Are you active on social media? For most businesses today, the answer is ‘yes’.
What about you?
Is it a resounding yes or a less-than-enthusiastic one? If you’re struggling to understand the role of social media in your insurance marketing, know that you’re not alone: many businesses struggle as they try to define what they are doing on social media sites.
What are you doing on social media, and what should you be doing to promote authentic engagement with your insurance customers?
Transitioning Away From Advertising
While you can certainly advertise on social media, your social media account must be about more than advertising. In traditional advertising, you send out promotional material to a wide or targeted audience, asking them to think about purchasing your product. Your focus is on the attributes of the product and its benefits to your audience.
You may try to get them excited about buying by playing on their emotions as well: you may play into their fears for their family or provide the enjoyment or camaraderie of a joke. The bottom line is, your insurance marketing goal is to ultimately get your insurance customers to buy your product or to turn leads into paying customers.
Social Media’s Role in Information Transfer
The use of social media as a platform or tool to promote your products can be a very successful way of doing business.
Social media can play the role that traditional advertising plays. You can create a post that describes your new insurance product, for example. You can advertise an informational workshop on auto insurance renewal for seniors who are concerned about losing their license as they get older. You can give information about this workshop and ask people to sign up.
More people conduct searches on their phones than they do on desktop computers, and they often look to social media for cues and reviews. According to Hubspot, “Facebook offers some of the most powerful, innovative and advanced ad units and targeting.” Ads on social media are organic, and your customers read them as they scroll through the rest of their social media feed.
However, this is not the only role of social media in insurance promotion, nor is it the most important role.
Pursuing Social Media Engagement
Social media is more than just a venue to share information. It’s also a way to connect with your audience. While many businesses look at the “media” aspect of social media, it’s important to consider the social aspect as well. Social media is about sharing:
- Questions. What do you want to ask your leads or insurance customers? Hold a conversation about this and learn more about your insurance audience.
- Assistance. According to Entrepreneur, “While traditional support channels hide the customer behind the interaction, leaving you with just an email or phone number, social media support is a real glimpse into your customers’ lives.”
- Excitement. Offer rewards and special offers that customers can only get by being connected to you through social media.
- Development. Social media conversations can help you develop new products or new ways of reaching out to your customers about your products.
- Connections. Connect with other businesses in your local area or other businesses with similar needs and interests to your own.
- Hiring. Whether you’re looking for volunteers for a community event or you need to find a new staff person, you can do so through social media.
While online advertising and information sharing is one role that social media plays in your business development, social media can open up a world of connection with your customers as well.
At American Agents Alliance, we’re here to help you with your insurance networking and your insurance marketing. Contact us and see how our many membership benefits can help you and your business grow.
