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Speaking with an expert agent has always been a critical element when buying insurance. Whether it’s life, home, automotive, or health insurance, a real-life conversation is likely to happen at some point along the customer journey. That’s because having a conversation with an agent is the best way to get quick answers to personal questions before making a financial commitment to a complex service.
As an insurance marketer, it’s important to recognize that while most insurance leads research insurance online, only 25% follow through with buying online. Conversations with prospects are critical to writing new policies. And what better way to strike up a conversation than by using your digital marketing to drive more calls to your agents?
There’s a lot you can do, but let’s start with Facebook. After all, Facebook is predominantly accessed by smartphone users, which makes Facebook a great platform for quickly connecting insurance leads with your agents. In this article we’ll outline how to leverage Facebook marketing for insurance agents so that you can do a better job connecting with potential customers.
The first step to driving conversations is by getting your mobile News Feed ads in front of smartphone users. Yes, a desktop user can call using another device at some point, but a smartphone user can call right away.
Do you know who else is more likely to call? Someone that has already shown interest in your services. Make sure to retarget consumers who have previously called you from your site or mobile app. They’ve already shown a desire to call – so show them ads that encourage them to re-engage by calling.
Once you’ve found a targeting strategy that drives calls, expand your reach by targeting new audiences that resemble your ideal customers who have called you in the past. These are called lookalike audiences in the Facebook world. You can take it one step further and try adding these targeting options to help drive calls from insurance leads:
Nearly half of smartphone users expect insurance agents to be within 5 miles of them. Geo-target people near your agents or branch locations and make ad content hyper-local by including a local address and phone number. Using a “Call Now” button in your Local Awareness Ads is also a simple and effective tool for driving calls to agents directly from your ads.
Set triggers for different types of insurance purchases. Show specific messages to take advantage of what’s happening in your audience’s lives. For instance, target married couples with first-time home buyer ads or those that just had a child with upgrades to life insurance ads.
Life Events Worth Targeting:
Target people that have expressed interest in or have liked insurance-related pages, or have purchase behaviors similar to those that are likely to respond to insurance offers.
The right conversation intelligence solution not only tracks which Facebook ads are driving calls, but also uses AI to capture insights from the phone conversations. Insurance marketers are using these insights to retarget previous callers with the right ads. For instance, if a caller purchased auto insurance over the phone and mentioned they were closing on a home, you could target them with ads promoting an auto and homeowners insurance bundle over the next 60 days, as the closing process progressed.
Facebook’s lookalike audience feature helps you build on your success by finding prospective customers with similar attributes to those who already converted from your ads. Some insurance marketers use their call tracking data to build lookalike audiences based on callers who converted over the phone. This is an effective way to drive new policyholders, since 72% of insurance shoppers purchase offline by talking to a call center or local agent.
A/B testing is pretty straight forward. Are life insurance ads running better than homeowner insurance ads? It’s all about the variable and what you’re trying to learn about your audience. Small tweaks to your imagery, placement, text, or the audience itself, when compared to an original ad, teaches you what is more attractive to your audience or if you’re simply targeting the wrong people from the start. This is important to your budget because it allows you to spend confidently since your decisions are based on actual data rather than making wild guesses.
How do you get a Facebook user to start thinking about insurance? How does an ad spark action? You won’t know until you test, but one thing is clear: the most effective way to drive calls from Facebook advertising is to first drive visits to your website where you can encourage them to call. But how do you stop someone from scrolling through their Facebook News Feed so they'll click on your ad? Here are some ideas.
One way to cut through the noise is to present a great offer or incentive. Give users a reason to click through to your landing page where you can offer additional details and incentivize them to call.
Carousel ads are very helpful in capturing attention and creating a visual story. According to Facebook, this format consistently drives higher engagement compared to single-image ads. Showcase your brand’s uniqueness in bite-sized bits using different images to tell an interesting narrative.
It’s critical to make sure you’re utilizing the right strategy throughout a customer’s journey which follows these typical steps. We’ll use auto insurance as an example:
As mentioned earlier, it’s likely that you will drive your calls from your Facebook audience once you get them to click through to your landing page. While these tips might sound like a broken record, it’s critical that you don’t skip out on them as they will help you improve your conversion rates.
If you don’t have a responsive website that’s optimized for mobile, you’re losing customers to an insurance company that does. Make it easy for smartphone users to navigate your website by optimizing for mobile. Don’t force your audience to pinch their screens to view your content.
Place your click-to-call button above the fold on every page or in the middle if you’re targeting Facebook smartphone users with an inclination to call.
