Ever feel pressured to market your resource-strapped agency to the hilt in a competitive digital age when you'd much rather engage in
A new digital marketing solution tailored to benefit advisers and insurance agencies might just be the answer. It features semi-custom websites, mobile-friendly professional designs, do-it-yourself tools that require minimal setup and no advanced expertise — all within a fully connected platform. AgencyBloc also has developed expert-created, industry-specific content with simple distribution workflows.
In a market defined by economic uncertainty, evolving regulations and increasing client expectations, the goal is to help small and midsize employee benefit brokerages and agencies that are struggling to keep up, especially when it comes to marketing.
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"As we talk to more and more agencies, they're struggling with a perception of what they should be doing in the marketing space," says Dyani Galligan, product director for digital marketing at AgencyBloc.
The goal is to make the marketing easy enough so that advisers can devote less than two hours a month to these tasks and
The face of business
While many benefit advisers and group insurance agents are confident in their ability to sell themselves face to face or at an event, she describes digital marketing as "all the ways you're being represented when you're not there…Your website is the face of your business, and it needs to reflect who you are." While blogs and newsletters represent an opportunity to demonstrate educational expertise and trustworthiness, she says social media should mirror an adviser's personality.
As the owner of a startup called Flawless Insurance Group, Danielle Guyton found the website building capabilities extremely easy and simply emails AgencyBloc any changes or updates she needs to have done. When prospective customers click on the website's contact form to learn more, their information flows through Guyton's customer relationship management software and alerts her right away.
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AgencyBloc's packages feature about 25 pages of content with relevant subject matter on multiple lines of business, including group health and life insurance, supplemental medical policies, Medicare, etc. Educational resources may include anything from pamphlets and employee handbooks to videos and checklists. Advisers also can access up to 100 pieces of various content every month that can be customized to each agency's needs as part of a brand-new content marketing suite.
"They can create their own content calendars, schedule posts, watch the analytics, see all the replies and respond to them," Galligan reports.
Websites are integrated with AgencyBloc's industry-specific sales and servicing management solution so that advisers never have to remember where they went, retype leads, download or upload them. "They funnel straight into their systems, and they can start firing off workflows, follow-up emails and requests for information," she explains. Her team builds and maintains all the websites. "The only piece that sits with the agents, if they choose, is a blog platform, which we add for free," she adds.
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Personalization is top of mind. "There are certainly cookie cutter websites out there, but we want to make sure that each of our websites tells a unique story about that agency," Galligan explains.
What Guyton found most valuable was "how much they listened to what my vision was and strived to make it happen," she says, appreciating regular check-ins to see how the website was coming along. "I had a couple of getting-to-know you calls where we spoke about my vision for my agency and what I most wanted my clients to get out of my website."
