Social Selling
By: Susan Hodges
Emek, a partner with CBS Coverage Group in New York City, uses social networking o extend her reach anywhere in the world, both personally and professionally. Not only can she “talk” electronically with anyone in her growing circle of contacts; by establishing herself online with the free tools of Web 2.0, she’ll be ready when the next generation of Internet technology arrives.
“Web 3.0 will be an extremely collaborative environment in which you can communicate as easily with your underwriters and prospects as with your clients and friends,” says Emek. “But agents have to start experimenting with marketing in 2.0 firstso they’ll be able to benefit from 3.0 when the time comes.”
Super Connected
Web 2.0 allows anyone with a computer and an Internet connection to establish a presence online through Web sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Plaxo. These social media sites enable users to post information, pictures and videos, provided that the user creates a profile.
Right now, however, electronic media is still largely disconnected. eMarketer, a digital intelligence and marketing firm, says“Gen X presents unprecedented challenges to marketers (because) the media they use is fragmented. They embrace a wider range of lifestyles than previous generations and, weaned on MTV and cable television, they are largely immune to traditional advertising.”
Enter Web 3.0, designed to meet exactly this challenge. Angelyn Treutel, chair of the Big “I” Agents Council for Technology (ACT) and president of Treutel Insurance in Bay St. Louis, Miss., defines Web 3.0 as using “web-based applications to improve the Web 2.0 experience by remembering your previous entries to provide better results and predictive analytics. Web 3.0 provides more collaboration opportunities for agents to interface with their clients and carriers.”
Expanded networking opportunities aren’t the only benefit of Web 3.0. New technologies are also allowing people to spend a lot less time searching for information, which is a benefit to agents and their customers. Consumers are able to find an insurance provider who can meet their exact needs, just by keying in a few words. Web 3.0 customizes their Internet browsing experience. It also gives agents an enormous–and inexpensive–opportunity to extend their reach to the types of businesses and individuals they want as clients. By advertising on social media sites, agents can post just a few key words that will bring prospects to a Web site where they are asked to enter basic information, such as name, address and type of coverage desired.
Build Brand Equity
Founders Insurance Group in Torrington, Conn. began using social media about one year ago to strengthen its brand. The agency is a merger of several older agencies, and the goal was to market the new firm in connection with its well-known principals and its staff. To do this, the agency hired former consultant Cindy Donaldson as its director of marketing. “We now have the “Founders Forum blog, and we Twitter and Facebook a lot,” says Donaldson. “All of these things have been a big help in our brand development.”
The concept, Donaldson says, is to make the agency more visible in the online community so that users will get to know the firm’s people, values and products. “We don’t sell on price, we sell on value,” she stresses. “We believe having people understand this will eventually help our bottom line.”
Donaldson’s latest goal is to convince more clients and prospects to follow her and the agency on social media sites. “This will make us more personal, and not all of it is about insurance,” she admits. “We really just want people to know who we are and to like us – and that’s a subliminal sell.”
Cindy Adams and Lori Tapscott of Holmes, Murphy & Associates, in Des Moines, Iowa, realize how powerful the Internet is becoming, and so they’re proceeding with caution. They’re testing blogging and discussion forums internally among the brokerage’s 500 employees before launching them online.
At the same time, though, the brokerage is moving ahead with social media and other e-tools. Adams, who is vice president of IT, and Tapscott, assistant vice president of marketing, have launched an RSS (really simple syndication) feed for the firm’s e-newsletter. RSS technology automatically feeds updates from a chosen web site to the email addresses of anyone who signs up for them, creating a fast and efficient form of outreach. “We’re also on Facebook and Twitter, but we don’t yet have links on our Web site for these,” says Tapscott. “We’re still testing to gauge the response.”
Adams and Tapscott have also placed three videos on the brokerage web site that are employee testimonials, and launched a customer testimonial on YouTube. “We’re trying to learn what brings us the most value,” says Adams. “That’s why we’re touching so many areas, and it’s also why we’re doing so much testing. Even internally, we have to find the mix of business and personal information that strike the right balance.”
Pick a Topic That Sticks
Once agencies discover social media, it’s tempting to use it as an advertising and product placement platform – after all, it’s free! However, agencies that have been using the technology for a while have discovered that creating an interactive space to discuss a range of topics often unrelated to insurance has proven more valuable in attracting potential customers.
“I think people seem to respond best to things that are more on a personal level,” says Pauline Handy, marketing director at V.F. McNeil & Company in Branford, Conn. “That creates a bond, and I’ve learned that consumers are so flooded and tired of traditional sales methods that they’re more interested in creating relationships and doing business with people they know and trust.”
Handy says she uses her agency’s blog presence to bring important insurance issues to customers’ attention, but she also highlights things like staff members’ weddings, which generally get the best response from followers. Rick Morgan, chair of the ACT Web 2.0 Work Group, advises agencies new to social media to consider what they’d talk about at a cocktail party or during a round of golf.
“It’s more social in nature,” says Morgan. “You’re posting about the fact that you’re sponsoring an awareness event or coaching a soccer team, or you might talk about tips for tornado preparedness.”
Kristin Reilly, new media developer at the Irwin Siegel Agency in Rock Hill. N.Y., says she uses social media to raise awareness about issues in the social services sector since her agency specializes in insurance products for that field. Although the blog posts are not always about insurance, they keep the agency top of mind for social services professionals who may need to purchase coverage someday.
