Smart's Insurance Marketing Tips Blog

First things first: A pitch isn’t the same as a press release. A press release is a self-contained news story that you provide to a number of news outlets, which, if you’re lucky, reporters will rewrite so that your release fits their style and space — and you can run the release as-is on your Read full article

What if insurance agents had a sort of magic lamp they could use to identify their business strengths and weaknesses — or their insurance agency’s strengths and weaknesses?  All you’d have to do is rub it, say those magic words and all the wonderful things people think and say about you would be revealed to Read full article

Many of the biggest challenges facing the insurance marketer, agent or entrepreneur have to do with staying focused and aware of all the tasks at hand – not to mention deciding which task should get top priority.  To keep myself focused and on track I make a list of everything I need to do, prioritizing, Read full article

First of all, they say every snowflake is different.  As David Bradley points out on his blog sciencebase, this is true of larger, fully formed snowflakes.  But not necessarily true of smaller, “simpler crystals that fall before they’ve had a chance to fully develop into the familiarly evocative hexagonal flakes.” So, then, it could be Read full article

Successful insurance marketing can often rely as much on graphics as on words. Good graphics enhance any message. But what if you’ve got an appealing message, accompanied by poor visuals? Poor visuals put a greater burden on content, so if the message isn’t well structured and compelling, the entire slide show, website or newsletter suffers. Read full article

Does it make visitors want to pull up a chair and stay for a while?  Or is finding useful information like to trying to figure out which line to stand in at the DMV? One of the ten biggest problems with insurance agency websites is poor design and functionality. Make it attractive and pleasing to Read full article

We already know that paper newsletters have more impact than emailed newsletters.  When compared to an electronic version, the paper newsletter is four to five times more likely to be read.  That’s mainly because email  has a relatively poor open rate and even worse read rate. But now here’s a more compelling reason why paper Read full article

Even when they pay lip service to the concept of being a trusted insurance advisor, most of the insurance agency websites we see are nothing more than online corporate brochures or storefronts for quote engines. There’s nothing wrong with either of these approaches, if that’s what you really want.  Maybe you’re just trying to build Read full article

Last time, I talked about surprised by insurance as a transformational concept that helps customers and prospects reevaluate how they perceive their relationship with their agent.  Using tools such as the Internet — but not necessarily just the Internet — I’ve suggested that your goal should be to develop relationships with your customers that transcend Read full article

  In my last two articles about “Surprised by Insurance,” I talked about surprise as a distinguishing feature of your brand.  I want to broaden the concept this time.  I’d like to suggest getting surprised by insurance as a way of re-imagining or re-inventing how you do business — and more importantly, how your customers Read full article