If you ask any big corporation why they spend so much money on branding and marketing, they will probably all have the same answer: consistency and impact. A well-thought-out digital brand strategy creates a public perception of a business. And it is up to each company what that perception will be. Digital marketing also leaves an impact on those who interact with it. Again, it is up to individual businesses how deep that impact will be.

If you’ve been ignoring your insurance agency’s brand strategy, or you don’t have one at all, you’re making it much more difficult for your prospects to find you. You’re also not making any impact on social media or via your website. People might notice your logo when they do an online search, but because they don’t recognize it, they’ll move on to the one they do.

The less recognizable your brand is, the more customers you’ll lose to your competition. You can detail your agency’s mission with a cohesive digital brand strategy. You can visualize its vision. You can target your ideal audience. And you can make their insurance worries something of the past.

So, if you don’t know where to start with your agency’s brand strategy, keep reading to discover simple ways to make your agency a household name.

Decide on a Brand Identity and Stick with It

A brand presence doesn’t happen overnight. First, decide on the story you want to tell your audience and potential customers. Your story should include emotive points that connect your brand with your audience. You can only do this by explaining and demonstrating your business’ values and mission. If your agency claims to be unique in certain aspects, explain why. If you do something different to your competition, detail it. If you offer a one-of-a-kind customer experience, highlight it.

But you can only do this if you know your target audience. Do you want to attract first-time homebuyers? Do you specialize in life insurance? Your agency’s products play a big role in what your branding will look like. Your strategy must appeal to the demographic you want to introduce your products to. This is where a comprehensive insurance agency website comes in handy.

Build or Revamp a Dedicated Agency Website

Your website, along with your social media profiles, is what potential customers will look for first. It is essential to have a professional but inviting website that instantly reflects what your agency sells. Also, it must be easy to navigate so visitors immediately find the information they want.

If you plan on marketing your agency to Gen Z customers, your website should include the following core elements: mobile-first design, excellent graphics, and impeccable user experience. Visitors should be able to get a quote, sign up for insurance, and even submit a claim within one or two clicks. Gen Z audiences demand technologically advanced features from all businesses they buy from. If you offer them this, you will minimize the risk of them buying from your competition instead.

Also, your website must always reflect your brand identity. It is no use having one color palette for social media and another for your website. It will cause confusion and even frustration with your audience and website visitors. Your identity must look the same throughout your branding strategies. This includes social media, websites, flyers, videos, TV ads, etc.

Use SEO Best Practices for All Content

You want people to know about your unique products. You want them to marvel at your gorgeous logo, informative website, and social media content. But they can’t do that if they can’t find you online. Building a cohesive digital branding strategy is about making your agency as visible as possible to your target audience.

The cornerstone of online visibility is SEO (search engine optimization). You must include key phrases and keywords in the content you post on social media or upload to your website. Doing this will not only help with the cohesiveness aspect of your strategy but will make it much easier for people to find your content, social media profiles, and website.

Use Your Position of Expertise to Build an Unbreakable Digital Brand Strategy

You are in a unique position of expertise. Use it to build and strengthen your brand strategy. Write blogs, share relevant articles, and have valuable discussions on social media. Create infographics that show the benefits and consequences of having and not having insurance. Use client testimonials and success stories to point out why insurance exists in the first place. Make insurance coverage something that your audience does not want to be without.

Then, personalize your communications with customers when they reach out for more information. Acknowledge their interest immediately and contact them on the same day. Use targeted email campaigns to keep them informed and interested. Doing this will guide your leads through the customer journey process right through to where they sign up for one or more products.

Don’t Give Up Halfway

Don’t lose motivation if your brand strategy doesn’t pay off immediately. In most cases, building a successful digital brand strategy takes time to show positive results. But, if you keep at it and continue to build your brand, you will create a consistent agency image that people will think of first when they need to buy insurance.

