You’ve heard by now that insurance content marketing can help grow your business, but have you added this strategy to your arsenal? Maybe you’re too busy to keep up with a blog, or you think that insurance writing is too dry to attract an audience. Perhaps you simply don’t feel comfortable writing professional content for your insurance website.

Despite these reservations, there are solutions to creating content that raises your google rankings and encourages insurance lead generation. The time is right to bolster your bottom line with inbound marketing. Here’s what you need to know about creating an actionable strategy with the help of experienced marketing gurus.

 

Why Insurance Content Marketing?

In the 2018 report Digital disruption in insurance: Cutting through the noise, consulting and research firm McKinsey & Company stressed the importance of a digital transformation for insurance companies to survive and thrive. An online presence gives you the opportunity to reach potential clients effectively while creating increased exposure to interested visitors.

 

 

In addition to technology upgrades and online service platforms, the report indicates the critical need for clear, understandable communication about a company’s products and services. With accessible information, lead conversion is just one phone call or online form submission away.

 

How Can Insurance Content Marketing Establish your Online Presence?

The insurance content you write and market helps define what your company stands for. It creates the bulk of your website, describes your services and provides useful information for visitors. Of course, one of the best advantages of quality website content for insurance companies is how it can improve your search rank on Google. With carefully placed keywords and quality writing, Google can use your blog posts and landing pages to answer the search queries of potential leads.

 

A comprehensive, consistent marketing strategy for insurance companies can also provide the details your customers expect while reaching them on the apps and social media platforms where they spend time online. With a creative approach, you can attract the interest of readers through your content strategy.

 

What are the Benefits of Using Content as the Center of Your Insurance Marketing Strategy?

Consider these numbers from the magazine IA: Insight + Analysis for the Independent Insurance Agent:

• Companies who post regular blogs and other types of posts receive 97% more customer leads than brands that do not engage with customers online.
• 90% of consumers find value in custom content distributed by brands.
• 78% of clients think that brands that release custom content are interested in building good relationships with their clients.
• More than half of customers report they feel more positive about a company after reading its custom content.
• 61% of consumers say they have greater trust in and are more likely to buy policies from insurance companies that provide custom online writing.

The statistics above show how content marketing for insurance companies can improve your brand image and gain the trust of potential customers. However, there are also great financial and marketing benefits from investing in this type of strategy. Industry expert Neil Patel adds these statistics:

• Content marketing costs three times less than traditional marketing methods and generates 62% more leads.
• The average conversion rate for companies that use content marketing is 2.9%, compared to just 0.5% for companies that do not rely on this type of marketing.

We know you can’t ignore numbers like these. The traffic, loyalty and conversion rates go above and beyond with the help of an insurance content marketing strategy. If you are convinced of the power of online marketing, follow this guide to develop a strategy that works for your business.

 

How To Create Insurance Website Content

In order to get your insurance marketing campaigns off the ground, you need to know how to create really great insurance website content. This comes from understanding what brings insurance lead generation.

 

 

Your insurance firm is focused on the people you work with, and so should your marketing strategy. As you begin to understand your customers and their needs, you can use the resources you have to gain greater traction.

Use the insurance content writing tips below to get started!

 

1. Consider Your Target Audience

You can’t write effective insurance website content if you don’t know who your audience is. If you want to gain clients, you learn how to help them with their insurance needs. This requires getting to know who they are and the challenges they might face.

Any insurance company can dig deeper into their target market. The more you understand them, the more you can focus your insurance content marketing on potential buyers. Ask these questions about your target client base:

• What are the demographics of my desired audience?
• What are their behavior patterns?
• Are there popular sites and apps that they frequent?
• Which factors motivate them?
• What insurance problems do they face?
• How can we provide content to help solve these problems?

The answers to these questions will form the basis of your firm’s insurance content marketing strategy. They will determine what topics you’ll focus on, the platforms you’ll use and the services you will market more firmly.

Of course, if you sell policies both directly to consumers and to insurance brokers that sell these policies to their clients, you will need to perform this analysis for both audience groups.

 

2. Offer Educational Insurance Content

Too many insurance firms create website posts focused on selling their products. To succeed in insurance content marketing, you must provide posts that offer value to your clients.

Any effective marketing strategy for insurance companies creates room for informational content. The main reason being the impressive benefits of getting more engagement on company websites. Unless specifically looking for an insurance firm right off the bat, most insurance leads research information that will help them find solutions to their current situations.

 

 

As a firm with insurance experts and resources, you can provide answers through content. With some help from Google and social media platforms, readers can find your blog posts when searching for specific topics. If they feel satisfied with your answers, they have a likelier chance of looking into your services or sharing your post with other interested readers.

However, traffic is not the only benefit of including informational writing in content marketing for insurance companies. As you provide quality writing that benefits readers, you begin to set your company apart from others. Visitors will begin to see your company as an expert in the insurance field, thus giving you more credibility and trust as an insurance provider.

