Agents, try these tactics to tap new niches and broader geographies
Video conferencing and new marketing tactics are changing how insurance agents will define their marketplace.
Agents have certainly faced new sales and marketing challenges over the last six months, but internet marketing and an acceleration in the use of video conferencing technology has created new opportunities for geographic expansion. Opportunities abound for agents willing to think outside the box.
Traditionally, agents focused their businesses in their local communities, sometimes expanding their marketing within their home state or region; rarely did they go national. There are two historical impediments to broadening agency marketing beyond their hometown: cost of marketing and difficulty in establishing relationships without onerous travel.
Cost-effective internet marketing is addressing the first issue, while a new form of widely adopted, almost universal, fast transportation called Zoom and similar platforms is solving the second.
That’s right, while most people think of Zoom as a communications technology (and it is) Dan Sullivan of The Strategic Coach program has rightly made the point that Zoom and similar platforms allow us to transport ourselves anywhere. This newly widely adopted technology is allowing agents to have highly effective face-to-face conversations with prospects and clients regardless of where they are located. This is changing how agents will define their marketplace.
In effect, the traditional geographical limitations of the typical agency have been removed.
Target marketing
The fact that agents can now access more prospective clients in a broader geography means that there are nearly infinite possibilities for new business. The way to manage such growth is the same way smart agents always have, and that is with target marketing. The difference now is that agents can narrow their niches and still have a big enough market, measured in prospects, to achieve sales and growth goals.
By narrowing their focus, agents can actually increase their success rate by developing a higher level of expertise than perhaps they could before while also developing cost-effective capabilities to serve that market that perhaps wasn’t feasible before.
For example, many agencies target manufacturers as clients. If the market is defined as a state, there may be only a few hundred, or a few thousand, manufacturers of all kinds. To be successful, the typical agency is, by necessity, a generalist. If they are able to expand their market to a region, or even the entire country, they can specialize not only in certain types of manufacturing but also target prospects by size, sales volume or other criteria — and still have a large market to work in.
When agents have a large enough prospect base and a very deep niche it becomes possible to develop more targeted carrier representation, highly specific field underwriting techniques and other resources. They can also develop highly targeted marketing that focuses on the needs and pain points of this particular class of business rather than a broader group of prospect types. This narrow targeting can increase effectiveness without spending unnecessary resources.
With enough expertise, agents can even create useful resources that prospects will find valuable beyond their insurance knowledge. The creation of these resources is now known as “content marketing,” which is a way to provide valuable and relevant information to attract and retain a target audience. Content marketing is highly effective when two preconditions are met: it is specific to the person or firm who is looking for the information and it is available in multiple media (print, audio, video, etc.) because people consume content differently. Generic content is generally not effective. But now, agents with a broad geography and a narrow niche can create highly specific content.
The new face-to-face conversation
Once marketing has attracted a prospect, agents can now have a face-to-face conversation using Zoom and similar technologies without the need to travel. Before COVID, this was simply impossible because the adoption of video calling from the desktop simply wasn’t in large enough numbers to make it practical. Now it’s universal.
While this new “transportation” and communication technology is revolutionary, it is still in its infancy and fairly crude. In the next several years, face-to-face communication will rapidly transform, perhaps in ways that seem fantastic. For example, the form factor and convenience of virtual reality headsets are rapidly developing, and it’s estimated that widespread adoption is a handful of years away. Regardless of what forms it takes, think of Zoom and its competitors as the Model T of the horseless carriage days. It is going to get much better fast.
The combination of widespread ‘Zooming’ and effective marketing now mean that agents can define to a greater degree than ever the kinds of prospects and clients they serve. They can reach those prospects over an infinite range of distance, immediately and with a highly focused product and service offerings. And they can do it from wherever they want to live and work. For agents on the new cutting edge of a traditional idea like target marketing, this means unlimited opportunity for growth.
Tony Caldwell is an author, speaker and CEO of One Agents Alliance, an alliance of 185 independent insurance agents in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas and California. Learn more by visiting www.tonycaldwell.net or contacting him at tonyc@oneagentsalliance.net. The opinions expressed here are the author’s own.
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