Leveraging LinkedIn as a Marketing Arm for Brokerage General Agencies
Brokerage General Agencies, IMOs, and FMOs compete for the same agents and advisors. While each has its own nuanced skillsets and areas of expertise their ultimate goal is to attract agents and advisors who regularly write business with them. Too often, BGAs rely on referrals alone to achieve recruitment. While referrals are certainly key to growing your client base, they are naturally limited in their reach. So how does a niche industry leverage the internet to help recruit new agents? The answer is to market to your agents where they browse. In the risk management niche, there is no better place online other than LinkedIn. Let’s explore some useful tips and strategies to utilize the power of LinkedIn as a marketing tool for BGAs, IMOs, and FMOs.
You Can’t Win if You Don’t Play: Creating a LinkedIn Profile for your BGA
If you don’t already have a LinkedIn company page for your BGA, then stop reading this article immediately and create one! Go ahead. We’ll wait. Okay, good. However, the work isn’t done yet. We need to make sure that we have optimized our company profile so that people who find us on LinkedIn have something to see. Too often I see clients who have spent a considerable amount of money having their website built and optimized, but fail to optimize their BGA’s company page on LinkedIn. Here are a few basic necessities.
- Complete Your Profile: Fill in all the relevant details about your BGA, including a high-quality logo, a compelling banner image, a concise but informative company description, and contact information.
- Tell Your Story: Craft a compelling “About Us” section that outlines your agency’s mission, values, and unique selling propositions. Use language that resonates with potential agents and advisors.
- Highlight Your Success: Showcase your agency’s achievements, partnerships, and success stories. Demonstrate why joining your agency is an attractive opportunity.
- Post Regularly: Share industry-related articles, company updates, and relevant content. This will keep your page active and demonstrate your agency’s expertise and commitment. We’ll go into more detail on this in a moment.
What should I post on my LinkedIn company page?
This is an area that I find our clients need the most help in. When it comes to posting on your LinkedIn company page, you should always remember what your goals are. For most BGA’s their goal is to:
- Attract new agents and advisors to their message and branding
- Generate renewed interest with their current agents and advisors
It’s really that simple. If you keep these goals front of mind as you post, you will rarely go wrong. However, there are a few things to consider.
Post information that is interesting, relevant, and showcases your knowledge
When you write a post, the odds are that your existing followers will have an opportunity to see it when they login to LinkedIn. Tell them something important. Sure, a simple holiday greeting is nice and by all means, you should wish your followers a happy holiday. However, regular posting should be focused on sharing your industry know-how with your followers.
They should look forward to seeing a post from you. This is an ancient principle. The fact is that humans listen to other humans who share their knowledge. This might be the most important aspect of social media today. LinkedIn is an opportunity to show your existing and potential agents and advisors that you know something that they don’t. An opportunity to let them into the room with your expertise and entice them to work with you in order to leverage your knowledge for their material gain.
LinkedIn is an algorithm, like Google that prospects use to find you
Most people don’t understand that LinkedIn is its own search ecosystem, just like Google. People who are on LinkedIn are shown information that relates to their searches within LinkedIn. Just as Google uses your interests to show you information that it thinks you will find interesting, LinkedIn shows you posts and companies that it thinks you would want to hear from.
In this way, you can use your posts to reach out across the algorithm to agents and advisors that you have not yet done business with. If you make your posts relevant and engaging, you greatly expand your reach from a marketing perspective.
Always link back to content on your website
LinkedIn is an opportunity to drive targeted traffic to your website. No matter what you post, you should always find an organic reason to link back to a page on your website. Whether you are linking back to a blog that you wrote recently, a recruitment landing page, or even just your home or about page it is crucial that you lead your audience back to your website. I can not stress this enough.
Are you a thought leader on LinkedIn or a copycat?
It is easy to simply repost an article you found on Forbes or some other publication that is relevant to your industry. While this is not always a terrible idea (there are times when someone else has said it better), I would recommend that you try to keep the bulk of your posts unique. After all, you want your followers and prospects to view your company as the thought leader on these issues, not the New York Times.
If you read an article that speaks to your audience, then take a moment to form your own thoughts on it and post those thoughts with a link back to your own website. This will help maintain the integrity of your expertise without giving away free traffic to someone else.
Content is king on LinkedIn, and creating valuable and engaging content can attract potential agents and advisors to your agency. Here are some basic categories to consider when posting:
- Educational Posts: Share informative articles, tips, and insights related to the insurance industry. This demonstrates your agency’s expertise.
- Success Stories: Highlight the achievements and success stories of agents and advisors who have thrived within your agency.
- Recruitment Posts: Craft posts specifically aimed at recruiting. Be transparent about the benefits of joining your agency and what sets it apart from the competition.
- Videos: Videos are highly engaging on LinkedIn. Consider creating short video clips introducing your agency, its culture, and the opportunities it offers.
Reaching out: Using messaging and advertising on LinkedIn
Beyond content creation, LinkedIn offers the opportunity to actually put yourself in front of your audience. One of the most impressive features of the platform is how it organizes people and groups. You can filter a search for agents and advisors from specific companies, specific industries, and specific interests. These filters are your friend when you are actively recruiting by requesting connections or advertising.
Now advertising on LinkedIn probably requires another article which we will address in a future post, but, generally speaking, it is always a good idea to identify groups of agents and advisors that live on LinkedIn for future campaigns.
Join the club
Find groups that speak about life insurance, annuities, long term care, etc. Join the club! These groups are like mini-conferences (minus the enormous conference fee) where you can have conversations, talk shop, and actively recruit new clients. Take advantage of these opportunities when you can. If nothing else, they are places where you can share your expertise and make new connections.
Apis is here to help you succeed on LinkedIn
There is no magic wand. Marketing takes effort and effort takes time. At Apis, our goal is to help all of our BGA clients thrive in the digital age. LinkedIn is just one tool of many to help you do that. We will be writing more articles in the future as a companion to this. If you haven’t already, check out the one we wrote last month about marketing for BGAs, IMOs, and FMOs.
If you want assistance with your marketing efforts, feel free to check out our packages here. In the mean time, get your LinkedIn company page in order and create some informative content to keep your clients engaged. Happy marketing!