Becoming a trusted expert and receiving constant traffic can and will affect your company’s success and survival in the digital world.

 

Provide Insurance Website Content that Proves its Value

Educational content about insurance topics is worthwhile, but you can also mix it up with posts indirectly related to your industry. Farmers Insurance offers a shining example of how to implement this strategy with their Inner Circle site for consumers. In addition to educational blog posts about insurance policies, plans and products, the firm provides lifestyle advice about home and car care, travel and other areas not directly within the industry wheelhouse.

 

 

The bottom line is that you’re not limited to dry, stereotypical insurance content. Branch out and hook your readers with a variety of writing and specificity.

If you’re not sure where to begin, consider these smart blog ideas for your insurance website:

• Current affairs: What’s going on in the news, and how will it affect the insurance industry and your clients’ financial outlook?
• Frequently asked questions: Engage with your audience by requesting their most common insurance questions. Create a weekly feature answering some of the most interesting requests.
• Local events: Let your readers know about fun activities planned in your service area. This is also a great way to network with the organizations and businesses hosting these events, thus further extending the reach of your content.
• Seasonal information: Teach your readers how to plan a road trip for summer, winterize their garage for winter, prepare their garden in spring and get kids ready to go back to school in the fall.

Although expanding your topic pool is a great way to reach more of your target audience, keep your insurance content marketing objectives in mind as you write. Relate back to the industry and how your company can help customers achieve their aspirations. An effective insurance content writer always keeps the end goal in mind.

 

3. Be Consistent with Insurance Website Content

According to data from Patel, 60% of companies with successful content marketing programs post every day. Whether or not you have the time and resources to invest as often as every day, it says a lot about the power of consistency.

 

 

So how can daily or weekly posts help your website? For one thing, it helps you get content out there without getting overloaded. You may be a marketing expert, but even you need to schedule out where you put your time. Along with making it easier for your team, regularity keeps a steady inflow of readers while creating more opportunities to raise your rankings on Google.

Your website isn’t the only beneficiary, consistency can do a lot of work for your social media accounts too. The more your readers come to expect worthwhile information, the more they will follow you on social media and engage with your posts. People are looking for the best resources, and you can supply a large amount of excellent insurance advice.

Consistency is one of the most important factors in building an online audience in the insurance industry. A schedule can help your company stay consistent with posting while giving your writers enough time to create valuable posts for your inbound marketing plan. However, if your team is too busy holding up the fort, consider outsourcing insurance content to save time and still get quality writing.

 

4. Use Multiple Channels To Market Your Insurance Content

Let’s be honest, social media is a huge influence in the world today. With so many different businesses and ideas fighting for the attention of your customers, you need to be intentional with your insurance social media posts.

 

 

Just because your firm posts occasional content on Facebook doesn’t mean you have an insurance social marketing strategy. Creating diverse types of insurance writing and disseminating your posts everywhere from LinkedIn to Google News and beyond will help you reach customers and potential customers where they hang out online.

 

Effective Social Media Content is Short, Catchy and Focused

Depending on the platforms you use, the best way of contact differs. For Instagram, short videos and bright images work best, while Facebook can include more content that interests readers.

However, spreading content for your insurance company far and wide doesn’t necessarily mean multiplying your workload. Repurpose each piece in a variety of ways for maximum reach. Formats that may spark inspiration include blog posts, website content, podcasts, videos, infographics, white papers, e-books and FAQ sessions.

Don’t forget to optimize for mobile as part of your insurance content marketing. A report from Nielsen indicated that 40% of insurance purchase research is conducted on mobile devices, with 25% of customers exclusively using a smartphone or tablet for this purpose.

Becoming mobile-friendly starts with the format you use on your website. Check to see if your website theme is responsive and try to optimize your site’s code. You can also decrease loading times by compressing images, getting rid of unnecessary widgets and updating everything periodically.

 

5. Include Calls to Action In Every Insurance Content Post

If your insurance content marketing makes every blog post sound like a sales brochure, you need to take a step back. Remember, it’s all about engaging your audience by providing solutions to the problems they face. Luckily, you can convert leads more effectively with smaller, less intrusive calls to action.

 

 

A call to action invokes the reader to act after reading. This can be effective if your visitors like what they read. In that case, even educational content should include a call to action that makes it easy for readers to take the desired next steps. Social media posts should have powerful calls to action, as well.

CTAs in insurance writing should be created with clear, direct language and include a link to your contact page or another way for potential clients to contact you with the push of a button. For the most leads and best conversion numbers, make eye-catching CTA buttons and forms that are easy to follow. Use powerful words to invoke emotion or action and find reasons why readers should trust your services.

 

Get Insurance Content Marketing That Works

Content marketing for insurance companies is the key to digital success. Readable writing helps brand image, lead generation and business standing. In the long run, your marketing strategy can raise your company to a new level of stability and awareness.