Tailor content for local if you’re targeting local shoppers with your Facebook ads. Direct them to a landing page that’s customized to them, from messaging to imagery to the local phone numbers.
When insurance leads call, use their location and online interactions to automatically route them to your closest location. Or if you send calls to a call center, route them to the best agent to assist them based on what you know about the caller. A call tracking solution can help you route callers and provide data on them to your call center agents at the time of the call.
Want a deeper dive on landing pages? Check out this article on landing page best practices.
Insurance is a complex and considered purchase which is why, according to J.D. Power, only 25% of insurance leads buy online. You’re tracking the online results of your Facebook campaigns, but are you connecting these to your offline results?
To prove and improve the calls their Facebook Ads landing pages are driving, leading insurance marketers are using call tracking solutions. The right call tracking solution can tell you not only how many calls you’re driving, but also how many of those calls are qualified sales leads and how many ultimately convert to policyholders. You can push this data into Facebook Ads manager or view it in custom dashboards. With these insights, you can optimize your Facebook ads and landing pages to drive more new policyholders at a lower CPL.
Facebook users will happen upon your profile and you want to be prepared for them, in addition to intentional browsers. Sometimes potential customers don’t know what they need until you tell them, and your Facebook page is the perfect tool to communicate the value your insurance can bring. When organic traffic does come across your page, your content needs to be able to do the three E’s: Engage, Educate, and Electrify.
To engage, give your audience a reason to keep clicking and keep reading. What value do you bring? How do you compare to your competitors? Is there a picture you can post that they would like or comment on? These are all questions potential customers are going to ponder, and if you can answer them with your content alone, it’ll draw them in to dig deeper.
To educate, your content has to fill in a blank that either your audience already knows they need filled, or didn’t know they need filled, but now they do! Provide numbers, data, competitor comparisons, or anything else that can differentiate yourself that your customers didn’t know about you before.
How do I “electrify” an audience about insurance? Ok, so it’s not the most exciting topic to promote, but this is where you get to be creative and MAKE it exciting. If a gecko or furry cavemen can make insurance funny and interesting, what can you do to bring that same energy? Creating some sort of ongoing insider joke, catch phrase, memorable slogan, or mascot are all strategies you can utilize to bring some energy to your content.
Contact information, the rates you offer, business’s name, logo, and the types of coverage you provide are all important pieces of information you need to make readily available. If potential customers have to go looking for it, you’ve lost them already. Facebook is full of distractions so all your basic information is required. If you move your office space or change your number, your Facebook and any other platforms need to be updated immediately. our audience will become frustrated and move on if the number they’re trying to call goes nowhere.
There are all sorts of relevant Facebook groups you can join to connect with a wider audience and cast a wider net at the same time. It’s also a great way to prove you’re an expert in the industry. There are groups like Insurance Claims Questions, Discussions, & Education where providers and those seeking answers can collaborate to provide guidance to everyday issues. This is a great way to demonstrate your knowledge and capabilities.
You’ve got to post regularly if you want to stay on your followers’ radars. Promotions on Facebook will get lost in the shuffle of every other product that’s being promoted, so discount announcements, promotions, or customer testimonials with imagery or video are all options you can utilize to keep current customers up to date or attract new ones. To stay relevant, create a realistic schedule that you can maintain and provide content for and stick to it!
We’ll put it this way. It doesn’t hurt, AND it’s free. Facebook Pixel is a great way to gather preliminary data before you start spending money and running ads. Pixel will track how users are navigating your website, their journey to get there, and other insights as well. From this initial information you can create more intentional and strategic ads that target the same or similar audiences.
Facebook suggests the following criteria for your ads:
Facebook ads are broken down into 3 man sections, Headline, Primary Text, & Description, and each section has a recommended character count. The recommended text length for a Headline is 40 characters, Primary Text is 125 characters, and Description is 25 characters. Don’t let the character count discourage you. This is where you really have to be strategic and focused in your messaging.
Choosing between boosting your Facebook Post or investing in Facebook Ads all depends on the goals you’re trying to achieve. Boosted posts are geared more towards promoting brand awareness. They allow your followers or potential followers to Like, Comment, or Share your post. These interactions can potentially lead to conversions, but should be seen as an added step in the funnel process. Ads are somewhat similar but lean more towards achieving more direct sales conversions. They guide potential customers towards your website so that the traffic is more likely to purchase the insurance offers you have available.
Get the Ultimate Guide to Conversation Intelligence to learn more about integrating conversation data with all of your digital advertising platforms.
