How to Successfully Cross-Sell Your Clients and Reach a New, Informed Audience.
One of your greatest resources is right in your own office. Your current database of clients has the immediate opportunity to yield one of your highest returns. This article sets forth a strategy you can implement to successfully cross-sell your current clients by using today’s best inbound marketing strategies.
Inbound marketing is about publishing helpful and interesting content your audience wants to consume. Every good marketing campaign starts with the customer in mind; unfortunately, many campaigns focus on pushing features and details consumers really don’t want to hear. It’s not about bragging about what you can do, but more about how helpful you can be to the person on the other end. Show people how you can actually save them money, or detail for them how they will benefit in the long run with better coverage, and they will reward you for your thoughtful advice.
Spend your time upfront mining your database. Before you send out that first cross-sell email or informative E-newsletter, you need to segment your lists. Most management software enables you to export your contacts by type of policy. For example, if you’re an insurance agency, you could use the following segmented lists of customers: Auto-No Homeowners Insurance; Homeowners-No Auto; Auto&Home-No Umbrella; Auto& Home-No Life Insurance. For a commercial lines campaign, you could use the following lists: BOP-No Worker’s Comp; BOP-No Commercial Auto; BOP-No Professional Liability.
Identify your campaign audience. Who are we talking to? You first want to understand your buyer persona before launching into a campaign, so you can target them correctly. Focus on what’s most important to them. Most people react first to their own wallets. So, lead with the savings and actual realistic dollar amount that they can keep .
In terms of number of communications to this targeted list, I suggest engaging with them every month with a communication, varying between a direct sell and a soft sell. I would rotate with an E-newsletter that always includes an article about savings, and an actual client testimonial (even better if it’s a video) that illustrates how a real person benefited.
Create landing pages with offers. You want to create individual landing pages off of your website for the different, specific programs you’re promoting. You should have a clear value proposition and call to action with a form for the user to complete, in addition to a link for an immediate quote. You also want to make sure you optimize your landing pages for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), so they come up high in the search engines. The goal of a landing page is to directly convert a visitor into a buyer, so be clear, concise and to the point.
Plan + build your automation + nurturing flows. Planning and building follow-up campaigns to nurture leads into new clients is a process. You should always present the option for a direct call to the client on their time frame to explain the benefits one-on-one. If a client does not want immediate contact, I would suggest a follow-up communication with an actual client video testimonial after two to three days. Next, they should receive an E-newsletter with three blog posts from your website, the lead story being about their primary topic of interest. Then they should be entered into your internal marketing campaign, receiving your electronic newsletter each month.
Write about what you know best. Your insurance knowledge is your greatest advantage especially over direct writers. But you need to tell people about it, and do it often if you want to move the needle. You should write 25-50 articles (150-300 words in length) about how insurance benefits consumers. Many of these articles can be written in advance, not requiring you to write every week.
Share your blog with consumers. Once you’ve written your blog, you need to promote it. First, you will send it your targeted list via email, but you need to also expand your reach and audience. You want to do a post about your blog on Facebook and publish the article directly on LinkedIn.
Consider paid search and other channels. Your blog post and social media can be used to drive traffic to the top of your sales funnel. I would recommend setting up a budget for each campaign to boost your blog posts on Facebook and LinkedIn to “lookalike” audiences of your current clients. Just be sure that you are measuring the effectiveness of these channels.
Tracking your results. You set goals at the very beginning so that you can evaluate your success. You want to track the URLs of the visitors coming to your landing pages, and in particular, you want to review where your traffic is coming from and how visitors are finding you. You will be able to analyze where and when your clients are visiting your specific landing pages, and you’ll ultimately be able to track all your new business. This will help you make educated decisions on which marketing activities to continue to invest in and which campaigns work the best.
This will not be a one-and-done campaign. This is a campaign you want to continue to replenish with new leads and contacts. As you attract new customers into your agency, you will need to continue to grow and nurture them into multi-line clients.
John Houle is the president of JH Communications. He can be reached at 401.831.6123 or at john@jhcom.net.