Marketing Challenge: Moving Insurance Clients from Retention to Advocacy

When it comes to marketing in most insurance agencies, there is no shortage of time, effort and money spent to build awareness and get prospective clients in the front door.

We need a shinier, flashier website! We should be taking advantage of Google and Facebook advertising! I want more SEO, one of our insurance companies told me we aren't on page one for the search term 'insurance'.

These are all valid things to keep in mind as we select marketing campaigns and a budget. But what about retaining more clients than last year? What about getting more referrals and online reviews from clients? When we accomplish those last goals we convert run of the mill clients from ones who might renew next year to those that definitely will. In the process of converting ordinary clients to brand advocates, referrals and positive online reviews also increase.

Some numbers to back up the idea that devoting a little marketing love to keeping clients and moving them toward advocacy:

• The average cost of customer acquisition in insurance is between $487 and $900. A new client doesn't really become profitable until the first, second or maybe even the third renewal. You definitely want to keep a client around long enough for that to happen.
• Insurance agencies who improve retention by 5 points increase profitability by 25% to 95% over a five year period.

Given those numbers it seems reasonable to think that a little marketing love in the form of campaigns and budget should be devoted to building a relationship with clients.

As seen above, the cost of customer acquisition varies and that variation depends on the type of business you are targeting but also the marketing methods you use to get those new clients. Nothing costs less than a referral and nothing converts at a higher rate, another argument for being deliberate about moving clients along in their journey to advocacy.

Clients who are ambivalent about your agency may be appreciative about premium dollars you saved them, recommendations you provided or the alacrity with which your staff handled a policy change. What is missing is the emotional connection that client-advocates feel. Here are some ideas for keeping clients and getting them to the advocates plateau.

Humanize your insurance agency

Your agency is made up of real people so let their real sides come through. Include bios on your website with photos and videos of your staff and share the kind of personal information that creates an emotional connection. For example, 'Joe Smith devotes a week every year to Habitat for Humanity, helping to create affordable housing in our community.' Let your website visitors connect with your staff on a more personal level.

Nothing humanizes like face-to-face but video comes close

Video email, video in Facebook posts, video distributed from your agency's YouTube channel... all of them should feature your staff. It's a lot easier to feel like you've gotten to know someone after watching a video than it is from reading an email or text-only Facebook post.

Leverage social media

Post to Facebook. Post to LinkedIn. If you want to use other platforms, great, but the aforementioned platforms are table stakes. Encourage your clients to follow you on social media. It will give you another touch point and the increase in 'likes' will boost awareness of your agency since increases in likes means your posts show up in more news feeds.

Don't forget about email

Email still works, though open rates have declined. For some clients, this may be the only way to reach them. You can share the same content you are posting on social media or your website in the form of blog posts but be sure to use video when you can.

Don't wait until renewal to educate

Use video to explain the claims process, evaluate the benefit of a higher deductible, the role of UM/UIM coverage in the context of the 32 million uninsured drivers or the number of drivers with inadequate limits (https://www.iii.org/automobile-financial-responsibility-laws-by-state). If you are seeing an unusual amount of claims due to one cause, say water back up, do a video educating clients (and others) about how to avoid a claim like this.

Don't sell

Remember, we are trying to create an emotional bond. Telling people you sell life insurance, that you recommend higher liability limits or an umbrella policy isn't going to create that bond. Educating them so they can make more informed insurance decisions, involving them in your insurance agency's community and charitable endeavors and making your staff seem like real, relatable people will create an emotional bond.

Frequency, Channels, Topics

You don't need to be in front of your clients every week but that's not a bad goal to shoot for, and by using a combination of channels like email, social media and YouTube, weekly touches are eminently possible.

As for the topics... we touched on that above. Generally speaking, you will want your 'touches' to make these points:

• We are here to educate first, we aren't insurance salesmen.
• We aren't a shifting collection of anonymous faces from cubicle-land. We are real people in your community and we share the same concerns and experiences you do.
• When we do sell insurance, we want to make you the savviest consumer possible - before you buy.

That's it. Armed with these few guiding principles you will find a wealth of topics to share with clients and you'll find that more clients than ever become, not just renewing clients, but brand ambassadors.