Video Guide for Insurance Agents – How to Genuinely Connect and Save Time with Your Prospects, Clients, and Referral Partners

The one thing we know for certain about life is that nothing is certain. Life just happens. This is why having insurance agents like you in our collective corner is so important. You help us plan for the unpredictable. For those 100-year floods and fires that we never thought we would see in our lifetime.

With every up and down that life throws our way, we look to you for security and support. However, you can only help those who are able to hear what you have to say. You keep trying to connect with your clients and prospects but you can’t seem to breakthrough.

How can you move forward?

The Problem

In a digital world full of constant noise and unwelcome distractions, it can be challenging to foster the genuine connection and trust you need with your prospects, clients, and referral partners. Spam, bots, data hacks, and more all create digital pollution, impacting your ability to communicate across virtual spaces. And because of this, your message can be muted or lost entirely.

The Impact

You see, the result of digital pollution is that people are hesitant to communicate with you because they don’t know who or what is reaching out to them. And who can blame them?

Think of your email inbox. How often do you find yourself hitting delete, unsubscribing from things that don’t serve you, or wading through junk just to find the information you need? It’s probably pretty often. And it’s important to consider that your recipients are doing the same.

In addition, digital environments lack vital communication elements like emotion, nonverbal cues, tone, and more, that meaningfully connect us as people. So whether you’re reaching out to request time-sensitive documents or providing updates throughout the insurance transaction process, ongoing communication — even with someone who knows you — can be challenging without the warmth, urgency, excitement, and clarity you convey in person.

The Answer

Human-Centered Communication: A Business Case Against Digital Pollution by Ethan Beute and Steve Pacinelli highlights that every piece of communication you send influences your recipient to engage you or ignore you the next time you reach out. As a result, you should be leveraging that communication to build familiarity. When your recipients understand that you’re a person who values their time and energy, they’re encouraged to engage you because you’ve earned the attention that’s essential to building relationships. And you’ve done that by demonstrating what matters to you — them.

Face-to-face communication using video helps emphasize the value, competence, and intent you want to convey to build familiarity and earn attention. It captures all of those unique, human characteristics that get lost in plain-text communication. With video, insurance agents like you can stand out in a sea of digital frustration and grab attention as authentic, vulnerable people who have something valuable to offer.

How to use video to genuinely connect and save time

Producing regular and consistent video content can help you connect with your prospects, clients, and referral partners while expanding your sphere of influence to create a consistent stream of referral-quality leads in a more organic way. The guide below gives you a step-by-step process in how you can create weekly email and social media videos that make an impact while taking as little time away from your day as possible.

What to Expect

Time commitment: ~5-10 minutes per video per week

Average budget: FREE

Outcomes:

• Larger following and engagement via social media
• Increased sphere of influence digitally and in your community
• More prospects, more responses, more business
• A sustainable pipeline that increases your ability to help more people, more often

1. Ditch the Scripts

To show up authentically means you must show up as yourself. Even if it’s messy.

When recording a video, try your best to be as real as possible. Humans want to connect with other humans, so don’t waste extra energy or time trying to make it perfect. By ditching the script you are able to recreate that face-to-face feel.

In this guide, we give you 52 questions a potential client would want to know the answer to. What we encourage you to do is to answer each question in a video. No script. Just you, showing up as yourself, giving your honest feedback and advice.

Need a pick-me-up before you hit record? Here are some tips on Getting Comfortable on Camera to get you started.

2. Be Consistent

Who you are, how you talk, interact, and engage with your audience creates an unspoken system that people start to depend on. The frequency in which you engage with your audience, the format, and the types of messages that you deliver also tie into that system. The more consistent you are in how and when you show up for your prospects, clients, and referral partners, the more they will trust you over time.

Trust is your greatest currency when it comes to building and maintaining your relationships.

In the spirit of helping you create a sustainable system to build trust, try these tactics.

• Time block: Think about the days in which you want to post a video (1+ days), block off that time on your calendar, and commit to making it happen each week. Pro Tip: Start small. One day a week is better than none. Lay the groundwork to allow yourself to create a new sustainable habit so that you can increase your chances of sticking with it. Once you have it down, you can grow from there.
• Use unexpected opportunities to record your video: Did someone cancel or reschedule your appointment? Use this unforeseen time to take out your phone and record a quick video. This can have the added bonus of having video in more dynamic locations – an interesting coffee shop, a picturesque mountain backdrop, or while you’re out walking the pup. These elements allow your audience to get to know you in small and significant ways.
• Schedule ahead of time: Consider recording videos weeks in advance by recording more than one at a time. Pro Tip: Use a social media scheduler to help you take your pre-batched videos and schedule them weeks in advance. All you have to do is upload the video, write out your post and choose the day and platform you would like it to post to. Then you can get back to connecting with your clients while the program posts for you.

3. Mix It Up

The great thing about video is that it is multi-dimensional. This one piece of content can live in a magnitude of different places, increasing your potential to get seen and connect with others. Outside of posting to social media, think through other ways in which you could leverage video. Pro Tip: Think about where your clients and prospects would go to connect, engage, and absorb content. Where they are is where you need to be.

One place that we suggest placing your videos is within an intentionally crafted email (or email campaign). Email, when sent intentionally, is a great way to connect with your audience. Create an email with the intention of nurturing your prospects and clients with educational content to keep them informed and help them be more successful. Maintaining a presence in their inbox is necessary to increase engagement and communication with potential repeat and referral business.

Want to learn more before you get started? Here are ways in which you can leverage video in every stage of your sales process.

4. Add and Subtract

There is no one-size-fits-all plan when it comes to engaging with your prospects, clients, and referral partners. What we have suggested is just the start and we hope it works, but we know that it may not, and that’s alright. While you are in the process of seeing what works best for you, here are some other ideas to try on.

• Get Curious: Ask your clients where they got stuck in the process of working with you and what they want to know more about to allow you to tailor your list of questions to meet the needs of your audience. Ask your colleagues what questions they receive most often and add them to the list. Pro Tip: Sometimes people need to hear the same thing more than one time. Feel free to recycle old Q&As from a few months back. It may be old content to you, but it may not be to them.
• Leverage Industry Thought Leaders: There is no shame in reposting someone else’s content (as long as you give them credit of course). If you come across an article or blog that you feel will really help your audience, create a short video talking through some of the points, your takeaways, and what you want them to get out of it. Chances are that they will watch your video instead of reading the article. Now you look like the thought leader.
• Give Your Clients The Spotlight: Stories are powerful. Have your client send a short video telling their story about why they sought out your services, what they have to lose, and why it’s so impactful to them. It will allow your audience to connect with that person and see themselves in their shoes with the ultimate goal of inspiring them to act. Pro Tip: If your client does not have access to a video recording platform, have them record it on Zoom and send the recording to you directly. You can upload it to your BombBomb account and post it from there.

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A human-centered approach to communication focuses on the needs of your prospects, clients, and referral partners. And by shifting your focus from the individual and self-serving to the personal and human, ultimately, you can change the course of your interactions. As a result, you have the power to influence the outcome of your relationships and the success of your insurance business.

If you’re ready to start using video to leverage human-centered communication with your insurance clients and referral network, don’t stop here! Try BombBomb Video Messaging with a free 14-day trial.

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