Let’s Get Real
How Insurance Agents and Agencies Can Maximize Real-Time Marketing
A whirlwind of events over the course of the last two years has impacted personal finances like no other time in nearly a generation. The ability to respond quickly to current situations that directly affect your clients is considered to be one of the greatest components of quality service. Being prepared for changes and ready to react can help you to provide information to your clients quickly and maintain relevance within your marketing messages. It’s all about real time marketing (RTM) — one of the most important methods of marketing within the insurance industry.
How do you effectively manage real time marketing?
GS National Insurance has 5 recommendations to help you evaluate your campaigns for RTM effectiveness:
1) Sophistication Meets Speeds. In the past, insurance agents had to develop marketing campaigns that were clever, on target, and sophisticated. Today, agents need to deliver messages that maintain a unique and clever connection with audiences while working within a short window of opportunity. Not only does information come about or shift quickly, but your audiences are also being flooded with content, shortening the time that they’ll spend consuming the messages that you’re presenting. Be sure that your marketing messages are attention-grabbing and quickly get to the point of your primary topic. When executed successfully, RTM captures and holds the attention of your audience and helps to further the effectiveness of your overall marketing campaign.
2) Keep An Ear Out. In order to maximize your RTM, you’ll want to keep listening for new trends and new messages that are related to the insurance industry. To help you keep current, consider setting up Google alerts related to buzz topics within insurance. Check out the agendas of publicized insurance conferences to help you get some ideas as to some of the topics you should be listening for. Be sure to follow insurance publications and newsletters to see what’s making headlines and how you can incorporate that information into your marketing.
3) Buckle In. RTM reminds us that our marketing is never about a single campaign. Be ready to continually connect with your audiences and adapt your marketing campaigns over time, with each campaign building on the last. Real-time marketing evokes a sense of urgency. You’ll want to present your information as promptly and as concisely as you can, while understanding that each message is just part of an ongoing conversation that you’re having with your clients and prospective clients. Plan to maintain a frequent presence on social media and/or keep your website updated with new information. If you’ve started a newsletter, be sure to have a plan for continuing to publish content. By making sure that you’re delivering timely messages through a consistent approach, you’ll be optimizing the success of every marketing message while meeting one of the fundamental components of effective RTM.
4) Think About Your Brand. Just because your RTM is a speedy execution of your messages, it doesn’t mean that you should compromise the integrity of your brand. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. For insurance agents, the “brand” is often all about their own, unique, highly individual personality. After all, your clients choose to work with you because of who you are and how they relate to you. Be sure to incorporate aspects of your unique personality into your marketing messages, helping to remind your clients of some of the traits that they appreciate most about you. Speak to your audiences like you’re speaking to just a single client in a one-on-one conversation. When your marketing connects with audiences in a real-life, down-to-earth way, it’s more memorable and ultimately more effective. Even if the information that you’re presenting is urgent and straightforward, always be looking for ways to present the information in ways that reinforce your brand and your own unique approach to communication.
5) Leave Breadcrumbs. Insurance agents often make the mistake of assuming that their clients — or potential clients — know where and how to reach them. Be sure to take time to let clients, colleagues, associates, leads, and referrals know where to find you. While this does entail the simplest forms of how to contact you, such as your phone number, email address, web address and social media handles, it also incorporates where you’re physically going to be located at various times throughout your community. If you’re planning to volunteer or be a sponsor at a local event, be sure to let your audiences know the what, why, when and where. If you’re involved with a community youth organization or other civic-minded association or special event, inform your social media followers. When you connect, in real-time, to the local and regional events and concerns that impact your community, you increase interest in what you have to say. Sharing this kind of content on social media, for example, boosts impressions of your posts while also helping to bring about more opportunities for dialogue and comments from your followers.
By improving the tactics behind RTM, you’re likely to discover hidden opportunities within all of your marketing. Today’s fast-paced society requires a rapid-fire approach to marketing messages; and you can rise to that challenge without compromising the strength of your messages’ presentation when you incorporate these techniques into your marketing. For more ways to enhance your marketing and grow your success faster, get to know GS National Insurance. Visit gsnational.com.
Sources:
• https://www.oktopost.com/blog/5-strategies-real-time-marketing
· https://www.synthesio.com/blog/8-tips-for-real-time-marketing-success
GS National Insurance is an independently owned insurance marketing organization. We specialize in helping independent advisors increase their Health, Life, and Annuity Business. Our primary focus is the senior health insurance marketplace. We combine technology and experience to deliver high-quality service and support. Learn more at gsnational.com