Running a business requires a lot of blood, sweat, and even tears. It requires money for practical things like furniture, electronics, and staff. It needs a proper recruitment process and marketing strategy. And most importantly, running a business depends on efficient customer retention.

It is no different in the insurance industry. If you run an insurance agency, you know how hard it is to keep up with the competition. You know what a challenge it is to keep your audience interested in your products. You also know your hard work will go to waste without business growth.

You need organic growth to ensure your agency is successful in the long term. This means investing in several strategies to keep attracting new audiences. But you could also benefit from acquisition-based growth. Acquisitions will help you make your business visible to new markets. It may also allow you to adopt new technologies and gain highly qualified staff.

Which strategy is best for growth, organic vs. acquisition? Keep reading to discover which one will work best in your agency.

The Organic Approach Requires Strategic Thinking

Organic growth means encouraging people to choose your agency over your competition. Find ways to show potential customers that your agency can offer them something other agencies cannot. Show them, inform them, and educate them about insurance and why your agency has the best and most accessible products.

For instance, if you offer life insurance for people with a specific medical condition like heart failure or diabetes, you already provide a product that many other agencies do not. If you’re able to offer competitive rates on non-standard home and auto insurance policies, you have added value where other agencies haven’t.

Use content marketing to let potential customers know how you can protect them and their families. Show them how you can secure their futures and how your agency can help take some of the fear out of emergency or tragic situations. Content marketing includes blog posts about insurance products, professional articles, social media posts, and educational videos.

Moreover, you can attract a larger audience with your content marketing by including SEO tactics. Optimizing your website and social media content with SEO keywords will help your agency rank higher in search engine results pages. This means your business becomes more visible, and more people will read and inquire about your services.

Use a CRM or insurance agency management system to track and store customer interactions and information. These systems help agencies manage and build customer relationships. And they can help you stay on top of cross-selling and upselling opportunities. You can also use them to automate time-consuming tasks like lead generation and email marketing, which allows you to grow your customer base faster.

Acquisition Offers Faster Results

Though you need organic growth strategies to sustain your agency’s success, these strategies can take a long time to produce results. Acquisitions, on the other hand, give you instant access to a whole new customer base. When you buy another agency, you get new distribution channels. And you get an additional team of qualified agents.

However, buying an agency to integrate with yours is an expensive way to grow. Not only that, but you also need to plan and do extensive homework before you sign that acquisition document.

For instance, you should choose an agency that is like yours. Going too far off the beaten path may lead to challenges ahead. Look for an agency that is roughly the same size and offers the same type of products.

Also, ensure that the agency is financially sound. Many acquisitions have gone sour because one party was not forthcoming with information about financial difficulties. If you buy an agency already struggling to stay afloat, you may suffer a financial loss instead of expanding your business.

Furthermore, merging any two organizations often results in some tension. You must prepare yourself and your staff for potential conflict, new systems, and possibly an entirely new operational process.

Buying another agency will provide you with a new customer base instantly. But, if the merged agency does not continue to provide the customer service that existing customers are used to, you will have a tough time retaining them.

Which Is the Right Strategy for Your Business?

The right strategy for your agency depends entirely on you. It is up to you to decide whether you have a budget suited to organic growth or acquisition. Or, whether you have enough time and money to do both. Establish whether your agency can withstand the risk of merging with another.

If your agency is small with niche products, you may fare better with organic growth strategies. However, if you have extensive coverage options and want to expand your business fast, you could consider an acquisition.

Plan for Sustained Success

Do not dive head-first into any strategy. First, determine whether your market position warrants acquisition. If you continuously beat your competition, organic growth may be enough to keep your agency successful. But, if you struggle to compete with other agencies, you could use an acquisition to gain valuable market share.

Lastly, your team is your most valuable asset. If your agents have the skills to run a successful organic growth strategy, let them do it. If your agency is a startup and you do not have agents with the necessary skills, buying another agency may get you the essential resources you need.

Plan for success and do not let short-term gains take your focus away from growing your agency over the long term. This is the only way to make a decision that will help grow your business.

