is a question that those in the insurance field must grapple with as storms, fires, and floods become more frequent. 

Insurance agent marketing is a tricky business. You want to be honest and polite, yet you need positive online reviews to ensure that people continue to come to your business. 

As the technology partner of choice for over 20,000 agencies across the country, including 5,000 California agents, we know what it’s like to be an independent agent.