Commercial Brokers and Agents: Leveraging Social Selling for Success

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Social selling has taken center stage for some of the top-earning commercial insurance brokers and agents. Why? Because it works. Social selling is a way to generate leads through posting and engaging with prospects online. 

Cold calling has long been a staple in insurance marketing strategy. While sales calls still have a place in today’s environment, they’re not nearly as efficient or effective as they used to be. Customers’ expectations have changed as technology has advanced. Brokers and agents must adapt their marketing strategies to include social selling to stay ahead of the curve. 

As part of your digital marketing plan, social selling increases brand exposure, generates leads, and boosts revenue.  In this post, we’ll enhance your understanding of social selling in the insurance industry and explain how it can help strengthen your brand. We’ll also help you sharpen your content strategy, provide tips on prospecting and engagement, and explain how to offer instant demos. 

Shortcuts:

Social Selling: What’s It All About?

Building a Strong Personal and Professional Brand

Prospecting and Engagement Tactics

Consistency Is the Key to Commercial Social Selling Success

Social Selling: What’s It All About?

Unlike traditional insurance sales, social selling is a strategy where insurance agents tap into the power of social media platforms to engage with potential customers. It’s a soft-sell strategy, and it works. 

Think about your own experience. If you’re looking to purchase anything, you’re bound to find it on social media. It’s where people like to hang out. 

According to Datareportal, a market analysis by Kepios shows that 5.31 billion users regularly check in on their social media accounts worldwide. This number represents 64.7% of the total population in the world. 

Considering everyone needs insurance, it makes sense for brokers and agents to do a little business on social media. 

Differences Between Traditional Selling and Social Selling

To master social selling, you need to understand the differences between traditional selling and social selling. 

Traditional Insurance Sales

Brokers and agents have long relied on outbound sales techniques to initiate contact with potential customers. 

Common traditional marketing strategies include:

  • Calling from lists
  • Sending postal mailings
  • Setting up email strings
  • Scheduling in-person meetings
  • Attending business lunches
  • Socializing at networking events

Here are some challenges with the traditional approach:

  • Having no prior relationship with prospects
  • Dealing with constant rejections
  • Expecting low conversion rates
  • Anticipating a longer sales cycle
  • Maximizing a narrow outreach
  • Keeping prospect lists updated

Social Selling Strategy

By contrast, the customer initiates contact with social selling. The buyer finds an insurance agent’s business or products on a social media site and expresses interest. Agents who respond quickly have a good chance at a sale, as these are warm leads.

Here are some common examples of social selling for insurance:

  • Reminding customers to schedule an annual policy review
  • Sending a tweet about a new commercial insurance product
  • Blogging about the importance of a commercial umbrella policy
  • Displaying an ad about valuable commercial insurance add-ons
  • Highlighting the special features of a niche insurance policy
  • Posting articles about safety issues

A benefit of social selling is that you can do a broad outreach with less effort than traditional marketing strategies. Also, the sales cycle is typically shorter because you’re interacting with customers in their time of need. 

While there are plenty of positives connected with social selling, there are a few challenges, including: 

  • Understanding the learning curve related to social selling
  • Spending time to build an online presence
  • Consistently engaging with users
  • Managing multiple platforms successfully
  • Ensuring high-value content
  • Being perceived as too “salesy”

Key Platforms for Social Selling

Each platform has distinct advantages when it comes to selling insurance. Depending on which insurance products you sell, one or more social media platforms may help you get the desired results. 

Here is a list of social media platforms and how to use them effectively:

  • LinkedIn: Professional networking, brand awareness
  • Twitter: Real-time engagement, trending topics
  • Facebook: Targeted advertising, engaging content
  • Instagram: Visual appeal, influencer marketing
  • Reddit: Engagement, industry expertise
  • Pinterest: Product discovery, visual inspiration
  • TikTok and YouTube: Short-form content, educational information

LinkedIn is a particularly good platform for increasing inbound leads by posting commercial insurance content. 

As further proof that social selling works, take a look at these statistics from Capital One Shopping:

  • Consumers will spend $1.37 trillion on products using social media globally
  • Social media commerce is worth 90.6 billion in the United States
  • Over 100 million Americans shopped on social media in 2024
  • Predictions say the social media shopping market will be worth over $2.26 trillion in 2030

To learn more about how to implement a social selling strategy, see our Updated Sales Playbook for Social Selling. 

Building a Strong Personal and Professional Brand

Commercial customers don’t need their insurance policies unless they have a catastrophe. Yet, your branding comes into play whenever they have a claim. 

It’s essential to build a trusted brand, so that customers feel confident in your expertise and your agency’s reputation in their time of need. 

By prioritizing clear communication and excellent customer service, you will earn your client’s trust. Transparency and fairness also go a long way in building trust. 

How to Build a Reputable Brand

An insurance agency brand doesn’t become reputable all on its own. Brokers and agents need to make the effort to ensure the public thinks highly of their brand. Social media can play a significant role in accomplishing that. 

In creating regular social media postings, you have continual opportunities to establish a consistent voice that defines your brand’s values. Social proof in the form of reviews and testimonials also helps to build a credible brand. Read more about the value of social proof in our article entitled How to Use Social Proof to Close Deals Faster.

