Leveraging educational content to inform buyers how your agency can help them mitigate risk.
In previous blogs, we’ve discussed how to establish your agency as an insurance expert and often referenced the importance of providing relevant content to policyholders and prospects alike. This month, we’ll be taking a deeper look at the benefits of educational marketing and how to go about initiating a campaign. Here are 4 tips to get you started:
Establish Campaign Goals
Educational marketing campaigns all begin with one question: what does your audience need to know? Take the time to research the industries you serve and ask your customers what they are most interested in learning to develop a list of possible topics. Once you’ve whittled the list down, you have your first goal: Effectively Teach Your Customers About The Chosen Topic.
We’ll touch on how to go about this a little further down, but for now let’s focus on the second goal of the campaign: Drive Business. The information you are providing is a great resource for your clients and can be used to add value to your proposal. Additionally, you should use your campaign to promote action and guide prospects to insurance and risk management solutions you offer that directly address their concerns.
Develop Engaging Content
On it’s own, educational content can be boring and dull. Thankfully there are countless methods available to help provide your information in an engaging fashion. We’re talking info graphics, videos, short & long form articles, quizzes, online training courses; the possibilities are abundant. Try a few different options and see what content works best for you and your customer base. The more interactive and engaging your content is, the more effective your campaigns will be.
Scale Across Platforms
Most, if not all, of your materials are going to be relevant to a greater audience than the one you are targeting with your educational marketing campaigns. If your campaign is email based, share the content on your website and across your social media accounts as well. Allow the people using your resources to share them with their followers and others in the industry. You would be surprised at how many people are looking for the type of information you are providing and just don’t know where to find it.
Plan Follow-Up
It’s important that your agency has a plan in place for campaign follow-up for existing clients providing feedback, existing prospects requesting more information and new contacts who are reaching out for the first time. Provide a means of contact in your campaign materials and have a designated employee filtering responses and getting inquiries in front of the right person. If you have new contacts reaching out, make sure you gather their contact information and input them into your CRM system. Consider automated messaging and setting up a template for new contacts interacting with one of your campaigns.
Whether you’re trying to maintain your client base, reach out to prospects or grow your lead list, educational marketing campaigns can be extremely beneficial for your insurance agency.
Have ideas for future blog topics? Let us know by emailing socialmedia@mcneilandcompany.com
For more on producing educational content, check out this article from Property Casualty 360.