You won’t need me to tell you that consolidation has been one of the biggest trends in the market in recent years. Many independent brokers have been snapped up by larger consolidators. In fact, we’ve even seen these large consolidators acquiring or merging with one another.

On the flipside, a number of networks have put a lot of thought into their offering for small, start-up broking businesses. It’s now realistic for a solo broker to set up their own brokerage and still get many of the benefits of being part of a larger group. So in short, it’s fair to say that the landscape is changing.

If you’ve resisted selling to a large consolidator, one of the following probably describes you:

• You have a strong base of clients and feel that their interests are best served by you remaining independent
• You’re just starting out and want a level of autonomy and independence that wasn’t there in your previous role

This probably means you have a vision of how you want to be perceived by clients. You want to shape those thoughts into a proposition which you then take to market. How do you communicate your difference to clients? This is a really important question, and if you get it wrong, you could just end up sounding like any other broker out there. As I alluded to in my headline, many brokers are underselling themselves and not standing out from the crowd as much as they deserve to.

The USP is dead, long live the Point of Difference

First though, let’s look at how you articulate what makes you different. Many people still talk about the ‘USP’ (Unique Selling Point). It’s a well-established concept and an American ad exec called Rosser Reeves is widely credited with its creation. However, how do you find something unique when there are over 3,000 brokers in the UK? The good news is you don’t need to.

Markets are so crowded nowadays that you don’t need to be unique – it’s enough to just come up with a point of difference. If you can then communicate that point of difference succinctly and clearly, you will be way ahead of many brokers out there. Because they can’t be unique, many brokers fall too easily into sounding the same.

So where are Insurance Brokers going wrong at the moment?

A lot of broker websites are nowhere near compelling enough. Their marketing is led by generic factors that are true of most brokers. On key pages such as their homepage and their ‘about’ page, they say things like:

• We were established in 19XX
• We have strong relationships and buying power with insurers
• We give personal service to clients
• We put your interests first
• We make the effort to get to understand your business and your risks

Don’t get me wrong – these are all valid. They should be on your website, somewhere, but they’re not strong enough to lead with. Most of these are simply what brokers do, and aren’t strong enough to brag about. They should be used to back up and reinforce your main message instead.

People buy on emotion and justify their decision with logic. Some people think that doesn’t apply to B2B selling, but business buying decisions are still made by people. Business buyers have even more to lose from a bad buying decision than if they choose the wrong car or TV. So it’s important to pay attention to the emotions that are involved.

Insurance buyers want to feel confidence and trust in you. They also want to avoid the frustration that comes with long-winded processes, back-and-forth negotiations on price and offerings that are difficult to comprehend or compare. You must address these emotions and concerns in your content.

So what should you do to properly differentiate your business?

Well that depends. Yes, I know – that’s a cop-out and a typical answer from a consultant! It does depend heavily though on what your strengths are and what you have to work with in terms of content.

Marketing your brokerage operates at two levels:

• The overarching proposition and brand values of your brokerage – what benefits do you give to clients and what problems do you eliminate?
• Your individual specialisms – how can you demonstrate that you are truly a specialist and explain how you are a better option than a generalist broker?

Now let’s look at each of those in turn and go into a little more detail:

The Brand Values of your brokerage

Your ‘home’ and ‘about’ pages are prime digital real estate. Use them to show prospects what you stand for and why they should use you. Strong brands have a clear focus and don’t try to define themselves broadly. Just look at Volvo – their cars are much better-looking nowadays than the boxy models of the 80’s and 90’s, but they still enjoy a great reputation for safety, which is hard-wired into many people’s perception of the brand.

You can’t be all things to all people – what will you pick as your single defining characteristic? Remember – it needn’t be unique, but must not be something that applies to all or most brokers. If you choose it as the defining characteristic of your ‘elevator pitch’, you must be able to provide something to back it up.

