Insurance Video Marketing Ideas to Create Compelling Content

Over the last few weeks, I’ve outlined how brokers can modernize their marketing strategy. An essential element to achieving this is by creating compelling content in your audience’s preferred media format. This week I’ll take an in-depth look at the most popular form of media, video. I’ll detail insurance video marketing ideas for 2018.

Last year I discussed specific ways brokers could use video to create compelling content in my blog post Insurance Agency Video Marketing Strategies. This post will provide you with additional video marketing ideas to help enhance your content strategy.

Insurance Video Marketing Ideas Are Key to Lead the Way

Without a doubt, video is the most consumed type of content across the internet. Consider these staggering statistics that showcase the sheer popularity of video:

• YouTube has over a billion users, almost one-third of total internet users.
• More than 500 million hours of videos are watched on YouTube each day.
• 85% of the US internet audience watches videos online.
• Internet video traffic made up 69% of all global consumer Internet traffic in 2017.
• The average user spends 88% more time on a website with video.

With these numbers, it’s easy to see why you should start thinking about insurance video marketing ideas to incorporate into your strategy for 2018. You may be thinking that you don’t have the resources to produce video content. But, thanks to technology, that notion is now a myth. The days of needing to outsource an entire production crew to create solid content are gone. Your smartphone is capable of recording video that’s good enough for the internet. For video editing, there are a number of affordable, easy to use software you can utilize to create high-quality content.

Now that you can appreciate how easy it is to get started producing your own video content there’s still the matter of use cases specific to your needs. While video marketing may be popular with the average consumer how can you, as a benefits broker, use video marketing to appeal to employers? Here are some insurance video marketing ideas for brokers in 2018.

Customer Testimonials

Thanks to search engines like Google, consumers can quickly search the internet for testimonials and reviews. Testimonials have a strong influence on purchasing decisions; 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Also, 72% stated that positive testimonials make them trust a business more.

Those statistics indicate the power of client testimonials. Research found that 4x as many customers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it. Since modern insurance marketing revolves around optimizing the customer experience, creating a video testimonial provides your audience with the experience they want at this stage of the buyer’s journey. Yet, while brokers already know the value of testimonials, many still share testimonials in a readable format.

When you combine the value customers have for testimonials with the popularity of video, it’s easy to see why this is must-have content for your marketing strategy. Segment your client database to find long-standing customers or customers who have recently given you positive feedback. Check out my previous blog on insurance agency retention marketing to learn how you can set up your own feedback survey. Reach out to those clients and ask them to participate in a recorded interview.

It’s important to remember when interviewing your customers not to make the entire interview revolve around how great you are. Make it about them; ask them questions like:

• How has your enrollment process improved since you started working with us?
• Which of our services has benefited your workflow the most?
• How has working with us impacted employee confidence in benefit elections?
• How have we helped you manage compliance?

Questions like these speak to specific pain points, and your testimonial video will be a powerful tool that provides leads with a preview as to how you can address their needs.

Video Blogging

Blogs are still a dominant force on the internet but video blogging, more commonly known as vlogging, is gaining momentum with millennials, and has its own unique benefits. It’s a useful platform to help generate leads and showcase your personality, taking your agency from a B2B brand to H2H – human to human.

You can optimize your customer experience by complementing your written blog, with a video version of the blog topic. This is a great method to establish your thought leadership, and sell your personality to your target audience. Creating a video version of your blog post also allows your audience to choose how they prefer to engage with your brand, optimizing the customer experience in the process.

An additional benefit to having regularly scheduled vlogs is that SEO loves video. Search engines like Google are optimized to the customer experience, which means they aim to present users with exactly what they’re looking for. Searches for video content have exploded in recent years, so much so that 62% of all Google searches include video content. This means creating vlogs will significantly increase your chances of ranking higher in search results. Implementing not just vlogging, but all of these insurance video marketing ideas, will help optimize your content for SEO.