To boost your brand, develop style guidelines and use templates for social media postings. Be sure your marketing team, agents, and brokers understand the voice and message you want to convey to your audience. Regularly review and adjust your content to ensure consistency.

With your entire team on the same page, you’re sure to have consistent branding on all social media platforms. 

Creating a Meaningful Content Strategy

You may have some luck by randomly posting material on various social media platforms. You’ll have better results when creating a detailed, meaningful content strategy. 

The best social media strategy involves adding value versus direct selling, creating content that resonates with your commercial audience, varying your media, and targeting your ads. 

Let’s take a deeper dive into effective content strategies. 

The 80/20 Rule

The concept of the 80/20 rule (also called the Pareto Principle) is that you get 80% of your results by putting in just a 20% effort. 

As the 80/20 Rule pertains to social media, think about how to create posts that create value and strengthen relationships. 

Social media isn’t the place for a direct sell. Your customers should enjoy reading your posts. Let the words entertain, enlighten, and educate light your way. 

Optimize Your Posts

Optimizing your posts will improve your website’s visibility on the internet. There are many ways to ensure your target audience sees your content. 

We discuss this topic in greater detail in our article Effective Social Media Tactics for OEP.

Generally speaking, focus on keyword research and adding keywords to:

  • Content
  • Meta descriptions
  • Title tags
  • Headers
  • Internal linking
  • Ads  
  • Google business listing

Create Value Through Content

The variety of interesting content for commercial insurance clients is limitless. Categorize content based on the information business owners want, such as:

  • Industry trends
  • Regulatory updates
  • Risk management and safety tips
  • Case studies
  • Success stories

Vary Your Media

Keep your audience coming back by changing up the format of your content occasionally. 

Brainstorm with your colleagues on how to present content creatively. You are an expert in commercial insurance, now come up with some exciting ways to showcase it. 

Consider eye-catching content in various formats, such as:

  • Blogs
  • Infographics
  • Short videos
  • Podcasts
  • Images and photos

Storytelling is a good way to engage customers through any of the formats listed above. Stories of people in similar circumstances, and the audience gives a human element to your marketing strategies. 

Insurance naturally lends itself to storytelling as the stories demonstrate the value they get from their insurance policies. 

How to Manage Multiple Social Media Channels

Managing your social media content can be a lot to contend with when you don’t have a plan. A content calendar will help you to post regularly on all sites. You can see at a glance what is lacking and what you need to add to round out your content offerings. 

There are a variety of software solutions that simplify the task of posting on your social media platforms. Here are some you may want to consider:

  • Hootsuite
  • Buffer
  • Social Pilot
  • Sendible
  • SocialPilot
  • Loomly
  • Social Bee
  • Zoho Social

You’ll find even more auto-posting tools by doing an internet search. 

Prospecting and Engagement Tactics

Business owners are typically looking for ways to strike a balance between protecting against the inherent risks and keeping rising insurance costs down. A timely social media post about commercial insurance is likely to capture their attention. 

When costs go up or a claim goes bad, business owners will likely be on the hunt for a new commercial insurance policy. The question is whether your brand is visible enough on the social media sites for them to find you (rather than your competitors). 

Facebook groups and Reddit subs are good places to hang out with others who are chatting it up online about issues like commercial risks, insurance, and business costs. 

Hashtags can also draw attention to your comments and other social media content.       

Once the conversation gets going, your challenge is keeping the relationship alive. Business owners often turn to social media when they have questions or a problem. Craft your responses in ways that show genuine interest and provide value.

Resist the urge to respond with direct sales tactics, which will only work against you. Here’s what to do instead:

  • Express genuine interest. 
  • Ask insightful questions. 
  • Respond with empathy. 
  • Share relevant content. 
  • Follow up by asking how things worked out.

Once a prospect is interested enough to seriously inquire about commercial insurance, you can schedule a virtual appointment with them. People hanging out on social media will likely be receptive to hearing what you have to say virtually. 

Remember that your end goal is to start a natural, two-way dialogue that builds rapport and trust.

Engage Inbound Leads With an Instant Demo

Don’t miss an opportunity to connect with warm, incoming social media leads. With the help of CrankWheel, you can respond almost immediately when someone clicks on your CTA “Request a Demo” button.

You will get an instant message, alerting your team that a prospect is interested in a demo. From there, it’s simply a matter of contacting the prospect and following through with the demo. 

A quality screen-sharing tool like CrankWheel makes sharing your screen as easy as sharing a link with them. There is nothing for the prospects to download. You have the options of sharing a browser tab, a program window, or your entire screen. 

A preview window will appear that shows you what the viewer is seeing, so you can monitor their level of engagement with your presentation. 

Learn more about how to craft a stellar sales strategy with our article on The Top 15 Sales Prospecting Tips.

Consistency Is the Key to Commercial Social Selling Success

You may not be able to meet your sales goals with social selling alone, yet it can be a valuable part of your marketing strategy.  

Consistency in your social selling process will help you build trust and credibility that is sure to grow over time. Regularly posting useful content, engaging with your network, and following up with prospects consistently ensures your brand is highly visible online.

The faster you can respond to incoming leads with an instant demo, the greater your chances of conversion. Contact CrankWheel today to learn how to build your first screen-sharing demo to share with your prospects.