Marketing your agency requires a delicate balancing of budget and resources. As a small business, it is difficult to compete with more established organizations that have more spending power and resources. So, you must get creative in order to break through the noise and make people take notice of your agency. Fortunately, there is no shortage of great, low-cost or free marketing ideas available.

The following list contains sixty of the most effective insurance agency marketing ideas you can apply today to start growing your book of business. You don’t have to implement them all right away, but over time you should incorporate as many of these ideas as possible into your marketing strategy.

The Basics

1. Develop customer personas so that you understand exactly who you are marketing to.
2. Create a bullet-proof marketing plan.
3. Borrow ideas from your most successful competitors.
4. Use consistent branding across all channels.
5. Under promise and over deliver on your services.
6. Gain valuable insight from industry publications and magazines.
7. Inspire customers to talk about your agency and keep coming back to you by providing epic customer service.
8. Personalize your service offerings.

Planning

1. Time your marketing messages and use the holidays to attract clients when they are in the buying mood.
2. Maintain a dynamic marketing plan and revise regularly based on performance.

Online Marketing

1. Use content marketing to become the go-to expert in your field.
2. Appeal to your prospects emotions in your advertising.
3. Use language your target audience can relate to.
4. Focus on understanding your local area demographic.
5. Use virtual assistance to expand your agency staff without adding huge expense.
6. Use Google Alerts to monitor mentions of your agency.
7. Set up a website for your agency.
8. Make sure your website is optimized for mobile.
9. Add a blog to your website.
10. Make sure your blog and website are on the same domain.
11. Keep your website and blog updated with fresh, valuable content.
12. Keep a consistent content editorial.
13. Save time and energy by repurposing content, i.e. turn blog posts into ebooks, images into infographics, or videos into presentations.
14. Map content to your agency’s unique buyer journey.
15. Expand your reach by translating your website into different languages.
16. Create impactful, engaging videos.
17. Use infographics to convey complex ideas in an easily digested visual format.
18. Create “explainer videos” to help people understand your products and services quickly and easily.

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Brand Development

1. Start an email list to keep in touch and add more value to your clients.
2. Respond to all online feedback (good or bad) to show your audience that you care.
3. Answer customer inquiries quickly and accurately.
4. Make it easy for people to get in touch with you.
5. Add text messaging to your marketing campaigns.
6. Make a greater impact by using visual marketing such as infographics and video.
7. Get your business listed in all the top online business directories, including Yelp, Google My Business, and Bing.
8. Use press releases to tell the world about all the good things your agency is doing, and gain more brand exposure.

Getting Found

1. Create a referral marketing campaign and encourage current clients to send new prospects to your agency.
2. Develop strategic partnerships, whenever possible, to boost the chances of success.
3. Use pay-per-click advertising on Google and social media to gain greater brand exposure and start attracting prospects fast.
4. Find and engage other influencers in your industry. You can gain traction faster by leveraging someone else’s audience.
5. Find potential press opportunities by using Haro (Help a Reporter Out).
6. Capitalize on trending stories to amplify your marketing success.
7. Use forums, such as Reddit, to find, engage, and proactively solve people’s problems.

Social Media Marketing

1. Create a profile on all relevant social media platforms to begin expanding your agency brand reach.
2. Use social media to build relationships with prospects and other influencers, rather than as a tool to primarily sell your services.
3. Use “vanity URLs” in your social profiles whenever possible. Most social networks allow you to change the default profile URL, which looks like this Facebook.com/business1357B5Z392, to one that carries your brand name like Facebook.com/YourBrand. The latter is good for SEO and building brand recognition.
4. Track how much your agency is being talked about on social media using a tool like Mention.
5. Follow your competitors followers on social media to boost your following. Tools such as CrowdFire can help.
6. Find custom and “lookalike” audiences on Facebook’s ad platform. That allows you to find a similar group of people to those you have successfully marketed to in the past.
7. Save time by using social media automation tools like Buffer and Hootsuite.
8. Purchase ads and content boosts to get your brand in front of people faster.
9. Include calls-to-action in your content
10. Setup and use analytics to gather important data about your marketing efforts.

Offline Marketing

1. Combine online and offline marketing techniques.
2. Get involved with local community events.
3. Use direct mail to surprise and delight customers.
4. Boost your network by attending industry events.
5. Reach new audiences by sponsoring organisations and local sports competitions.
6. Build credibility and content with cases studies of your current customers.
7. Don’t be afraid to ask current clients for referrals. If they are happy with your services they will likely be delighted to refer their friends and family.

Carl Willis CEO/Lead Strategist

This results-driven approach not only generated a flood of high-quality leads but also kept advertising expenditures at an unprecedented low. Carl's ingenuity not only cultivated a distinguished online brand but also positioned him as a formidable force, outshining competitors and achieving consistent business growth without the financial pitfalls of ineffective marketing campaigns.

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