Instagram Marketing for Insurance Agents - An All-In-One Guide to Get Started

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Are you an insurance agent looking to start or improve your Instagram marketing game? In this guide, you will be equipped with every detail you need to get started with Instagram marketing in your industry.

With features like reels and stories, many businesses have been able to put their brands in the spotlight. A 2019 study by Meta, suggested that 83% of users discovered new products and services on the photo and video-sharing social network.

instagram marketing for insurance agents

Not only that, Instagram has over 1 billion users - which makes it the right channel to influence the audience and create awareness about your brand. The social media platform is said to have millions of influencers converting prospects into clientele.

As long as you have the right content to stay relevant and large followers to leverage, you can influence people to decide on your brand.

Shortcuts:

It’s a form of social media marketing that centers on the promotion of brands. It allows businesses to connect with their targeted audience and market their offerings.

When done right, Instagram marketing could create awareness about your products/services as well as your brand.

Why Instagram Marketing Is Important for Insurance Agents

Over 200 million businesses use Instagram for the promotion of their brands, products, and services. So, if you’ve not been using the photo and video-sharing social media platform for your business, you are missing out.

But not to worry, we’ve got you covered.

Before we into the nitty gritty of how to use Instagram for your marketing strategy, why should you, an insurance agent, take Instagram marketing seriously?

A Perfect Social Channel to Tell Your Brand’s Story

Telling your brand’s story is a perfect opportunity to personalize your products/services as well as forge a deeper connection with the audience.

A number of marketers exploit social media platforms to tell their brand’s story. With features like Insta live and Insta Stories, you can give your audience a unique and engaging visual experience. You can also deepen your connection with your audience.

Instagram is the right channel to tell your brand story in a creative way.

Behind-the-scenes clips and images help personalize your brand. It gives the audience a reason to trust the quality of your services.

BTS media also helps the audience view your brand differently and creates an emotional connection. You can tell your brand story by sharing behind-the-scenes videos and images of your team/brand/events to build trust.

Reach A lot of People

Instagram has a huge potential audience insurance agents can leverage for their outreach. It has hashtags that let you target the right audience. However, avoid hashtag bombing, they can have a negative impact on your outreach.

Insurance agents can also use targeted ads to reach potential customers. Ads vary from $0.20 to $6.70 depending on the bidding model.

Improved Engagement

Instagram is one of the social media platforms with better engagement. It gets 23% more engagement than a Facebook post.

The social channel has features such as likes, comments, and poll stickers that prompt followers to engage with your content.

Serves As Goldmine for Resourceful Feedback

Insurance agents should never undermine the essence of monitoring conversations about brands & services on social media. Here are some ways to get resourceful feedback:

  • Use Iconosquare’s search tool to monitor the conversation about your brand on Instagram.
  • Let them ask questions on your Insta stories. The Instagram story allows your followers to ask any question while maintaining their anonymity. That way, you get unfiltered feedback about your brand and services.
  • Be responsive to your DMs.
  • Keep tabs on your follower’s comments on your content.
  • Publish content that nudges your followers to provide feedback about your services.

Grow & Nurture Your Audience

Having followers speaks volumes about your brand and services. Also, it maximizes your chance of reaching your potential customers.

Instagram is one of the best channels to grow and nurture long-lasting relationships with your customers. To grow your followers:

  • Know your best time to post your content
  • Post consistently
  • Learn how the Instagram algorithm works

Keep An Eye on Competitors

Keeping a close look at your competitors is effective in the evaluation of your strengths and weaknesses in contrast with others in your industry. That way, you get to leverage your strengths and work on your weaknesses.

Also, it keeps you informed on your competitors’ current and future plans. When you keep an eye on your competitors, you formulate a better marketing strategy for your brand in the future.

However, there are tools you can use to keep an eye on your competitors. Sprout Social, Phlanx, Brand24, and SocialBlade are some of the tools you can use to spy on your competitors on Instagram.

They perform different functions such as monitoring discussions on your brand and competitors on Instagram.

Strengthens Your Brand

A survey by Meta shows that 78% of users considered brands on Instagram popular. While 74% of Instagram users have the perception that these brands are relevant.

