What's the secret to insurance agency marketing? It's not your ability to read your customers' minds, but it is an ability to read your customers' personas. An in-depth understanding of your customers and their various motivations can help you target your marketing plan. While this technique is used by larger companies, it's rarely used by independent insurance agencies. Developing strong personas for your customers can give your business an edge.
What is a Customer Persona?
Who are these people who come to your insurance agency? With customer personas, you seek to discover this and give them a name. You might have general impressions, but do you have a deeper understanding of your customers? A customer persona is a series of profiles that allows you to separate you customers into different categories based on their demographics, interests, and needs. In turn, this will indicate how your agency can pinpoint how to speak to these specific interests, demographics, and needs.
Where to Begin When Developing Personas
How do you begin to collate information for your personas? You can begin by tracking personal information about your clients. This might include:
Marital status
Employment
Age
Gender
Whether they have children
Look at other questions too, such as their insurance needs and the challenges and life changes that lead them to need insurance. Start to place similar demographics, needs, and interests into profiles that will be the basis of client personas. Be open-minded: For example, not all seniors have the same insurance needs or life circumstances, and you might have more than one persona in an age group.
How Personas Connect with Insurance Agency Marketing
Once you understand the different backgrounds and needs of your customers, examine how these connect with your insurance agency marketing. Ask yourself the following questions about each developing persona:
How do they interact with advertising?
What advertising media do they interact with on a regular basis?
How do they use social media?
How do they prefer to interact with vendors?
Where is your first point of contact with them?
Do they research and interact with vendors online?
What makes them decide to purchase a product or service?
What would make them feel satisfied and well-protected?
Using Client Personas
Use this information and pair it with information about your current clients' interests, background, and insurance needs to inform the development of your insurance marketing plan. For example, you might discover that expectant and new mothers tend to research life insurance online and prefer to contact you through email or a contact form. Give them the opportunity to find you online using inbound marketing techniques such as blogs targeted at new parents. You'll be able to better tailor your marketing campaigns to the specific needs of your clients and communicate with them in the ways that they wish to communicate with you.
When you're working to hone your insurance agency marketing, contact the American Agents Alliance. We are a network of independent insurance agents, just like you, who understand your needs. Contact us today to learn more about the many membership benefits and learn how we can be stronger together.
