Bring Social Media Into Your Marketing Plan

Presented by John Schraut Any insurance industry publication you look at now has ways to use social media. So my question to you is: Do you have a Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn account for your business? If not, you are losing out on a way to connect with other professionals and potential clients. Best of all it’s FREE! I recently saw a survey that said more than 60% of advisors have used LinkedIn to gain new clients and 75% said it has improved the effectiveness of their referral network. I have even noticed some carriers offering social media marketing pieces such as blogs, statistics and videos. One agent I talked to said that he sets aside time each day to dedicate to his social media marketing. So have you set aside time to utilize FREE marketing? Maybe it’s time to do it!

Still Using Post-It Notes to Manage Your Day?

If you’re having trouble managing your day-to-day activities, have you considered CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software?  I’m not talking about tools like Microsoft Outlook where you set a reminder on your calendar, but am instead referring to full-fledged CRMs that allow you to manage the sales process from start to finish.  You’ll know who you should call on a daily basis, track which activities are the most profitable and manage your marketing more effectively. Stay in front of your clients and market more effectively to prospects by sending e-mail or mail on a regular basis or at key intervals in the lifetime of current policy holders.  Many CRMs have built-in “blast e-mail” capability where you can send out important information personalized with your contact information and then track which clients open the e-mail messages.  Sounds like a good way to know which type of marketing really reaches your audience! If you’re looking to start small, there are MANY free CRMs on the market, one of which offers a license for three users at no charge; follow the link to www.zoho.com/crm/index.html.  When you become proficient with your CRM or if you are looking for a CRM for multiple users and more functionality, we will have a solution for that very shortly!  The CRM (coming soon) will not only allow you to do all the fancy CRM-like things, but it will be completely integrated within our current platform of tools – quoting, illustrations and iGO (e-app entry and drop-tickets).  You’ll have only ONE location (our web site) to access for everything you need in your life…well, mostly.  We plan on having more information on the new CRM in the next month or so.  Stay tuned!

Make Life Insurance Profitable (even when it’s not your…

We work frequently with P&C agencies to show them how easy it can be to sell life insurance.  Remember, existing P&C clients (works well for banks, CPAs, etc.) already trust you or they wouldn’t be an existing P&C client!  And, when they trust you, it makes the life insurance sale a natural part of your conversation with them.  In fact, if you’re not already having those discussions, you may actually be doing a disservice to your clients.  If it’s important to insure their home, their car and other personal belongings, how can insuring their life be overlooked? So, now that I’ve said it’s “easy”, how do we define that??  1) You’ve already done the prospecting because they’re already your client! 2) Financial Brokerage can create and brand life insurance-focused web pages for you to embed in your current web site 3) FB can also provide to you professional marketing materials to get your clients thinking about life insurance 4) We offer full-featured term quote engines, needs analysis tools and budget calculators that allow clients visiting your site to perform their own research and 5) We offer a robust e-mail marketing tool and provide client-facing e-mail newsletters  for you…all you have to do is provide the client e-mail addresses and send ’em out! and 6) And this is a big one…we have all the electronic tools that make it easy to write the app, which I’ve “blogged” about in the past.  No paper!!  In fact, you may not even need to ask all the awkward health questions (you know the type, “now what was the size of that boil again??”) So, you’ve already got the clients and we provide everything you need to market life insurance and complete the sale in, say, ten minutes.  What’s not to like about additional revenue?!?!  And, if you’re not writing the life insurance, someone else is, and maybe it’s another P&C agency…and when they do, they slowly start to become “creepers”…creeping into a relationship with your client.  That doesn’t sound so good, does it? Contact us at 800-397-99999 and ask for Kevin Kusleika, Senior VP and CTO or Sarah Stewart, COO to find out how we can help you help yourself!

You Are a Business Pro (yes, I stole the…

Do you still use an e-mail address for your business with a domain like @yahoo.com or @gmail.com?  Did you know that, for a very small amount, you can own your domain name (the part after the ‘@’ sign) with a great name like ‘@ihaveaprofessionalbusinessdomain.com’?  In our opinion, having your own domain name gives your business legitimacy.  Even if you don’t have your own web site, which I’ve spoken and blogged about in the past (yes, I think it’s a requirement in today’s business world), you can at least have the domain name.  Of course, one of the first methods a consumer might use to research you would be to look at your domain name within your e-mail address and try to access your web site by typing in ‘www.ihaveaprofessionalbusinessdomain.com’.  If they find it, great!  That means you’ve taken the time and spent a little $$ to build your web presence.  If not, well, you should probably take the time and spend a little $$ to build your web presence!  Even if you’re technology-averse, it can easily be done through our web site hosting partner, which can be found through financialbrokerage.agentquote.com.  And, as a bonus, you get all the help you need from me at no charge!  Hey, it’s a $1.99 value for free! So now, at the very least, you have your own domain name and professional-looking e-mail addresses…and probably a web site as well since I’ve made you feel bad about NOT having one.  Did you know that we can build your business brand, logo, etc.?  We have a fantastic graphic designer on staff that has created branding for hundreds of clients!  You simply provide your thoughts, as complex or as simple as you wish, regarding theme, colors, look and he will do the rest.  Even if you have no thoughts, neither simple nor complex, he can work with that, too!  The guy’s like a mind-reader, even when there’s not much mind to read…trust me, he works with ME all the time. After you’ve got the basics down…domain, web site (yes, you need to build one…have I mentioned that?), branding, it’s time to get started doing some really sweet e-mail marketing!  Call/e-mail and ask all the questions you want (still a $1.99 value for free) and we’ll get you going!  402-334-6330 or krkusleika@fb-inc.com.