Here are some ideas you could work with:

• ‘Start with Why?’ – If you’ve already seen this Simon Sinek Ted talk how can this be applied to the world of insurance? What are the beliefs that you share with your ideal client? Well it’s probably something like:
  • We believe insurance should be simple and clear for you
  • We believe insurance should give you confidence without onerous conditions
  • We believe insurance shouldn’t tie up too much of your time
• Service – On the face of it, service is quite generic, but if you have compelling case studies, testimonials, accreditations or awards that really back this up then service can play a central role in your marketing. When have you gone above and beyond for your clients? Stories and examples are vital if you want to build your reputation around service.
• Claims – As with the point above – if you have a truly compelling story to tell about your claims service, you can build your marketing around it. Have you secured a quick payment for a client to keep their business going? Or turned up at their site at 3am after a robbery? Brokers can – and do – go to extraordinary lengths for their clients when the worst happens. If you have great claims stories, use them if the client is happy for you to do so.
• Stability – As an independent broker, if you compete against larger brokers you may find you pick up clients who are frustrated by frequent staff turnover within their current broker. If you have a stable, settled client-facing team why not build this into your marketing? Insurance is about providing certainty and continuity after all. Now of course, your brokerage could lose staff too. However, few brokerages enjoy 100% retention, so if your staff retention is above average and your key people have many years’ service with the company, it can be a genuine differentiator.
• Clarity – Any intermediary in any sector will only survive if they add something to the buying process. For a broker, that ‘something’ is clarity. Do you have case studies or testimonials that demonstrate how you’ve provided clarity to your clients? Have you picked up a client who overpaid for cover they didn’t need? Or did they have their buildings covered for market value instead of rebuilding costs? If you’ve provided ‘Eureka’ moments like this to your clients, you’re providing a level of clarity that your competitors don’t.
• Technical knowledge – Does your business boast a level of technical knowledge that’s rarely seen in other brokers? If you’re Chartered, then you’re already one of only around 5% of brokers to demonstrate a very specific level of technical knowledge. However, Chartered status is often marketed very unconvincingly. (Watch this space – I have another post in the pipeline for that alone!) Even if you’re not Chartered though, there are other ways you can demonstrate your expertise. Do you have specialist in-house advisers in – for example – Health & Safety, Risk Management, Fleet Risk or any other specialist areas? If you do, this makes your service more holistic and could help clients reduce their insurance premiums in the long term.
• Personality – Yes, that’s right – personality! If you consider your team to be more approachable, plain-speaking or easy to deal with than some brokers, that’s another idea you can develop further. If you take this route though, please do make sure you use good quality photos or video of your staff. When it comes to imagery, I have a few pet hates:
  • Stock images of people who clearly aren’t employees of that broker. These often include cliches such as a smiling woman with a phone headset or people shaking hands in a glass reception area!
  • Badly-taken photos of staff sat at their desk which were clearly taken on someone’s phone. It needn’t cost the earth to get a photographer to take some good-quality staff photos with a consistent background.
  • Last but not least, some sites have no staff photos at all. In fact, I’ve even seen sites with a ‘Meet the team’ page which have no photos and no specific details of actual staff members!

So as the above demonstrates, even the smallest of brokers should be able to market themselves based on something that’s not generic and which makes them genuinely different. If none of the above resonate with you, talk to about 10 of your most long-standing clients and ask them for the main reasons they stay with you. Don’t prompt them, or feed them any answers – just see which themes come up repeatedly and this may give you some more ideas.

Your Specialisms

If you have specialisms for any particular sectors or types of cover, you should market these to your potential clients, but you must put some substance behind it. I see too many brokers with a page on their website with their specialisms listed. They add a bullet-point for each one. Well, I’m afraid that isn’t enough for you to appear like a specialist nowadays.

If you brain dump all of your specialisms on one page, nobody from those sectors is likely to find your page anyway because the information is too generic to show up well on Search Engines. Even if they did find it though, it’s not enough to say that you specialise in something, you have to show that you’re a specialist. Let’s say you specialise in insurance for locksmiths for example. If you can’t even cobble together one page of content dedicated to that and that alone, you won’t be seen as a specialist.

To truly market yourself as a specialist in a particular sector, you need as many as possible of these:

• A dedicated insurance page explaining the cover you provide, the potential pitfalls, typical claims and risk management tips.
• News items on your news page that are specific to that trade (you can then link to these from the main page for that trade)
• Separate content, such as free guides, pdf brochures and maybe video content

If you need a reminder of why specialising is so important for brokers, check out this previous post about specialisation.

So, I hope that’s given you a few ideas as to how to market your Insurance Broking business. Even as a smaller broker, you should be able to find plenty of angles to make you stand out from the crowd.

If you need help with any aspect of Digital Marketing for your brokerage, contact me through the website