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August 22, 2013 at 01:38 AM
It’s September, and Life Insurance Awareness Month (LIAM) has arrived. Life insurance and annuity producers should be taking advantage of this opportunity to market their services to clients.
One of the first rules of marketing is to be where your customers are, and social media sites are the pulse of consumer interaction. The nonprofit LIFE Foundation offers an information-packed toolkit of materials and resources — including an entire month’s worth of social media posts to help bolster your LIAM marketing campaign.
This is a great month to take the plunge into social media, armed with a ready-made marketing campaign. But after September, you might ask yourself, “Now what?”
Here are five steps for building your social media marketing plan for LIAM and beyond.
1. Have purpose.
As with any good marketing plan, know your objectives before you start. Do you want to deepen your relationship with existing clients to become their go-to resource for financial advice? Do you want to build a referral network? Perhaps you focus on a niche market, like business continuation planning, and want to engage with small-business owners and entrepreneurs.
Producers targeting the mass affluent market have had success using LinkedIn1 to connect with doctors, lawyers and other high-net-worth professionals. To reach the same demographic with women, Pinterest may be an option. Its users are mostly “female, well-educated and have disposable income.”2
See also: Mass affluent market: Your ideal pool of prospects?
The point is, don’t be on social media just for the sake of being there. Figure out the why before you implement the how.
2. Know the rules.
A key part of marketing in our industry is understanding and following the rules that apply to social media use, especially when it comes to the various licenses you may hold. Remember, the government entities that regulate licensing have different rules about licenses you use in daily practice.
It’s also important to stay current. Social media is a fluid environment, and regulators try to adapt to the shifts in technology as they happen. Follow industry resources like LifeHealthPro, LIMRA, and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) for the latest news and updates to social media regulations.
Know your agency’s policy on social media, too. Agencies, make sure you create a policy. One of the first things regulators may look at in a spot-check of social media communications is not only how a firm is using social media in the course of business, but also whether a social media policy exists.3
3. Don’t sell — engage.
Product pitches should not be a part of your social media communications. Not only does discussing specific products or making recommendations get into complicated compliance territory, but it can also turn people off.
Rather than souring social media followers with tired sales pitches, offer them information that is relevant and useful to them. In step one, you figured out why you wanted to be on social media. This is where the how begins, with engaging content.
Engaging could mean creating a blog where you offer tips on saving money and planning for retirement and linking to it from Facebook or Twitter. It could mean sharing interesting articles with a LinkedIn group or network. It could be creating a Pinterest board of healthy recipes and lifestyle tips, which might help clients improve their overall health.
Try a variety of media, not just text-based posts and links. Try to mix in videos, photos and infographics.
“A simple photo or quote can often have a much bigger impact than, say, insurance how-to information,” says Marvin Feldman, CEO of the LIFE Foundation. “It’s about finding the right balance for what your followers will find engaging and what they’ll want to share with their followers and keep them coming back.”