The days of loopy, handwritten signatures are long gone. With people conducting business with customers worldwide, a better solution was needed. And so, back in the late 80s, the concept of a digital signature scheme saw the light. By the 20th century, electronic signatures were legal with the ESIGN Act passed by former president Bill Clinton.

Electronic signatures evolved from signing a document with an autopen to computerized documents. Most countries consider electronic signatures binding. They are also easy to verify or authenticate. For this reason, companies can use them in contracts and other documentation.

Benefits of Electronic Signatures

The best benefits of using electronic signatures are convenience and time savings. This is especially true for insurance agencies. How many times have you emailed a client, asking them to physically sign a document, only to never get the document back? People don’t like printing documents just to sign and scan them back. It is an unnecessary hassle.

An electronic signature eliminates this process and makes signing a document much more convenient. For instance, if you send a new customer their insurance documents, they can open and sign the documents using electronic signature software, and email them back in under ten minutes.

Electronic signature software can also save your insurance agency money. Your agents don’t have to print a stack of papers before meeting a potential client. They can show them all the information they need via your website or marketing materials, and when they are ready to sign, they can do so with an electronic signature. There are no printing costs, and when you must send paperwork, there are no mailing costs. You simply email whatever documents you need to send.

Moreover, electronic signatures increase the security of a document and reduce risk. They are easy to verify using a digital audit trail and difficult to forge. It becomes even more challenging to forge an electronic signature when it is done free-hand compared to choosing a pre-selected font. Electronic signature software can even detect alterations, further minimizing the risk of fraud.

Lastly, you no longer have to store documents in piles. You can use an agency management system to store customer policy documents (and other paperwork) because the signatures will always be there when you need to use them.

Jenesis Offers a Flexible Electronic Signature Solution

Jenesis is committed to helping insurance agencies save time, money, and effort. Our Insurance Agency Management System integrates with a technology known as Formstack. This integration allows agents to get documents signed electronically without customers visiting an agency in person.

The signing process is also as easy as one, two, three for agents. They can sign their name and save the document as a .bmp file. Using a simple image editing tool like Canva or the one built into a computer’s operating system, they can shape and size the signature or save it in another format. Then, they can add their signature to the management system under User Setup. They can use this signature to sign customer documents and personal contracts within seconds.

If you use WeSignature, you can also integrate it with the JenesisNow management system. Simply click on All Locations on the Jenesis main page, go to location options, and turn the WeSignature Integration tab on. Then, you can add a WeSignature credential to your Jenesis user profile, which adds a new signature.

Getting Documents Signed Through JenesisNow

JenesisNow makes it easy for your agents to get documents signed. They have a few options, including sending an email request via the client’s profile. All they need to do is click the WeSignature button to open a popup window and password-protect the document they want to send. Then, they can add the document to an email using the same screen and send it to the customer.

Agents can also send policies via the policy screen. Using the Accord Forms menu, they can select the orange button, which will give them the WeSignature option. Clicking on WeSignature will direct them through the same process as emailing via the client profile.

Use JenesisNow For All Your Electronic Signature Requirements

JenesisNow can help you eliminate all the hassles of printing documents and getting physical signatures. E-signatures are the way of the future. They allow your customers to review their documents and sign them from anywhere in the world. This reduces frustration for your customers and turnaround times in your agency.

E-signatures also help build a memorable customer journey by offering a paperless but secure signing process. Along with happy customers, you will enjoy Jenesis’s strict security measures that ensure the integrity of all e-signatures. You will also save on costs of printing, storage, courier fees, and postage.

Using JenesisNow and integrating it with e-signing software means your agents can customize their workflows. They can facilitate agreements that require multiple signatures. And they can keep track of signed and unsigned documents on one platform. Moreover, they can do all of this with their mobile phones.

By using this incredible technology in your agency, you can enjoy the benefits of e-signatures from day one. Ready to see it in action? Request a demo, today!