All businesses, regardless of their industry, size or customer base should be investing in marketing. The insurance industry, despite being considered a commodity at times, is no different. One of the key goals of insurance marketing is to build brand awareness and establish trust and credibility with potential customers in order to gain new clients, and retain current, as customers need to trust the company they are purchasing insurance from in order to feel confident in their decision.
Insurance companies use a variety of marketing techniques, such as advertising, public relations, and content marketing. Advertising can be used to reach a large audience and raise awareness about the company and its products, while public relations can help to build relationships with key influencers and media outlets. Content marketing, on the other hand, can provide valuable information and support to potential customers, which can help to establish trust and credibility.
In this article, we will discuss some of the ways insurance agencies can utilize content marketing in order to drive leads and build trust.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is a strategic approach to creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience with the goal of driving profitable customer action (Content Marketing Institute). This approach is particularly effective for insurance agencies, as it allows them to establish trust and credibility with potential customers while also providing valuable information that can help them make informed decisions about their insurance needs. To get started on creating your own strong content marketing strategy, visit our helpful infographic.
There are many types of content that insurance agencies can produce in order to do this, but first it is important for the company to do some research into their customer to understand what they are looking for, and cater their content towards this. One helpful way to begin this strategy is to research the keywords that the customer is looking for online and build the marketing strategy around this. Once the customer is understood, you can add these keywords to different types of content for your audience:
Types of Content:
Relatable Blogs and Articles:
Once you understand your customer and relevant keywords, including these specific keywords in all content is key, it will help organic SEO and Google Ranking, and your customers will establish trust and credibility knowing their problem is understood. Writing blogs and articles about customers’ experience with insurance, how to streamline the insurance shopping or claims process, ways to save money etc. are great ways to appeal to your customer, give them valuable information and allow them to connect with you.
How-to’s:
Many people take to the internet once they need to take action with insurance and look for help filing a claim, or needing to know who to call when an accident happens, or how to pay a bill. Having all this information in a quick, digestible, and searchable format is key for great content marketing. You can publish how-to content as videos, an image carousel or quick bullet points.
Customer testimonials:
Showing potential customers why others find you easy to work with and trustworthy helps build your brand and credibility. Having small quotes, longer case studies, and even video testimonials are really important to the content you are producing.
Reviews:
Including an indexable review section is a great way to allow potential clients to get the true picture of what customers think about your company. Making your reviews indexable and searchable helps customers find reviewers similar to them, and let’s them read their thoughts. If you do business well, this should not be a scary thought and always ask for reviews from customers who tend to support you.
Maximizing readership with content marketing
When it comes to content marketing, yes content is king, but how it is presented and distributed is an equally important queen! To ensure the content you are producing is read, understood and leaves the reader wanting to return, there a few important tips to maximize your readership and engagement in your content marketing strategy:
Responsive content:
All content, whether it is on your website, a landing page or microsite, or a standalone piece of content should be responsive to any device it is viewed on. This allows readers full accessibility to your content regardless of their screen size and gives everyone the optimal viewing experience. Having a great user experience is key to content marketing.
Engaging content:
Of course finding the right keywords and relatable topics to create content on is important, but how this content is presented is important too. Adding images, videos and animations keeps your viewers engaged and producing content in a variety of ways, using multiple elements to tell your story increases your chances of conversions as readers will continue down the content and will maintain interest.
Interactive content:
Allowing feedback or interactivity in your content can really take your content to the next level. Adding polls, hyperlinks, buttons, and CTAs allows your readers to give you information and feedback and allows them to feel like they are part of the experience. Read the 6 types of interactive content to generate leads for more insight.
Branded content:
You will want to ensure that all of the content you produce meets your brand guidelines, all text, fonts, colors, imagery etc. is the same across all pieces of content and a reader can tell immediately that they are part of the same family. Often this is a lengthy process to ensure branding guidelines are consistently met, but using a content experience platform like Experios can make this process much more efficient.
Easily navigable content:
Regardless of where you content is distributed, it has to be easily navigated on any device. Indexable content, an interactive contents menu, page button navigators, back and forward functions and an easy to use search menu is key to any piece of content, to allow readers to digest the content at their own pace and have a natural intuitive experience.
Benefits of Content Marketing for Insurance
To create an effective content marketing strategy for an insurance agency, it’s important to first identify the target audience and their needs. This will help to ensure that the content created is relevant and valuable to the audience. Once the target audience has been identified, insurance agencies can create a variety of content, such as blog posts, articles, videos, and social media posts, to provide valuable information and support to their customers.
One of the key benefits of content marketing for insurance agencies is that it allows them to differentiate themselves from their competitors. With so many insurance options available, it can be difficult for customers to know which agency to choose. By providing valuable and informative content, insurance agencies can establish themselves as a trusted and knowledgeable source of information, which can help to attract and retain customers.
Another benefit of content marketing for insurance agencies is that it can help to build relationships with potential customers. By regularly providing valuable and relevant content, insurance agencies can establish themselves as a go-to source of information and support for their customers. This can help to build trust and credibility, which are essential for building long-term relationships with customers.
In addition to creating content, it’s also important for insurance agencies to regularly distribute their content to their target audience. This can be done through a variety of channels, such as email newsletters, social media, and other online platforms. Read the 5 distribution channels to increase your readership for more tips. By regularly distributing content, insurance agencies can ensure that their audience is consistently engaged and informed about the latest developments and information in the insurance industry.
Key Take-Aways
Content marketing for insurance companies is a valuable strategy and there are various approaches you can take to find the right fit for your agency, but it is always important to research your customer first, do a keyword search to find out what they are interested in and base your content around this. Then build engaging, interactive, branded and easily navigable content that will reach your audience where they are and provide them information of value.
About Experios
Experios is 3D Issue’s all new Content Experience platform that allows you to build both internal communications and external content easily, while implementing your company branding. You can create annual reports, newsletters and brochures for your employees as well as your customers. Experios contains a full tracking and analytics package that can link to your Google Analytics so you can always measure the success of your digital content. You can get started with Experios for free today, schedule a demo or start your free trial.
