A business is like a house. Without a strong foundation, your house may look good, but it has nothing to stand on. When you're looking at your insurance agency's branding, you must make sure that it rests on a foundation of values. What makes your particular insurance agency valuable and valued by your customers? Ensure that your branding reflects this strong foundation.
Talk About Your Mission
What is the mission of your insurance business? "To sell more insurance, of course," just won't suffice. If you're a small insurance agency, you may not spend a lot of time articulating the reasons why you're here. However, a strong mission statement can help you define your purpose and become clear about the path to action.
Keep your mission statement short, realistic, and up to date. If you want to become the best community-oriented insurance company for your city's auto insurance market, say that in your mission statement.
Focus your attention on becoming the strongest player in your market. This means that you'll put your branding focus onto auto insurance, creating blogs and e-books that focus on the topic. Your email newsletters and educational opportunities will generate interest in auto insurance and increase the capacity of families in your community to choose the product that's right for them. By creating a mission statement with focus, you create opportunities to position yourself as a topic expert in your insurance marketing. You also get clarity that allows you to focus on a single mission rather than jumping at every opportunity that comes along.
Understand Your Values
While you might talk about your mission from time to time, chances are you don't have as much conversation about your corporate values, especially if you run a small, independent insurance agency. After all, you're so busy working on the day-to-day that there's not a lot of time to stop and reflect.
Together with your mission, your values form part of the strong foundation of your insurance agency. Consumers are looking at the values each business holds and whether or not each business lives up to those values. Your customers want to make sure that your brand will live up to the reputation you're putting forward in your insurance marketing. They do research and they look on social media and review sites. Customers want to make a decision that's in line with their own values as a consumer.
For example, if they regularly support small businesses in the community, they may turn to your independent insurance agency over a larger insurance agency simply because you have a strong reputation and you're a community-oriented business. Make sure that you let give people proof of your values in action so that they can make a decision about whether your business connects with their values.
Telling Customers About Your Values
Telling customers about your values can be helpful for your insurance marketing. While you can talk about your values directly, you can also express them through your actions:
Understand what makes you a unique asset to the insurance community. What is the one thing that you can do better than anyone else? Celebrate this in your insurance marketing.
Show customers the actions that you take that are in line with your values. For example, you could sponsor a local sports team and share this on your social media.
Design your website and other communication tools in a way that reflects both your mission and your values. If your business is all about supporting the local community, feature your community on the front page.
Be a leader in your field. If your focus is on selling auto insurance to your local community, become known for your competency in this area and for the valuable information you share with the community.
Communicate with your customers in a tone that echoes your values. Communicate content that's in line with your business' expressed values. If you're upbeat and casual, be that way in your social media communications as well.
Are you working to develop a long-lasting, independent insurance agency? At the American Agents Alliance, we're here to support your business development and growth. Take a look at the many membership benefits that can support your further education, and enjoy learning about industry players and trends at our annual American Agents Alliance Convention—the largest P&C insurance conference in the west!
