Life insurance is something many individuals need but fail to consider when developing a financial plan. They may be unsure of what they need, or simply feel overwhelmed by the number of available options. If you’re interested in selling these products to your existing clients or attracting new clients to your business who are buying life insurance, a sound marketing strategy is crucial.
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Why Life Insurance Marketing Matters for Advisors
Marketing can help you scale your business by increasing your visibility and allowing you to position yourself as an expert. Given the often complex nature of life insurance products, prospective clients may be looking for someone they can trust to provide them with advice. If you’re not actively marketing life insurance services, that could be a significant missed opportunity to drive sales.
Here are four common ways that life insurance marketing can help you grow:
- Spotlight your brand. Establishing a solid brand identity is central to effective marketing. If a prospective client who’s still in the research phase of learning about life insurance remembers your brand in a way that has a positive association, they may be more likely to come back to you when they’re ready to move forward with buying.
- Highlight your expertise. Life insurance marketing is a chance to demonstrate to prospective clients how much you know about the products you’re selling. If you can win a prospective client’s trust through marketing, they may be more likely to consider turning to you to help fill their life insurance needs. Once you have them as a client, you can continue nurturing that trust to encourage loyalty, so they remain your client for the long term.
- Increase engagement. When someone’s searching for life insurance, they may be a blank slate in terms of understanding the different policy options: which one could be best for their situation or how much coverage they will need. Actively engaging with prospective clients to answer their questions or provide them with educational resources shows that you’re genuinely interested in helping them and it’s yet another chance to underscore how knowledgeable you are about life insurance.
- Stay ahead of the curve. Life insurance is constantly evolving as new products are developed to meet the changing needs of consumers. For example, there’s been increased interest in the possibilities that embedded insurance may offer to the underinsured and the uninsured. When you’re continuously fine-tuning your life insurance marketing strategy that can put you in a stronger position to capitalize on trends as they arise.
Proven Life Insurance Marketing Strategies for Advisors
Marketing is often a trial-and-error process as you test different strategies to learn what works and what doesn’t. How you shape your life insurance marketing plan can depend on several factors, including the type of clients you’re hoping to attract and your marketing budget.
With that in mind, here are four practical ways to market life insurance as an advisor:
Get to Know the Client
Understanding your ideal client is the cornerstone of any marketing plan. When you’re specifically talking about life insurance marketing, it’s important to consider where prospective clients are in the buying process.
That can make a difference in the marketing messaging you create and how it’s delivered. So first, consider what type of clients you’re hoping to attract. That can include those who are:
- Not actively looking for life insurance solutions yet
- People who are interested in buying a policy but are still in the information-gathering stage
- Investors who are ready to commit to buying a policy
Segmenting prospects this way can make it easier to determine which marketing channels to pursue. Remember that marketing doesn’t end with prospective clients either; you may need to reexamine how you’re marketing life insurance to your existing clients if you’re not getting the sales from those efforts you expect.
Develop Your Digital Marketing Plan
As people increasingly turn to online search tools to find answers to financial questions and get help from experts, you can’t afford to skip out on digital marketing. Some of the most effective ways to market life insurance online include:
- Ensuring that you have a user-friendly, professional website that displays your services and how you help clients meet their life insurance needs.
- Asking existing clients to offer testimonials or short reviews that you can feature on your website to build trust and demonstrate your expertise.
- Creating social media content, including short videos, long videos, polls and interactive quizzes, for the channels that your prospective clients spend time on most often.
- Utilizing search engine optimization (SEO) to craft content for your website or blog to drive search traffic to your business.
- Setting up business profiles for Google and Bing to increase visibility in local searches if you’re hoping to target life insurance buyers in your geographic area.
- Utilizing PR outreach to promote your business’s latest achievements or offer yourself as an expert source to financial publications.
- Being a guest on financial podcasts that discuss life insurance-related topics or developing a podcast of your own.
- Collaborating with financial influencers to tap into their audience and drive traffic to your website or social media channels.
- Developing an effective lead magnet to offer to website visitors as an incentive to join your email list.
- Sending regular email newsletters or updates to create an ongoing conversation with prospective clients or existing clients who are interested in buying life insurance.
- Investing in digital ads on social media or Google search so that it’s easier for those interested in life insurance to connect with your business.
You might want to try a combination of these strategies if you have the marketing budget for them. However, you may find it more effective to focus on just one or two at a time to see how prospective clients respond.
Don’t Neglect Offline Marketing
While establishing an online presence may be your primary marketing focus, don’t overlook the possibilities that could exist to attract new clients offline. Some of the best ways to market life insurance can include:
- Attending local trade shows or insurance events in your area as a participant and leading a free workshop or Q&A session for potential policy-seekers.
- Building goodwill in the local community by sponsoring a neighborhood event or a youth sports league.
- Leveraging direct mail marketing to reach out to people who may not be active on social media or simply prefer physical mail to email.
You can also turn to your existing clients for help with marketing life insurance services. Your current client base can be a built-in source of referral traffic. So, how do you get more client referrals?
Delivering top-tier service and ensuring that you exceed client expectations is an obvious first step. You can also encourage referrals by hosting client appreciation events to build loyalty, offering a referral incentive program or (tactfully) asking clients outright if they’d be interested in referring you to their friends, family members or coworkers who may be shopping for life insurance.
Consider Lead Generation
You could also try lead generation services to find clients who are interested in buying life insurance. That could mean buying life insurance leads online using a marketplace or promoting your business through a lead generation service. The advantage of doing so is that much of the heavy lifting is done for you.
Rather than trying to come up with the perfect marketing campaign, you can tell the lead generation service what type of clients you’re interested in working with. They can then connect you with those clients and you can decide which leads to follow up on.
There’s a financial investment, of course, but it may be well worth it if you’re able to gain new clients and increase sales while freeing up more time in your daily schedule. When considering lead generation platforms, look at the range of services offered and the cost to evaluate your expected ROI.
Bottom Line
Marketing life insurance isn’t one-size-fits-all and as an advisor, it’s important to consider which avenues offer the most growth potential. Once you’ve decided which strategies to implement, the next step is developing some metrics that you can use to track your progress and the results you’re getting.
Tips for Growing Your Advisory Business
- SmartAsset AMP (Advisor Marketing Platform) is a holistic marketing service financial advisors can use for client lead generation and automated marketing. Sign up for a free demo to explore how SmartAsset AMP can help you expand your practice’s marketing operation. Get started today.
- Social media can be a difficult game to master but if done correctly, it can provide you with a steady stream of traffic and potential leads. If you’re unsure how to approach social media, you may consider outsourcing that task to an expert. A social media consultant can help create a promotion plan that aligns with the type of clients you’re hoping to attract.
Photo credit: ©iStock/Drazen Zigic, ©iStock/AzmanL, ©iStock/Drazen Zigic