Insurance Agency Facebook Strategy – It’s Now Mandatory

Whether you want to admit it or not, facebook has exploded as a key marketing tool for anyone who wants to have strong brand recognition. With over 70% of all insurance agencies using social media it’s gotten much more competitive and harder to generate results. Hopefully by this point you realize that with facebook you can grow a large distribution of “Fans”. When marketing or “posting”, those fans become your guaranteed distribution or virtual reach. With a solid posting strategy you have the ability to actually increase your distribution by touching your fans friends through interaction occurring. At the end of the day this won’t lead to instant online sales while you sleep. However it will lead to “planting the seeds” of your agency in people’s minds. As we know with insurance, it’s not till something happens in our life that we need it. When that life event occurs in your follower you have a much more likely chance that seed will sprout into a referral phone call from a friend of a fan!

So what does your insurance agency really need to do to be successful with facebook? In my opinion you need the three “P’s”. (P)age purpose, (P)romotion, (P)osting Strategy. If you can implement all three on a consistent basis you will be above and beyond most insurance agencies. The problem is most agencies have fallen into a bad trap with social media. They have heard so many times that they need it, that they rushed to create a presence. There was never any thought process on its purpose and game plan. Now these agencies are left with a lot of wasted time and having a social media presence just to have one. What good is that?

Your Page Purpose –

The first key to success is defining what your facebook agency page actually offers people. What does it actually provide its fans consistently? If you want to seriously increase your “Fans” and distribution you can’t just tell people “Like my page, become a fan”. Let’s say you have lunch with your top client and you say, “Hey Bob, we now have a facebook insurance agency page, we would love if you went home and clicked “like” and became a fan.” Well what would you say to Bob if he said “Why?, what does it offer me?”. My point is, almost everyone has a facebook page now for their insurance agency. The ones that are going to rise to the top have an actual purpose for the page, it offers something for free. That purpose maybe promoting one of your clients businesses each week or offering a silly golf joke every Friday but it’s still more then you may have now! Once you define your page purpose it will make getting fans and posting much easier.

Promotion –

Once you have a page purpose, it makes it much easier to promote the page and get fans. Instead of telling everyone to “Like” your page, you can say, “123 Insurance is proud to announce our new free value added service. Visit facebook.com/123Insurance and become a fan today to receive weekly silly golf jokes and special advertising discounts from our clients, which is only available to our fans! Just visit the page and click the “LIKE” button at the top middle of the screen.”

Promoting should be done consistently through many traditional and nontraditional means. Featuring it in your client newsletter, website, email signature, send it to your facebook friends, LinkedIn connections and any other means that people are likely to pay attention to.

Posting Strategy

Now that your page purpose is in place, you have a road map of what you have to post. If you have promised your fans silly golf tips every Friday, then you must come through and post them. Now that your page purpose is in place, you have a road map of what you have to post. If you have promised your fans silly golf tips every Friday, then you must come through and post them. Of course you still want to offer a balance of three kinds of posts. (1) Projecting yourself as experts in the products you sell. (2) Agency promotion – Making sure people know the products you offer. (3) Interactive Posts – Posting things that people will “Like” and “Comment on” giving you the ability to increase your distribution.

Facebook is a very powerful tool for anyone looking to influence potential consumers. The problem is its getting more and more complicated to get results. To get to the next level you need to have a game plan that you can consistently execute and modify. If you don’t have that plan then you’re just hoping for results and in business none of ever want to truly rely on guessing.

They key to getting referrals for your insurance agency with social media is to actually start off getting all of your clients to connect to your social media presence. Then when you post things you can attempt to get your clients to “LIKE, Comment or Share” the post. This makes that post go out to all of your client’s social media connections, which is likely where referrals are going to come from anyway.

Inviting your clients via social media or traditional email marketing is imperative for social media “Distribution Growth”. The “How To” verbiage that you use to do so is the key to success.

Here is an example of what most insurance agencies write to promote their page:

Bob’s Insurance created a facebook business page! Go to our page and LIKE it today!

Here is what we suggest.

Bob’s insurance continues to use technology and innovation to keep its clients in the loop when it comes to industry changes and updates. We’ve created a special facebook business page that offers industry news, ideas and fun tips. Just go to www.facebook.com/bobinsurance and click the “LIKE” button at the top middle of the screen to receive our free value. Contact us if you want us to walk you through the process!

Ken French

www.benefitstore.net

973-607-1916 Ext 1

Ken@snoozzy.com

3 Steps For Getting More Agency Facebook Fans

As we move into the middle of 2013 it is now pretty obvious that a high percentage of agencies not only use facebook, but use it strategically to generate referrals via their current book of business. The formula is pretty simple; get as many of your clients as possible to “Like” your page. This allows them to potentially receive your daily posts.  Next you post four or five days a week, with the goal that your clients “interact” with your posts. (Interact means they click Like, Comment or Share under the post on Facebook.) If you can get interaction on your post, it then goes to those clients connections. Touch enough of your clients “friends” and you generate referral phone calls.

The above strategy sounds easy enough, however likely only 10% of all agencies have a strategy in place to actually achieve these results. The biggest part of the strategy is getting your clients to become “fans”. Below are 3 steps to make it happen.

Step 1 – Setup your agency facebook page so it is complete and professional looking. This sounds obvious but most agencies over look it. Make sure your logo is present and that you have an impressive main image. Also make sure your contact info and agency description are inserted into the “Edit Page” area.

Step 2 – This is the step most agencies skip! Most think step 2 is to market the page and get more fans. Actually step 2 is to start posting, even though you may have minimal or no fans. We suggest you post once a day for two weeks. Make sure your posts look good and have value. Once you’ve posted for 2 weeks straight the page will look active and have value.  Now when you market the page, more people will see a reason to click “LIKE”.

Step 3 – It’s time to market the page. First we suggest you click the “Build Audience - Invite Friends” tab at the top of the business page. This allows you to send an invite to all of your current facebook friends about the page. You can expect about a 30% conversion ratio. This means if you invite 100 friends you will get about 30 fans. Next we suggest you send out a special email to your entire client base. The verbiage on how to become a fan are very important, below is a sample. You should be sending out variations of this email three times a year. Remember you’re never done adding connections, it’s a constant process.

Sample Verbiage

Bob’s insurance is excited to announce the relaunch of our social media presence. Each day we will be posting insurance insight and interesting ideas. To receive this information you need to become a fan of our page. To become a fan go to www.facebook.com/benefitstore.net and click the “LIKE” button at the top middle right of the page.