At BKA Content, we help clients in the insurance industry harness the power of content marketing with high-quality insurance website content targeted to their audience. Our content shop is ready to help with your insurance writing needs both large and small, boasting a team of professional writers trained in SEO best practices. Contact an account manager today to get customized services that can evolve your company’s insurance content marketing strategy.

Neil Patel once said, “There’s no such thing as a boring industry … just bad writers who aren’t creative.” He said this in response to thousands of business owners who were complaining that content writing wasn’t for them because they were in a boring niche. The truth is, content marketing is for every business in every industry — even insurance.

 

Why Should You Incorporate Content Writing Into Your Insurance Marketing Strategy?

We get it — you’re in the business of avoiding risk. It’s what you do. However, while this aversion to risk makes you great at your job, it may make you resistant to change that could lead to very real business growth. While you should continue to encourage your clients to steer clear of the unknown, take a leap of faith and invest in content marketing. Here’s why.

 

Stay Top of Mind

As an insurance company, it’s difficult to stay relevant as the only interaction customers have with you is either via a monthly bill or a phone call during which they file a claim. Both types of interactions are less than ideal. If you want to stay at the forefront of your customers’ minds for, say, when a friend or colleague asks for a referral, you need to give them small reminders throughout the month that you exist and that you’re ready to help. 

Content marketing allows you to grab your customers’ attention, for however briefly, a few times a month. Make each interaction a positive one by sharing pieces of interest. When trying to come up with ideas for content, think about the relevancy to the readers’ interests. What do your customers want to know? Below are a few topic ideas you can turn into great pieces any policy holder will want to read:

• How to reduce car insurance rates
• Seasonal maintenance or hazards (winterizing your home, staying healthy during flu season, etc.)
• Best foods for a healthy heart
• Exercises to reduce joint pain
• Frequently asked questions

 

Foster, Nurture and Maintain Relationships With Your Customers

One of the greatest benefits of content is its ability to connect a business to its customers. Whether you have 100 policyholders or 1,000, chances are you have a hard time keeping in touch with all of them, much less establishing a personal relationship with each. This distance makes it difficult for you to generate loyalty, and loyalty is key to customer retention and acquisition.

According to a HubSpot statistic, 50% of a consumer’s time online is spent engaging with custom content. A TMG finding reveals that as many as 78% of consumers believe that organizations that provide custom content are interested in establishing good relationships with them. If you struggle to form and maintain relationships with your customers, and therefore struggle to garner customer loyalty, it may be time to redesign your insurance marketing strategy so it includes content writing.

 

Establish Trust

Consumers today are smarter about how they spend their money than those of previous decades. While this may not necessarily mean they don’t make impulse purchases or that they save more money than previous generations, it does mean that they spend more time reviewing and comparing products and services and the brands that provide them. When two offerings are equal in quality and value, the customer is more likely to go with the company they trust. Content marketing helps establish that trust. There are stats to support this assertion.

According to statistics shared via WordStream, as much as 95% of shoppers consider content as trustworthy when evaluating a company and its offerings. Nine out of 10 B2B product or service buyers say content plays a moderate to major role in their purchase decisions. As many as 78% of consumers said they relied on white papers to make a major purchase decision in the last year.

 

Have Those Tough Talks in a Personal Manner

No policy holder likes to receive a bill in the mail along with a statement that says, “Oh, by the way, your rates are going up!” These types of inserts add insult to injury and are sure to inspire several of your customers to begin the hunt for a new carrier.

However, rate hikes are often necessary, which many insurance customers don’t understand. You can help them understand, however. For instance, maybe the risk factors in a customer’s particular region changed, or maybe the cost of medical care or repairs is on the rise. Whatever the reason, a friendly email or blog post explaining the rate hike may soften the blow to your policyholders.

Moreover, if you establish a strong relationship with your customers via content marketing before sharing bad news, they’re more likely to take it better. This is because you’ve earned their trust, so when you say the spike in rates was out of your control, they’ll believe you.

 

Brand Yourself As More Than an Insurance Agent

Your policyholders know you as an insurance agent, plain and simple. Because of this, they contact you only when their rates go up or when they need to file a claim. However, as an insurance professional, your knowledge extends far beyond numbers and claims.

For instance, maybe you have extensive knowledge of health issues and what individuals can do to manage symptoms or prevent issues entirely. Or maybe you’re also a financial whiz and know what steps consumers can take to not only reduce their rates but also save in other areas of their lives. If you have the knowledge, share it. In sharing your advice and expertise, your policyholders will begin to view you as more than just an insurance agent — they may begin to view you as a valuable life advisor.

 

Connect With Your Customers Today

If you want to stay top of mind, establish trust and foster and maintain relationships with your customers, content marketing is for you. However, to realize the benefits of content marketing, your articles need to be high quality, genuine and helpful. If you don’t have the time, resources or capacity to create that type of content, look into our content writing services.