The Executive Suite: Selling Insurance Using Social Media

Here’s 18 great ways you can sell insurance on social media without alienating your fans:

1) Post Stories About Saving Clients Big Money When people see that you’re saving others money, it begs the question of how much they could save. Don’t just make a bland post about how “the average person who switches to us saves $428″, because that isn’t what people use social media for. They want stories about people. Tell the story, use real numbers, post a picture of the client, explain how saving that money made them feel, and be as real as possible.

2) Share Your Competition’s Rate Increases Let your social media followers know anytime you hear about the competition filing for rate increases. Think of it as a public service announcement for all their friends who are insured with that carrier. But don’t just leave it there because your Facebook followers are probably not with the competition – they’re with you! When you post the information, ask your followers to “share it with anyone you know who has this company”.If it’s a major company, there’s a pretty good chance everybody knows one or two people with that carrier… but most people wouldn’t even think of forwarding something like this if you don’t ask. A side benefit for your own customers is that they’ll think twice about leaving you and if they DO get a rate increase they’ll know that all the other companies are getting them too!

3) Quote Rewards It’s a simple idea here: offer some type of reward for getting a quote. (gift card, etc.) But here’s my twist to make it more effective: Don’t offer the reward to everyone! If you offer a standard prize for any quote from anyone it’s just not that interesting. Plus, most of the people who follow you on social media are already your customers anyway! On the other hand, if you offered the same prize but only for people who have a birthday this month, you’ll be losing 11 out of 12 people but for those that qualify, they’re going to be much more interested in the offer because it’s exclusive. And your social media followers just might forward the link to someone they know simply because they had a recent birthday. Make sense?

4) Quote Charity Donation This is just like #3 above, except that instead of giving the “prize” to the person getting the quote you’re offering to donate to charity instead. The trick to this technique is to build the offer around a charity that has an enthusiastic audience and let them do the promotion for you. Make it all about the charity, not about you. And working with local charities will get you far more benefit than national ones here.

5) Sell The “Other” Lines Let’s face it, 95% or more of your engaged Facebook fans are probably already clients of yours. So stop trying to talk your followers into getting an auto or home insurance quote if it’s likely they already have those lines with you. Use your page to raise awareness of other lines, to get referrals, to up-sell and retain your current policyholders. You can’t sell more auto and home insurance to a bunch of people that already bought it from you.

6) Announce New Products If you’ve got new products or coverage options to offer your customers make sure to share it on social media. One valuable technique is to start the post by explaining specifically who (or what life situation) is the perfect person for this new product. People don’t care about insurance products and they definitely don’t want to read about them on Facebook. So start with providing a description of the person it’s ideal for. You’ll catch people’s attention because either: It’s an ideal product for them. Or it’s an ideal product for someone they know. People are interesting. Details and features of insurance products are not.

7) Share Testimonials Whether it’s a video you record on your iPhone, an email you copy and paste (with permission) into a status update or an online review you take a screenshot of and post to Facebook, testimonials are gold. And if there’s any way to mention or tag the person that gave you that testimonial so it shows up on their Facebook page to their friends do it. If it’s really flattering, share it on your personal Facebook account too. It doesn’t look pretentious when you share other people’s words about you. (and don’t post it to your personal account again, click the share button on the original post from your agency’s page instead)

8) Post Great Insurance Commercials Your carriers spend millions of dollars creating entertaining, interesting and engaging sales content. Use it. With that being said, I would only post commercials that have an entertainment or interest factor. Ask yourself this question: “Would any normal person care about this commercial enough to show their friend?”If the answer isn’t “Yes”, it doesn’t belong on your Facebook page.

9) Announce New Discounts Did your carrier just come out with a new discount that might entice people to get a quote or share with a friend? Explain it on Facebook. And if you think there may be some backlash from people who won’t qualify for the new discount, post something more ambiguous that asks whether the reader has the qualification for the discount and if so, they should contact you to learn more.

10) Ask for Referrals As I mentioned in #5 above, most of your Facebook fans are already friends or clients of yours so trying to sell to them is just preaching to the choir. The real opportunity with social media (in my opinion) is x-selling, retaining customers, and getting referrals. I’ll probably write another whole article like this one with ways to ask for referrals on Facebook, so I’m going to keep it simple here: Just ask for them.

11) Local Twitter Search Want to see all the people within 15 miles of you that are tweeting about insurance? It’s easy. I wrote another article about it over here so check it out if you’re interested. FYI – The basic idea is you listen to people tweeting about insurance and then message them with an answer to their question.

12) Be a Real Person One of the unfortunate circumstances of improving technology is that customers are becoming less connected to their insurance agent. You can have multi-policy clients for years without ever meeting face to face. While this is good in many ways (and inevitable anyway) it’s a major problem for insurance agents because it weakens the human connection you can have with your clients. Fortunately, social media is the antidote! In fact, you can be a person in front of hundreds of people at once! Tell a story about your childhood, share personal pictures, be open, be vulnerable, and be yourself. People want to do business with other people – not with companies.

13) Turn Your Staff Into Real People Too Take real pictures of your staff in action and post them often. Share stories about their background, family, likes, dislikes, and everything else. Explain what they do in the agency and their areas of expertise. Facebook is all about people. Not insurance agencies. Learn the rules and play the game.

14) Post News About Growth Anything growth related is good for sales. Adding a new employee, moving to a new office, new desks, new computers, new anything – it all says:“We’re successful”And when you look successful, people will assume you have a great products and great service so there’s less risk and more upside to referring their friends. Your balance sheet might suck. But business should always be great on Facebook.

15) Share Horror Stories When you see stories in the news or actual clients who face horrible consequences as a result of Not buying a certain type of insurance. Not buying enough insurance Getting bad insurance advice Or anything else insurance related that you theoretically would have prevented Share it. Share the story. Those examples are the reason people need insurance agents. If you don’t share the pain of NOT buying from you, eventually no one will.

16) Offer Policy Reviews I keep saying that your Facebook followers are probably already clients so keep that in mind when posting to Facebook. How you can use Facebook to get more sales (and renewals) from your existing book since that’s mostly who is listening to you there. Policy reviews is one way. Just be sure to frame it around the benefits to them in a way that doesn’t come off as a trick.

17) Share Relevant Claim Situations People love stories. And if your agency is like most, you’ve got plenty of interesting claim situations. Share them on Facebook and remember that every time you get people thinking about insurance claims, they’re not thinking about insurance premiums.

18) Post Pictures of Random Insured Items Even if you sell every type of insurance policy known to man, most people will only think of your agency for the types of insurance they bought from you. It’s impossible to remind your clients too much about the other lines of insurance you offer. An easy, interesting, and fun way to do this is by posting pictures of the 4-Wheelers, motorcycles, boats, trailers, commercial vehicles, and every other outside-the-box item that you insure. Obviously you’re not going to do this all the time, but an occasional reminder that you also cover mopeds is going to help your most loyal fans be even better referrers of your agency.

In Conclusion

Shoving sales messages down people’s throat is not going to work, even if you only do it 1% of the time. Hopefully I’ve given you enough ideas to understand how you can sell without turning off your followers. Could you do something for me? If you got even just one or two ideas you can put into action, would you hit one of those social media buttons so I know you want more content like this? And if you know someone that wants to get more from their agency Facebook page but doesn’t know how, would you share this article with them?

I hope this helps you!