Making Social Media Work for Your Insurance Brokerage – Part One

We touched on social media last week but we’ve found that it’s an area that many brokers need help with to get the best results. So this week we’re going to begin to take a more in depth look at how to make your social media strategy succeed.

Go where your audience is

This might seem obvious but in the rush to have a place “everywhere” many brokers forget where their target market spend their time online. Pinterest, for example, is one of the big success stories of the last few years. However, the demographic of users is skewed. Who are the main users of Pinterest? Professional women aged under 35 who live in the United States. Perfect if your product is targeted at that space – but not really worth your effort if it’s not.

So do some research and find out where your audience hangs out.

Insurance Broker Marketing
Is your marketing making a splash in the right places? Smart brokers can benefit from more targeted social networks.

Don’t rely purely on big names

Facebook, Flickr, Google+, Pinterest, Twitter, WordPress, etc. have the “big name” but it’s easy to forget that these often don’t cater to your specific audience. Wouldn’t it be better to find a smaller social network that caters to people in your geographic location (like this one for London)? Or a network that caters for your area of business? (For example, Pet Crash, if your product is mainly pet insurance).

These networks may not offer access to the same number of people as Facebook or Twitter but they do offer a much more targeted approach.

Don’t rely on Social Advertising – Do rely on Social Marketing

Most of the big social networks (and many of the smaller ones) allow you to place advertising that in theory generates business faster than social marketing (e.g. creating a presence and building an audience for it). As General Motors found out – this often isn’t the case. They pulled their advertising from Facebook when the company found; “that paid ads on Facebook have little impact on car sales” that’s a $10 million lesson you can benefit from.

GM haven’t pulled their Facebook page; they recognize how beneficial an honest content strategy can be for engaging and keeping an audience for their products. They’ve just learned that there’s no short cut for “quick wins”.

Insurance brokers that want to make the most of social media need to start with the basics and that means determining where their audience is and how they will connect with them. There are no short cuts to increased profits in this space but there are real benefits to be had from winning over an audience in the right way. In the next part of this series we’ll take a look at how you can achieve just that. Technology is a big part of the future for successful brokers who want to stay successful.

One comment

  1. This is true what you are saying always start from the bottom and work your way up to the top, especially when starting a new business. I work at an Insurance Broker and we offer Technology Insurance, some of the things we cover are Negligence, Breach of Contract, and Fraud, so its good to have this kind of insurance to look at.

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