Hey Agents

Social media is such a unique digital marketing beast, we’ll going to get right into this.

It’s time to reconsider the BEST time to post studies, infographics, etc

and really look into your audience

Instead, we want to build a profile for your own unique data and audience. 

A lot depends on your market and brand. Does time even matter anymore since posts are not sorted by recent? Yes in the sense posting consistently is important for the algorithms but time has less meaning when your post are sorted by relevance and interest - these affect your audience and each audience is going to have unique factors. 

When is your audience is most active on the platform is a great place to start but keep in mind consistent posting is needed - so pick times that work for you regularly. It’s also important to build your brand consistency. When someone looks at your page, are you going to have something random every day? You can plan out content in advance and share themes on specific days. It’s great to share random work-related things on your business page, but maybe you are into food and want to share great restaurants you get to try with clients too. Scheduling some items can help hold you accountable and will build your page to that audience - say Monday morning accountability - opening a whole new audience to your content.  

We love this article by Buffer. They recommend doing regular post daily at different times over a course of a month or so to find your audience’s best time and walk you through how to find this data per platform.

Social media is a growing monster of opportunities. Don't let it scare you away, it just changes how we communicate with our audience. With our thorough agent training, administrative support, and a marketing team behind you - Secure American lets you focus on what matters - Happy Clients. If you are interested in joining us, check out our career's page. 

Hey Agents

The start of the new year always has us deciding what we want to accomplish in the next twelve months. In this article, we want to discuss the importance of setting SMART Goals.

A SMART GOAL is a goal that is:

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Relevant

Time-based

This means, your goal is written in a way it has a deadline, specifics, and is relevant to your other goals. For example, “I want to earn more” is not a SMART goal. Instead, be specific on the amount, how, and the deadline for your goal: “I will increase my income 20% this year by interviewing agencies that payout renewal commissions, making a decision in the first 3 months of the year and focusing on my clients.”

This goal is specific: increase your income; measurable: Income increase 20%; attainable in the time frame, assuming you know your numbers, relevant to your work, and time-based: one year for the increase, 3 months for finding a better fit company.

If you are looking for a company that pays renewal commissions, Secure American Insurance is a great choice. With our thorough agent training, administrative support, and a marketing team behind you - Secure American lets you focus on what really matters - Happy Clients! If you are interested in more information, you can read our career's page or email us for more information. 

In this case, we are setting a yearly goal but you can set quarterly, monthly and weekly goals as well. We personally like to set yearly BIG goals and follow up with monthly smaller goals and tasks that will help us reach that goal one step at a time.

For example, to increase your income the 20%, your first step is to find and interview with agencies that offer renewal commissions. If you are unfamiliar with renewals, you earn when a client renews. So it’s important to keep your current clients happy and satisfied with your customer service. So in addition to working with new clients, you now work more to nurture your current clients. This may include launching a feedback system - asking clients what you can help with and what they would like to see. It may be a digital marketing campaign to let them know you are here for them for any questions, with tips, local favorites, or a giveaway. 

These are all smaller tasks that support your larger goal - increase your income 20% this year.

It’s important to remember to set strong goals at the beginning of your process - it does not have to be start of the new year, you can start a new goal anytime, and work towards improving. 

With the New Year just ending, it's the perfect time to set your goals.

Hey Agents,

It’s the time of year when we like to encourage each of our agents to take the time and review their book of business, take a check of the numbers and see what they want to accomplish in the new year. 

The great thing about being an independent agent is you are able to set your own goals, deadlines, and timeframe for yourself. This can be a bit intimidating for some people and we love helping our agents figure out their own goals. New year happens to be a time when many of us are thinking about these goals.

A good place to start is with the previous year’s numbers. Not all numbers need to be income versus expense. How did your community and client list grow? Did you lose any clients this year? These are all numbers that are just as important as monetary ones.

It’s good to ask; Where did my business come from? 

This is a great question for any independent worker. Some options we look at are Community Sphere, Farming, Referrals, and Cross-Selling. This is a great question to help figure out where you should put effort into marketing next year.

If you lost clients, it’s never too late to reach out and ask why and if you could have done something better to learn from it. 

It’s so important to understand your sphere and community.

It’s always a good idea to review yourself periodically, be sure to keep track of your numbers through the year as well, making sure you are on pace for your goals and keeping everything together. There are many services that offer features to help you stay in contact with your clients. 

Secure American Insurance uses Ezlynx, a great all in one system for your clients. Secure American Insurance uses thorough agent training, administrative support, and a marketing team to help you focus on what you do best - take care of your clients! If you are interested in learning more about our opportunities you can email us anytime, or apply online at our career's page. 

^{“If you know 150 people, imagine 10% of them plan to change insurance this year. (15)}

^{Then imagine 5% will give you someone who isn’t happy with their insurance (roughly 8).}

^{What could you do with these extra 23 client policies?”}

It’s important, to be honest with your numbers and review the changes year over year. Once you have looked through your lists, made some observations you are ready to set those goals for the new year. 

