Small is in. Smaller businesses, niche markets, and handcrafted items are trending. What does this mean for your small, independent insurance business and its insurance marketing?

Can inbound marketing actually work for your independent insurance agency? It can, but only if it's not neglected. Inbound marketing for insurance agencies is one of the most beautiful flowers in your marketing garden, but you need to continue to give it water and food, or your inbound marketing efforts will fade away. 

We all make mistakes. The problem is that some of those mistakes can be costly, especially when they're about something as important as insurance. That's why E&O insurance is necessary.

As an insurance provider, you need to be scrupulously ethical in your interactions with your clients. For Millennials, in particular, your reputation and your community involvement matter very much. 

Sometimes it seems that drones are everywhere. Used extensively by the military, their commercial uses seem only to be limited by the user’s imagination. 

Are you a fan of networking? Whether the word makes you cringe or you're keen to jump into as many social events as possible, you are already networking and you may not even know it. 

Do your insurance clients feel like they could pass Insurance 101? Probably not: a lot of them may have some quiet confusion about their insurance policies.

Whether you're just starting out in your insurance agent career or you've been a longstanding part of the insurance field, you need to choose where you work and why. Insurance companies are diverse. 

Your customers have questions. Sometimes they ask those questions in person. Sometimes they ask them on the phone. 

It's time to hit the road again: the American Agents Alliance convention runs from September 21-24th, 2017. 

Driverless cars sound like a possibility for the far distant future, but they're almost here. This poses questions for the insurance industry.

Your insurance clients know what their insurance covers, don't they? You'd be surprised at home many clients are stunned to learn that their insurance does not cover problems such as overland flooding. 

Influencer marketing is one way to build your brand credibility. By reaching out to influencers, you can extend your reach in the online and offline community and create a better reputation through word of mouth.

Cyberspace isn't an ethereal digital world. It's a matter that's very present in the insurance industry. From online insurance queries to social media marketing, you're already living in the digital realm every day. 

When you have a new insurance client, what do you talk about? Insurance, of course: but whether you have E&O insurance or not, you need to make sure that your insurance communication is clear.

Are you a website wizard, or would you prefer that online marketing goes away? Whether you're new to the insurance business or you've been in it for many years, you may not have a strong comfort level with SEO.

You're tired of the same old insurance marketing bag of tricks. 

If you're looking for something more, consider influencer marketing.

When it comes to advertising, are you a native speaker? Insurance marketing can feel unnatural at first, but your insurance agency needs to become fluent in marketing so that you can help people get to know your business.

Do insurance agents need insurance? It might seem like an insuranceagency would automatically secure the right insurance for their business, but that's not always the case. 

Managing insurance employees and their jobs can be difficult. It all starts with finding the right employees. 

What's up in the insurance field? Whether you're looking for insurance jobs or trying to look into the future at your agency, you need to know about emerging trends in the insurance industry.

Does the thought of starting a blog make you want to call in sick to work, not just for a day but for the whole week? Unfortunately, blogging isn't a passing trend and you can't hide from it forever.

You want to know how to sell insurance to Millennials, but they're more than just a group of leads. Millennials are a powerful group of consumers, and they're an equally powerful group of employees.

The vast majority of professional liability claims have a common theme - an upset client. A client who has been damaged due to a negligent error or omission by a financial representative is obviously justified in making a claim to recoup his losses. 

Sometimes the customer is actually wrong. What happens when a customer is mistaken or completely off-base? An angry customer can be problematic for your insurance marketing.

Although news headlines highlight data breaches involving large corporations industry studies show that the majority of data breaches, including ransomware incidents, involve much smaller firms.

Who's listening to your insurance clients? If you're more focused on building your agency than on having a dialogue between you and your clients, you could miss out on many key insurance marketing opportunities.

As an insurance company, you think of parents as one of your key demographics. After all, parents have insurance needs that can differ substantially from the needs of those without children.

You made a mistake. It's also possible that you didn't make a mistake but a customer is unhappy anyway. You get to work and discover that a misunderstanding has blown up on social media, and the comments are pouring in.

