According to a recent Bain & Co. report, your loyal insurance clients - the ones with whom you’ve built a relationship - will stay with you longer, buy more products, provide more referrals to friends and family, and cost less to serve. In other words, that old saying about it being cheaper to keep a client than to gain a client is true.
It means that independent insurance agents should abandon that old “Always Be Closing” mentality and adopt an “Always Be Caring” strategy instead.
Traditional insurance agencies have generally employed what’s known as a transactional approach to marketing. Agents would focus on closing on a client account through often aggressive sales techniques. While this approach had significant short-term achievements in the past, most modern consumers are too savvy to fall for it.
Modern buyers are happy to buy from and endorse brands that work on building relationships. A relational approach to marketing focuses on building a connection between clients and their agency. It’s a long-term strategy, and it offers many long-term benefits.
While relational marketing can take more time (just like relationships), it’s not only more profitable in the long run, it’s also more affordable. Tactics like blogging, social media interactions, and consistent branding across platforms allow independent agencies to market on their own “real estate” - their website, their social accounts, etc. More traditional, transactional tactics - commercials, magazine ads, billboards, etc. - require agencies to “pay to play.”
Relational marketing does make a few demands on independent insurance agents, but that’s a small price to pay to secure future sales and burgeoning client bases. Even better, relational marketing strategies should be familiar, comfortable terrain for most people because you already employ them with your friends and family:
Take time to really get to know your clients
Understand what they need
Worry about what worries them
Support them in their times of trouble
Stay in touch always
If you need help building a sustainable relational marketing strategy, contact the insurance marketing experts at AgenciesOnline today.