Yes, you sell your insurance knowledge in the form of products and services for commissions, but that's not why your clients buy from you. Every successful insurance agent today understands that they do much more than transfer risk for their clients.
To become a successful insurance agent today, you have understand that they are marketers first, then publishers, creators, innovators, speakers, and value providers. This may seem like a foreign concept, but it's true.
No insurance producer can help their clients financially if they can't first paint an emotional picture through their words and ideas. Marketing is not about manipulation, tricks or tactics. Today's insurance buyers are too educated and untrusting to fall for inauthenticity. So, today's marketing is about great content.
Content is not limited to your website, emails, or product and service descriptions. Everything your prospect or customer comes in contact with about you or your agency is content. It is any medium through which you communicate with the people who may use your products or services.
For example, content could be the words on your webpage, the email sent to a client, a headline on your brochure or the words used during a prospect appointment.
There is no hiding from content: It will make you or break you. Yet, most agents don't seize this opportunity. In fact, most agents don't even know the opportunity exists.
Ann Handley, author of "Everybody Writes," says it best.
"Ours is a world where technology and social ideas have given us access and power: Everyone one of us has the awesome opportunity to own our own online publishing platforms — websites, blogs, email newsletters, Facebook pages, Twitter streams, and so on.
"I don't use the phrase 'awesome opportunity' lightly. The opportunity to change how we communicate with people we are trying to reach, and what we communicate, is tremendous — yet we aren't taking full advantage of it."