“Social media has definitely helped keep us abreast of what’s happening in the field because all platforms are in real time, so we can address what’s going on as it happens, such as budget cuts,” says Reilly. “We have a blog focused on developmental disabilities and each week, we post a bio about a direct support professional and their struggles and successes within the field.”
Social media can sometimes be the fastest way to communicate with clients in time-sensitive situations. Nibby Priest, an independent agent at Vaughn Insurance Agency in Henderson, Ky., says customers often send him notice through Facebook that they need to file a claim or just purchased a new vehicle. In addition, he’s able to quickly alert customers to important claims information.
“In January, our community was in the midst of an ice storm,” says Priest. “We had lots of information we needed to get out (to policyholders) and our traditional Web designer was not able to get it posted fast enough. I quickly created a blog and started adding claims-related information to the blog about contractors and claims adjustors in the area.”
Balance “Can” and “Should”
Phil Harr, a partner at MNB Insurance in McCook, Neb., is looking for balance, in this case between interactive Internet tools and the sensibilities of his clients. A subsidiary of MNB Bank, the agency has three locations in Southwest Nebraska that serve a largely agricultural clientele. Harr knows too much fancy technological footwork on the agency’s part might go largely unnoticed. That’s why he’s “doing a little blogging and Twittering,” and thinking of launching customer testimonials on the agency’s Web site and maybe on social media.
One thing Harr is not doing is resisting change. “Web 3.0 is going to happen whether we resist it or not, so why not try to shape it and have some input,” he asks. Harr thinks agents should be talking with their carriers now about interactive marketing that could include advertising on social media sites. He also thinks agencies should be asking satisfied customers to recommend the agency on their blogs. “We need to stop thinking about how business used to be done and start thinking about how it’s going to be done,” he says.
Susan Hodges (hodgeswrites@aol.com) is IA senior writer.
Ramping Up for Web 3.0
Does your agency have the necessary tools in place to take advantage of the social Web? Benchmark your agency against these basics:
* If your agency still doesn’t have a Web site, contract with a Web designer and create one–immediately. This is important because 80% of all commercial and commercial insurance buyers, now use the Internet to get information before choosing an insurance agent or company.
*Make your Web site interactive to enable contact with clients and prospects.. Ask your Web designer to install e-mail links to employees. Ask carriers to help you with online Real-Time quoting capabilities. And visit other agencies’ Web sites to see what they’re doing.
* Ask for help. The number of firms and consultants specializing in “digital marketing” is growing, and these professionals can help you decide how to proceed and then get you up and running. Visit www.astonishresults.com to learn about a Rhode Island-based firm focused exclusively on helping insurance agencies join and capitalize on the interactive Internet revolution. Also search other digital marketing Web sites to understand what they can do for your agency.
* Go to www.twitter.com, www.linkedin.com and www.facebook.com and join these free social media networks.
* Leverage the smart, young talent in your agency by asking for ideas. Charge one or several employees with making recommendations on which interactive tools to start using next, and explain why they are effective.
* Consider hiring a professional, full or part-time. Snap up a fresh-out-of-college marketing person for not much money, put them in a cube and watch your business grow..
Kevin Brandt (kevin.brandt@iiaba.net) is director of operations for Trusted Choice®.
Put Policies in Place First
Agencies delving into the social Web can reap many rewards, but must also consider the risks. The Big “I” Agents Council for Technology (ACT) Web 2.0 Work Group recently completed a social media policy guide to help agencies craft their own policies and user guidelines.
The ACT policy guide discusses the role agency management can play in overseeing social media use and provides a checklist of initial steps agencies can take when crafting their own policies, such as reviewing other companies’ guidelines. In addition, the ACT guide outlines possible provisions that could be included in an agency policy, from the use of disclaimers to addressing references made on social media sites. Finally, agencies can benefit from ACT’s “Social Web Code of Conduct,” which provides a comprehensive guide to using social media safely for employees and first-time users.
Katie Herbst, senior marketing communications specialist at Westfield Insurance, participated in the work group that designed the ACT social media policy and says it’s meant as a starting point for agencies that would like to craft their own policy. While working on a social Web policy for Westfield, Herbst found that much of the information she needed was already at hand.
“When we were creating our policy, we discovered that most of what we needed to put in was already covered in our employee handbook,” she says. “We just needed to reference our other policies in the context of the social Web.”
Herbst adds that sitting down and running through a series of possible social Web scenarios also helped in the policy development process. Asking “what if” questions helped her company determine possible risks to address and discuss with employees. In addition, both Herbst’s company and the team at Holmes Murphy & Associates in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, found that assembling a group of employees with different areas of expertise was a good approach to crafting a social media policy.
“We put together a team that had a lot of different perspectives,” says Cindy Adams, director of information technology at Holmes Murphy. “We included people from HR, IT and marketing, which created some synergy. HR drafted a policy and we all looked at it.”
Adams adds that because her agency has 500 employees with offices in 13 states, it was particularly effective to test social media platforms internally. Many employees found Facebook and YouTube to be especially helpful in communicating with their co-workers in other locations.
“Internally, we logged our progress, did a discussion forum and set up (online) communities with like experiences,” says Adams. “We also have an ‘executive corner’ feature where agency executives write a weekly blog. It has caught on very well.”
For more information, including sample social media policies from agencies, visit www.independentagent.com/act.
– Veronica DeVore
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