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. However, it is also very hard to achieve, because to communicate to more audiences more effectively, you need to understand the diversity of your audiences and how to connect with them. Here’s how you can do that.
Understand the Scope of Diversity
What does diversity really mean, and how does it affect your insurance business? When you think about reaching out to diverse audiences, you might think about cultural and racial diversity, but diversity has many forms, including:
- Gender
- Sexual orientation
- Ethnicity
- Disability
- Age
- Economic diversity
- Cognitive diversity
This list is just a small selection of the many kinds of diversities that make up the people that you connect with every day at work. Due to the many diversities that are at play, each person may have very different needs and communication styles. Knowing the many different kinds of diversity can help you consciously consider the needs of many different audiences.
Know Each Audience’s Unique Needs
Every person has similar, yet personalized needs: the need for safety, for instance, and the need to feel that we are protecting our homes and families. According to Info Entrepreneurs, “you won’t persuade anyone that they want or need to buy what you’re offering unless you clearly understand what it is your customers really want.” The first step in effectively communicating with your diverse audiences is to get to know them well. You need to understand them in all of their diversity, including:
- Who they are – their demographics
- What they do
- Why they are buying your products
- How they prefer to buy your products – for instance, in person vs online
- Their financial means
- What makes them feel happy
- What the expectations are in your customer relationship. For instance, are they relying on you as a stable source of information?
- What they think about your business and how you can make the most of that
Communicate With Different Audiences
Combine your understanding of the diversity of your audiences with your understanding of their needs to communicate more effectively. Here are some ideas on how to do that.
- Hire a diverse workforce so that you have people in your group of employees who can relate to different groups of customers and provide insight.
- Show diversity in your marketing materials. Make people feel more comfortable.
- Create many different ways for different customers to engage with your business. For instance, one customer group might prefer to renew online, while another might like to talk with you in person. Make things easy for both groups.
- Develop different product pitches and different products for different demographics. For instance, are you ready to talk with your clients with disabilities about how modifications to their homes are covered under their home insurance?
- Pay attention to nonverbal and verbal cues when you are communicating with customers, so that you can better understand their concerns.
- Strive for clarity in communications. The more buzzwords or metaphors that you use, the harder it can be for some of your audience to understand what you are talking about.
- Intentionally develop trusting relationships with your customers so that you can ask how communication is going. Be willing to accept and integrate feedback from your clients.
Get ready for better insurance communication this year. At American Agents Alliance, we offer membership benefits such as a 20 percent discount off Constant Contact, so that you can stay in touch with your clients. Contact us today to learn more.