When your brand has a strong presence on Instagram, it gives prospects the perception that you are reputable. That alone influences their buying decision.

9 Ways for Insurance Agents to Get Started With Instagram Marketing

Now you are acquainted with the meaning and importance of Instagram marketing for insurance agents, how do you get started?

Set Up an Instagram Business Account

The first step to start your Instagram marketing journey is to create an Instagram Business Account.

While managing a social media account might be stressful and difficult if you are running a small insurance firm, it helps to hire a social media manager or partner with an influencer to handle the setup and the running of the business account for you.

We understand there are other aspects of your insurance firm that also demand attention. And you might not have the budget to take on a social media manager.

That’s why we’ve come up with these helpful DIY tips to make the process of setting up an Instagram Business Account hassle-free:

  • Once you’ve set up an Instagram account, you need to convert it into a business account to enable the features that will help transform your business.
  • Go to your profile and click on the menu icon in the top right-hand corner.
  • Click on “Settings.”
  • Then click on “Switch to Professional Account”
  • Click on “Continue”
  • Tap on “OK” to confirm
  • Click on “Business” and “Next”
  • Now you will be asked to add contact details to proceed. But you can skip this step if you are not ready.

The Instagram Business Account comes with special features like data analytics, feature posts, and ad opportunities to promote your brand. Personal Instagram accounts do have these features.

Define Your Targeted Audience

Identifying your audience makes it easy to channel all marketing efforts and resources into the group of people that are likely to buy from you.

To get started, come up with a buyer’s persona which gives you a clear picture of your potential audience. It can be likened to an avatar of the common features your targeted audience poses.

The more detailed your buyer’s persona, the better. Age, gender, education level, status, income level, and location are some demographic traits that should be in your buyer’s persona.

However, if your insurance services serve all gender with different age groups, then you need to create multiple personas.

Creating a frictional buyer persona will not be effective and hurt your business. Instead of guess working, use data to gather information about your prospects.

You can gather information about your potential audience with two approaches:

  • Hashtags: You can use Instagram hashtags to identify your prospects. Search for hashtags relevant to insurance. Then look closely at the profiles using these hashtags. Pay attention to common traits of these profiles - it could be the content they engage in or what they post. It’s tasking but rewarding when you do it right.

insurance agent hashtags for instagram

  • Pay attention to your competitors: At the beginning of this guide, we said taking a close look at your competitors gives you insight into how to formulate a better marketing strategy that works. Similarly, you can learn a lot about your targeted audience from others in your industry.

Take note of the kind of followers they have and the content they publish. That can also give you a clear picture of your audience.

Additionally, the Phalanx Influencer Auditor gives you access to valuable analytics like brand mention, location, and other demographics.

Map Out Clear Goals & Objectives

Planning gives us the right course of action. Likewise, mapping out goals and objectives for your Instagram marketing outreach puts you on the right track.

Ensure that your goals and objectives align with your brand’s values and needs. If your insurance firm is struggling with customer retention, you might want to tone down your brand awareness outreach.

Furthermore, make sure your goals and objectives are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely). Here are some examples of how to map out your goals and objectives for Instagram marketing:

  • Increase engagement rate by X% by the end of Q3.
  • Increase customer retention from X% to Y% during the winter.
  • Maximize brand awareness by X% in a year.

Leverage Instagram Tools for Business Accounts

Besides sharing videos/photos, captions, and adding tags, Instagram Business Account comes with some basic tools you can leverage to promote their brand. They include

Instagram insight: The tool gives you access to valuable analytics on your Instagram Business Account. You can see the number of people that saw each of your posts on their timelines.

It also lets you know the specific time your followers are most likely to be online as well as your level of engagement per post.

With Instagram insight, you can build an Instagram marketing strategy that really works.

  • Instagram ads: For a price, you get to make a sponsored post targeted at your potential audience. Factors like usage behavior, interest, and location are some metrics used by Instagram ads to target your potential audience.
  • Instagram shopping: The Instagram business account tool allows people to shop directly from your business profile.

It lets you set up an online storefront to offer services to your clients. The Instagram shopping tool also has other exciting features such as:

  • Shop in explore
  • Collections
  • Product detail page
  • Shopping tags
  • more
  • In addition, you can include a call-to-action button as well as business contact information on your profile.