For example, if you lost a client this year, reaching out and trying to improve is a great goal. Once you are sure of your numbers and able to accurately see your book of business - it’s also a great time to set growth goals! Maybe this year you want to focus on your clients - so you will focus on cross-selling for new income and ensuring your clients are satisfied. This will also generate great referrals if you work with your current clients. 

If you are looking to start or join an independent agency, one type of income you may hear about is insurance policy renewal income. An insurance policy renewal is when your client decides to continue their current insurance policy with your agency and with the same insurance carrier. Many agents will typically not be paid renewal commission income or they will be paid a much smaller percentage of the renewal commission than what they are paid on new business commission. At  Secure American Insurance we feel it is important to put renewal income back in the pocket of our agents. Renewal commissions are an incredibly important part of building a consistent stream of income on a book of business. 

Clients want to renew their insurance with a great agent; so staying in contact with your clients throughout the year and providing excellent service is the key to maximizing your renewal opportunities. Renewal dates are also a great time of year to bring up additional coverages your clients may now need or want, that were not available in previous years - for example if they want to add identity theft coverage to their homeowners policy or maybe they just bought a boat they need to insure. Renewals are a great time to reassess your client’s risks and needs and adjust their coverages as needed. This is also a great time to educate your clients about the types of services, coverages, and carriers you have the ability to provide to them.

The key to keeping your clients happy is a balance of checking in regularly- but no too much. It’s good to be available for questions, concerns or just neighborly chats. Keep in mind your audience when you are sharing things online or when finding new places you enjoy - the best type of contact is a non-sales chat; make your conversations personal. 

Renewals commission rates, changes in premium, and updates to coverages depend on the policy. It’s a good idea to check in with the insurance carriers regularly on any changes to coverage your clients may have at renewal. Policies renew at the end of their policy period, which is generally 6 or 12 month periods. It is a good practice to make sure your clients are aware of those upcoming dates. We suggest setting up automatic email reminders to go out to your customer as well as you, in order to stay on top of your upcoming renewal dates. 

For clients, this is a great time to make changes to policies, add or remove coverage and verify their discounts. As an agent be the expert and do your research before starting your renewal check ins. A great point of practice is to send out a reminder email so the client has a chance to respond with any questions or life updates. This gives you time to get those questions answered and provide the answers to your clients. 

Renewals are a great way to build a stream of income and build your business, but remember in order to keep those renewals rolling in you need happy clients. Finding ways to communicate and service your clients is an important part of building your income. Advocating for and educating your clients is the best way to express your gratitude, while also ensuring they are prepared for anything through excellent coverage.

Engaging on social media is a great way to stay connected to your clients and future prospects. Just like in person networking, there are ways to make great impressions on your social media feed. As an independent agent, you get to develop your own marketing plan. Great interactions with the community are essential to your business; you can interact with people and show your expertise in your industry  by sharing tips specific to your business, the time of seasons, or current events. For example, a current campaign we developed is our End of Summer tips. 

The best way to share on your social media platform of choice may vary - however good quality photos or videos will always perform best. It’s best if you can share your posts on multiple sites by using all three types of post - text, video and pictures. It’s a great way to spread the content around and use it to the fullest extent. 

Developing social media content requires the following steps: first, gather your tips and include some relevant text; you want to organize the information  in a clear and concise way. You want to avoid long text walls, making a brief sentence as the top take away, with a bit of detail following it. Second, post your content. When posting text, it’s best to phrase it in a conversational way with an open-ended question; connect people, do a give away, or more! Below is an example of how simple a post can be while still getting attention.

A simple text post:

Happy Thursday, stopping in to remind you to check your gutters as we get ready for fall! Fall brings us great rain here in Denver, so it’s always a good idea to have your gutters cleaned as we head into the season to protect your roof. Stay dry this season, and as always if you want to have a free second look at your insurance, message me.

Use it as an opportunity to get comments:

Happy Thursday! Stopping in to see how often you clean your gutters? Keeping your gutters clean can prevent water from sitting on your roof. Keep it dry this season, and as always if you want to have a free second look at your insurance, message me.

Or use you can use it as an opportunity to connect people:

Happy Thursday! It’s the time of year and fall is sneaking up on us! Have you gotten your gutters cleaned lately? If you can’t remember the last time, give  *company here* a direct message and they can give you a quote for free, just mention you saw it here on my page! Stay dry this season, and as always if you want to have a free second look at your insurance, message me.

This is a great way to connect with the community. Reaching out to a fellow small business and asking to swap a post for a post is FREE and a great way to network in your neighborhood. You can also work with that company and share a discount or give away a free service...

Giveaway:

Happy Thursday! It’s that time of year again and I’m giving away an opportunity to get your gutters cleaned for free! Just share this post for me and comment below to enter! I’ll select one commenter and send them over to my friends at *company here* for a free full service gutter cleaning. Thanks, and always if you want to have a free second look at your insurance, message me.

As you can see, you can take a simple post and share it in many ways. You can share your tips on social media either by posting the text or creating an image. Another great way to share on social media is to show the tips as a video. We hope this article will help give you some simple, yet effective ideas for generating more business on social media.