If your insurance agency is not taking full advantage of LinkedIn to make connections and market your insurance brokerage, you are missing out on a great opportunity to grow your book of business.
LinkedIn, as you likely already know, is the social media equivalent of Facebook for the business world and is a great tool for professional networking. When it started, most people were using it for job prospecting, but it has evolved and is now a go-to platform for making new connections and marketing your agency.
To get started on LinkedIn, you will need to create a profile. Your profile should be as complete as possible, as this can also double up as your online resume. Using the e-mail address you provide, LinkedIn helps you find connections right away by matching your e-mail contacts with its member database.
The best way to get started networking through LinkedIn is to start building up your connections by adding people you know first. LinkedIn also has a number of other tools and options to allow you to search for connections.
Making connections with those you know is important on LinkedIn because many people often turn to LinkedIn to make contacts as they search for services, business deals, employees and a number of other needs. You are also branding yourself a professional with your profile in a convenient place where people are searching to make business connections.
Once you have completed your profile, you can also create a profile for your agency. This will allow you to showcase your company information along with the products or services that you provide.
What is nice about the company page is the ability to add not just your agency’s website, but any other website you have for each respective product and service you provide.
Adding a company page will not only help you within the LinkedIn network, it will help you beyond the network, as LinkedIn ranks very high in search engine search results.
This can help you in two ways. First, if someone is trying to find your company, chances are your LinkedIn company profile will appear on the first page of search results. It may also benefit your own website search engine result ranking because you are now listed on and linked to by a reputable, high-ranking site, which search engine algorithms pick up and use to add points to your website ranking.
Professional groups
Another popular place on LinkedIn is the tens of thousands of professional groups on the site. Most of these groups revolve around a discussion forum.
LinkedIn often recommends groups as you browse the site, based on your job title or industry information in your profile, but you can also search for groups by going to the group tab and using a number of different options to search for relevant professional groups in your industry or an industry you work with.
By initiating or participating in a discussion, you can get your company’s name out there and build your reputation, most especially if your discussion draws a lot of interest and you demonstrate a certain expertise.
People often make contact with you from these discussions, which may result in a key contract or a potential client. You can also create your own group; however, you will need to invest time into inviting people and building the group.
High-quality content is key
The key to success is posting content. With LinkedIn, you have access to the tools you need to showcase your knowledge of the insurance industry by including your research, blog posts and agency’s activity on your LinkedIn business and personal page.
When you regularly publish high-quality content, you set yourself apart from your competitors as someone who is an insurance expert. This helps build credibility before you ever meet a potential client face-to-face.
LinkedIn also lets you go a step further in your prospecting with its Sales Navigator function, which is one of its premium features. It allows users to create targeted lists, like prospects within a 15-mile radius.
The tool helps your producers leverage the information that users provide to the platform. You can send direct messages to people with whom you aren’t yet connected, set up media mention alerts for prospects, and follow news about certain companies.
LinkedIn Ads
For those who don’t have a lot of time to invest, yet want to promote their business, LinkedIn has a similar program to Google AdWords called “LinkedIn Ads.” This is a pay-per-click or “impression”-based advertising structure that is very simple to set up.
You can add a headline and two additional lines about your product or service. LinkedIn allows you to specifically target your ads towards the audience you want to reach, so the ad will only appear on those types of profiles you identify. The system allows you to choose by industry, position, age group, region and a few other criteria.
The nice thing about this is you can drill down and pay for ads only viewed and potentially clicked by your specific target audience, thereby saving money on advertising and getting a higher return on your marketing investment.
LinkedIn has a lot to offer, and without a presence on this system you and your agency are left out of a huge network where a significant amount of business takes place. In addition, your key clients may be on LinkedIn, and keeping your name in front of them is important in maintaining a relationship and a presence with those clients.
