105: Optimising Insurance Marketing on LinkedIn with Catherine France

How can LinkedIn be used for reaching your target demographic?

What kind of marketing content is most likely to facilitate a return on investment, and how can this be calculated?

In this episode, we’re excited to be speaking with Catherine France, an insurance copywriter who specialises in using LinkedIn to help attract and convert clients. In conversation with Boston Tullis’ Sarah Myerscough, she illustrates how you can target LinkedIn content to your intended demographic, and explains the steps you need to take in order to project a trustworthy and reliable brand presence.

Quote of the Episode

“In terms of sales vs non-sales content, when I'm talking to my clients, and we're building their profile on LinkedIn, we are very much focused on educating, informing, giving value, as opposed to selling. It's probably like the 80-20 rule: 80% of the content we put out is information, and then 20% might be information with a call to action, that's more sales.”

It’s easy to assume that the best way to garner sales through your marketing content on LinkedIn is to directly promote the services and products you offer. However, this is more likely to alienate than entice your ideal client, particularly if they have little to no knowledge of the insurance industry. Catherine suggests that a great way to subtly market your business whilst simultaneously capturing the interest of potential clients is to post educational and informative content, perhaps explaining different kinds of policy or common insurance misconceptions. Prior to doing so, you should establish who your ideal client is, and what challenges they might be facing that you can assist with. How much do they know about insurance? Subsequently, you can target your marketing content towards such individuals.

Key Takeaways

With 875 million people on LinkedIn, all of whom need insurance, the service provides a huge wealth of potential clients that you can attract to your brand. We live in the age of content, and quality posts on your LinkedIn page can be hugely beneficial in capturing the interest of potential clients. However, before you start posting, there are other considerations you should make which will help your content to reach the right demographic.

When it comes to social media marketing, the focus is often always on your content and the engagement it receives, but potential clients’ reception of your posts is often entirely contingent on the initial impression made by your profile. If someone sees your post, the next thing they will likely do is to view your profile, to garner a sense of your legitimacy and trustworthiness as a brand. To optimise this, you should ensure that your contact information is clearly visible. Additionally, you should enable creator mode in order to add a link to your business’ website onto your profile. The ‘Summary’ section effectively serves as your business’ digital shopfront. In 3000 characters, you must explain what you do, who you help, and how. Being overly general in this description can be potentially confusing or alienating; thus, it must contain specific details tailored to capturing the interests of your specific ideal client.

Having optimised your profile, you must also examine your LinkedIn network. Most insurance professionals’ network will be full of insurance professionals. To change this, use search filters to find people in the particular business sectors you would like to connect with. Connect with as many people as possible, but avoid sending them private messages – this is likely to deter them from your brand. Make those connections, and allow those people to view your profile and determine whether they would like to correspond with you or not. This further emphasises the importance of having a well-curated and informative profile.

Subsequently, you can begin to contemplate the type of content you should post. As previously mentioned, deploying educative content, by using simple language and relatable stories from a non-insurance perspective, can be highly lucrative in drawing people to your brand. This enhances your reputation as delivering valuable knowledge. Furthermore, posting a diverse range of content is key. Behind-the-scenes posts shared by company staff often receive the most engagement, as they emphasise the faces behind your brand, thereby humanising the business and further amplifying its trustworthiness.

How do you identify a return on investment with marketing? Post likes and shares can be misleading, as they don’t necessarily correspond with new sales. Catherine argues that the key metric with LinkedIn marketing is profile views, either on personal or company pages. If posts lead to profile views, this means that they are drawing people to potentially want to reach out and ask for help or further information. To facilitate this, posting consistently quality posts covering a diverse range of topics, whilst also targeting your ideal client is essential.

 

Best Moments/Key Quotes

“The profile really is like having another webpage. If you haven't got a website, then you can use it like a website. Make sure that you've got a banner image, a decent headshot photo, that your headline is clear, saying what you do and who you help.”

 

“Think about your ideal client, you know, who are they? What are their challenges, what's keeping them awake at night? Then, talk to those people.”

 

“I think the key metric for a personal page, and probably a company page as well, is that profile view. It's actually who's gone on there and viewed your profile.”

 

Resources

Catherine France - https://www.catherinefrance.com/

 

About the Guest

Catherine France is an insurance copywriter, who helps insurance executives create consistent quality content to help them attract and convert their dream clients. This ranges from writing blog posts to social media captions, helping them build their website, and more.

Catherine’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherine-france/

 

About the Host

Sarah Myerscough is the Sales and Marketing Director of Boston Tullis Group. The founder of The Insurance Brokers Podcast, she brings a wealth of experience and a fresh perspective on communication in the insurance sector. Boston Tullis works with insurance professionals to build effective communication both internally and externally through podcasting, event reporting, videography, and internal communications facilitation.

Website: https://bostontullis.co.uk/ 

Evaluation Link: https://s.bostontullis.co.uk/s/podcastevaluation