When your hiring new insurance staff, you know that your employees need good communication skills. What does good communication really mean? 

The children have flown, and now your insurance clients have an empty nest. What do they need from your insurance company? The empty nest is a time of great change for your clients, and their insurance needs change as well.

The written word is a critical part of modern communications. We've moved from face-to-face communication to the telephone, but today text messages, social media posts, and blog content rule the internet. 

In this E&O claim scenario, an agent was asked to write a landlord's policy on a new property for a long time client who owned a number of residential rental properties near a local college campus. 

When should you email to people? The question is so simple, but emailing at the right time has an impact. 

Your clients are getting older. Some are astonished that they now have active teens at home. As you support your clients through their different life stages and transitions, you'll note that having teenage children adds an entirely new dimension to your clients' insurance needs. 

There's nothing like new parenthood to send people into a protective panic. First-time parents want to make sure that every product that they buy is ideal for their new baby.

You're in business. You are connected to your customers. You are connected to your employees. But, are you connected to a community of your peers? 

Why are you marketing, anyway? At times, your insurance marketing may seem like a lot of work for little gain.

What kind of capital does your agency have? You may have a wealth of financial resources to draw upon, or you may just have the people who are involved in making your agency great.

Your office is happy, your business is thriving, and while you have navigated ups and downs like any other business, you feel like your company offers solid insurance jobs. 

Combine a simple, time-tested strategy, talented team and the commitment to execute the plan, and you’ve got a winning play. In the games of business and football, getting ahead is all about blocking and tackling. 

In this monthly E&o insurance claim scenario, a small town agent whose client was always late in paying his life insurance premium drove to the client's home every month to pick up the premium check.

Parents of young children are busy people. They're juggling careers while caring for children at the same time. They need to research and act on that research quickly. 

Insurance is a great benefit for your employees, but did you realize that it's a benefit for your company as well? 

When you're hiring for insurance jobs at your agency, you want an employee with experience, right? If you need someone to do the job well, you don't need to focus your hiring only on those with a resume that's packed full of industry experience. 

When you look at data, what do you see? If you see lists of numbers that don't make any sense, you aren't seeing the real beauty of data. 

Is it time to put a spring into your insurance marketing step? When Spring is here, you can count on the growth of specific insurance marketing opportunities.

Will you be able to post your insurance jobs in a way that attracts the right people to work for your business? Hiring isn't just about job descriptions and cover letters. 

In a case of he said, she said, an agent with a longtime business client had also serviced the business owner's personal insurance account for many years. The personal account included homeowners, motorcycle and umbrella policies.

Who is a leader? When you think of a leader, do you think of a powerful person who pushes ideas forward? Your ideas of leadership could be getting in the way of finding and cultivating the true leaders at your insurance agency. 

Buyer personas can be a boon to your business. By creating profiles of your typical customers, how they behave, and how they respond to insurance marketing, you can inform both the development of your business products and your insurance marketing. 

It seems like marketing is all about Millennials, but who are these Millennials, anyway? You know that Millennials are people born between 1982 and the two decades after that.

When you see a leader in your mind's eye, what do you see? Is it someone wearing a suit and barking orders? Is it a visionary who's leading a group of people in a revolution? 

"Hello, there. Nice to meet you!" Are you making the best possible first impression on your insurance customers?

Watch your tone. Your parents said it to you, and here you are hearing it again. When you write, it's about much more than correct spelling and grammar or doing impeccable research. 

You try to make your insurance company a positive place to work. You do this because you want to create a pleasant work environment, but it's also a way to give your clients the best.

Send an email, get a customer. Is that how email marketing works? While email marketing may seem like a simple form of insurance marketing, it's just one part of the constantly shifting field of inbound marketing. 

A formal quality control program including a written office procedure manual should be one of the cornerstones of your agency's risk management program to prevent the risk of an E&O claim.

Why isn't marketing simpler? Many an insurance company has had this very question. 

A business is like a house. Without a strong foundation, your house may look good, but it has nothing to stand on.