LinkedIn Native Video

Of all the insurance video marketing ideas I’ve listed take note of this one, as it will help you get your video content directly in front of your target audience. In an effort to compete with YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and every other social platform, Linkedin rolled out their own native video feature through their mobile app. This provides brokers the opportunity to enhance their LinkedIn page and, by extension, your agency’s customer experience.

Uploading a native video to LinkedIn is extremely easy. Open the mobile app, and look for a video camera icon at the top right corner of the share box. Once you’ve clicked on the icon, you’ll be prompted to either record a video with your smartphone’s camera, or upload a previously recorded video from your gallery.

LinkedIn has some guidelines for native videos. Your videos can be a max length of 10 minutes. I recommend basing the length of your video on its context. For example, if you create a promotional video keep it at less than a minute. If you’re sharing a vlog, it can be about 5 minutes or less.

You can also add text of up to 700 characters to go along with your video. LinkedIn’s videos function similarly to videos that appear in your newsfeed on Facebook, so here are a few things to keep in mind:

• LinkedIn’s videos play on autoloop with the sound muted. Users can turn on sound if they wish to listen. This feature is similar to how Facebook plays videos in their News Feed, and 85% of Facebook videos are watched without sound.
• Also, the text you add when posting your video should be descriptive and attention-grabbing.
• Depending on the purpose of your video, add links if you’re promoting content that’s hosted on your website.
• You can also tag colleagues in your post.

While this feature is still relatively new, given its similarity to Facebook’s native videos, it can be assumed that LinkedIn’s native videos will surpass embedded videos. On Facebook, native videos get 10X more shares than embedded videos from YouTube or Vimeo. Of course, the audience and content that resonates on LinkedIn differ from networks like Facebook and Twitter. So what should your LinkedIn videos be about? Here are some suggestions.

• A short company overview video
• Showcase your agency’s culture and introduce your team members
• How-to videos
• Product launch videos
• Sales promotion video
• Quick tips for solving pain points
• Testimonials

Crucial Data from Native Videos to Inform Insurance Video Marketing Ideas

LinkedIn’s built-in analytics will provide you with unique data that can’t be found on other social networks. Consider that beyond data like number of views, likes, and shares, you can also get a lead’s job title, job function, industry, company info, etc. You can leverage this data to further tailor subsequent content to your audience or to a specific prospect. This sort of data will help you optimize these insurance video marketing ideas for the customer experience.

Live Video

While LinkedIn has added native videos to its network, Facebook has been evolving the use of live streaming videos. Given that people spend 3x longer watching video through Facebook Live compared to pre-recorded videos, it’s easy to see why it’s become priority content for companies worldwide.

This form of video marketing has been popular with B2C companies and they’ve had significant success with it. On the other hand B2B companies have been slow to adopt this trend, and have stuck with pre-recorded video. This creates an opportunity for brokers to leverage this feature to create a unique customer experience.

As with pre-recorded video content, all you need is a smartphone and an app. The simplicity of the production for live video adds to its authenticity, which is highly valued in this day and age. Viewers can also like and comment in real-time while you stream live, providing you with immediate feedback. Check out Facebook Live to see how easily you can start streaming.

You can use live video streaming similarly to how you use recorded videos; show your agency’s culture, expand further on a topic from your blog/vlog, or host an Ask Me Anything for aspiring brokers. You can survey your current customers to find out what sort of content they’d like to see from live video and can also help you gain key insights for other insurance video marketing ideas.

Final Thoughts About Insurance Video Marketing Ideas

The insurance video marketing ideas I’ve listed today are good use cases for brokers to leverage the power of video. There’s no doubt how popular video is amongst the masses, and integrating these trends into your marketing strategy will help you optimize the customer experience.

This in turn will help generate more leads and drive conversions as you expand the methods through which your audience can engage with your brand. Just remember, whether they’re watching your latest vlog on LinkedIn, a client testimonial on your website, or a live stream of you sharing some quick tips on Facebook, keep the experience consistent and seamless. Subscribe to the Broker Tool Belt to keep updated on more of the latest trends that brokers need to know.