Keep an eye on what people are saying about you online—on Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, Yahoo! Local and other sites.
One thing you can do to be aware of what people are saying about your insurance agency is to set up a Google Alert, which sends a daily email to your inbox listing all the mentions of you online in a given day, based on a Google search.
Keeping up with online comments gives you a good idea of what customers think about you and your agency, as well as what you could be doing better.
You should direct your customers, especially those whom you interact with via social networking sites, to leave feedback on those sites and others. That way, when someone searches for the type of insurance you sell on Google, not only will you be one of the top results, you’ll also be one of the highest rated. People put a lot of stock in those ratings.
One mistake businesspeople sometimes make is to visit a review site and respond to a bad review or a complaint with a defensive tone or, worse yet, a combative one. That’s counter productive to effective insurance marketing.
If you choose to respond to your online critics, always do so in a calm, helpful way that aims to make you look like a consummate professional with the tools and skills to solve even the biggest problems. Solving a customer’s issue in a public forum is a great way to show people you know what you’re doing.
Turning insurance referrals into referrals
The biggest selling point of referrals is the fact that they should, if done right, become a self-perpetuating engine of growth for your agency. Those who get referred by your customers should refer their friends, and they’ll refer their friends, and so on.
To capture insurance leads, the only things you have to do are provide consistent, high-quality service and products to your customers and ask for referrals when the time is right. Similarly, referrals from local businesspeople you know can keep bringing customers to your door in perpetuity.
It’s all about the long term.
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