Come Up With an Editorial Calendar

Consistency in content delivery is an essential part of Instagram’s marketing success. The audience expects you to post regularly.

With that said, posting content frequently can be tricky. You are prone to typos, tone problems, burnout, and other challenges. But an editorial calendar can help streamline the way you post content on your Instagram Business Account.

An editorial calendar sums up your upcoming Instagram posts. It is usually organized by date and you need it for your social media campaigns, content planning, and reviewing ongoing marketing strategies.

However, an editorial calendar takes different forms. It could be in a spreadsheet, Google Calendar, or in an interactive dashboard.

There are tools that provide useful insight on the right time to post and in-depth analytics. Some of these tools include Buffer, Loomly, Marketing Suite by CoSchedule, Brandwatch, and Content Scheduler in Adobe Express Suite.

Prioritize Relevant & Valuable Content

Brainstorming content ideas every now and then can be daunting. Here are some of Instagram’s best content ideas we’ve handpicked for insurance agents:

  • 86% of marketers believe video content to be efficient in lead generation. Creating how-to videos is one of the best content ideas you can explore.
  • Provide answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs)
  • A short interview featuring your firm’s representative.
  • Insurance tips & tricks that would be helpful to your followers.
  • Create polls
  • Partner with NGOs, charity organizations, and other non-profits.
  • Quizzes & competitions
  • Content that focuses on special offers and deals.
  • Share testimonials and different kinds of insurance policies in your firm.

Write catchy Captions

Writing creative and attention-grabbing captions can also enhance your visibility. It serves as the right guide to directing the audience to your website or blogs.

So, what makes a good Instagram caption?

It’s compelling and creates engagement - which is essential for the Instagram algorithm. A thoughtful caption mirrors your brand story, voice, and personality.

Here are some helpful tips to write compelling and engaging captions on Instagram:

  • Make the first few sentences count. An average user strolling through their Insta feeds will only see the first sentence of your caption. Therefore, ensure that the first sentence conveys the right message to your audience.
  • Add a call to action. Do you want the followers to visit your website, register for a webinar you’re hosting, or click on the link in your bio? Include it in the CTA. The times when you ask questions, encourage them to leave a comment.
  • Make sure your captions are valuable to your followers. Ask yourself “what do they stand to gain?” Once you have the answer, it’s easy to move forward from here.
  • Add layers of emotions in your captions. You write for humans, not robots.
  • Use relevant emojis to evoke emotions.

Optimize Your Bio

Your Instagram bio is the first thing potential follower sees when they visit your profile. So, make sure you make the most of the 150 characters.

Your bio should have the following:

  • A clear description of what you do
  • Have a glimpse of your personality
  • Call-to-action
  • A link
  • An action button

Here’s a perfect example of how you should optimize your Instagram bio.

Make It Less About You and Your Brand

When you only focus on salesy content, it gives your followers the perception that you only care about yourself and your brand.

American author, Dale Carnegie, in his book ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People said:

“I know you know people who are blundering through life trying to wigwag other people into becoming interested in them. Of course, it doesn’t work. People are not interested in you. They are not interested in me. They are always interested in themselves — morning, noon, and after dinner”.

Your Instagram followers are not any different. They only care about services, products, and people that improve their lives and businesses.

So, limit the rate at which you post content that directly sells your brand and insurance policies. Instead, prioritize valuable content that provides actionable tips on ways to make their lives better.

Here is a perfect example of how you can make it less about your brand and more about your audience.

While Liberty Mutual covers auto & vehicle insurance needs, in this post, they didn’t pitch their policies. What they did is offer safety auto tips for your followers in the spring.

Final Thoughts

Instagram has the power to connect your insurance firm with your potential audience. It can help get the word out about your services. You just need the right tweak to make that happen.

We believe these power-packed tips will help guide you through the right tracks of Instagram marketing for your insurance company.

BIO: Nikola Baldikov is an SEO specialist and founder of InBound Blogging, specializing in content and outreach strategies. Besides his passion for SEO, Nikola is an avid fan of football and he loves to dance.