10 Tips for Branding Your Agency

Independent agents and brokers: Of course you’re solid insurance technicians as well as sales and service professionals. But who says you also can’t be smart at customer and prospect marketing, with a little effort? Here’s how:

Hey, really important stuff comes up during the year — why not make up your agency communication plan as you go along? Send postcards one month, renew those snazzy Yellow Pages ads the next month, another fun new agency logo the next, jump on — and off — Facebook the next … the fun never stops.

Go for it!

Leave it all to chance. Pay the bills and see what’s left to grow your agency. Those canny principals who spend 3 percent of revenues on advertising and promotion are overthinking this stuff.

Who needs a social media person? And the website? That was done in 1998, and it’s fine.

You grow 100 percent by referrals anyway, and most of them search for you online and spot that cutting-edge site and just can’t wait to call you!

Goodness, who has time to talk with existing customers? The annual bill should be enough communication — and the job is even easier when the carriers send them direct to your customers on plain white paper with friendly CAPITAL LETTERS in that slick 1970s font. And you save postage.

Don’t waste time on asking customers if your messages or materials make any sense before you bet the farm (or the country club dues) on a big campaign. Fire, aim, ready — launch that puppy!

Spread all your brand touch points (capabilities pieces, business cards, sell sheets, etc.) out on a table and ask if they appear to be from the same firm. They don’t? No worries! Let colors and fonts change with the seasons.

Who cares if insurance experts and design experts are rarely the same people? Have at it yourself and save some big coin by bypassing those high-priced creative consultants — what’s the worse that could happen?

Come on, already: People don’t buy from people. They buy from shiny big buildings and faceless entities such as agencies with acronyms for their names. And who needs client testimonials? Personality is overrated.

Try a social media effort for just one week? Sure, you can call that a full campaign; why not, the attention span of the average customer is 38 seconds max.

The breathless radio ad rep calls touting a special: “200 ads for 200 bucks.” That’s a heckuva deal — especially when the ads run on Sunday at 2 a.m. so you can reach the drunks who need high-premium car insurance. That is your key target, right? Metrics are for bean counters. Just wing it without looking at Google analytics or other measurements. Just check the seat of your pants to gauge your results monthly or quarterly.

Van Aartrijk (peter@Aartrijk.com) is CEO of insurance branding firm Aartrijk when he’s not being chief fun officer (CFO) and cooking the books for Insurance is Fun (www.insuranceisfun.com).