Relationship marketing is more than just shaking hands and remembering birthdays. It involves a continuing effort to provide a unique and delightsome experience that takes a prospect through their initial engagement with an agent and creates a satisfied client that will continue to be an asset and advocate for years to come.
A major aspect of relationship marketing is placing an emphasis on developing relationships with existing clients over prospecting for new leads. It might be hard to believe, but this leads to greater growth than consistently finding new prospects. Agents who use relationship marketing strategies beat the industry average for portfolio growth by 42%.
Existing clients:
- Are 50% more likely to try new services
- Spend 31% more when compared to new clients.
- The probability of selling to an existing client is 60 – 70%.
- The probability of selling to a new prospect is just 5 – 20%.
In order to develop an existing relationship, it is important that an agent focuses on their clients’ engagement levels. The more engaged the client, the greater the Share of Wallet (SOW) they are willing to dedicate to their advisor’s services.
- The fully engaged client is a rationally loyal, emotionally attached, brand ambassador who on average has a 23% higher SOW.
- The indifferent client is rationally neutral and has a “take-it-or-leave-it” attitude. They provide the baseline SOW, but provide a great risk as their lack of engagement means they can be easily lost.
- The actively disengaged client is ready to switch insurance providers at the first opportunity. They are emotionally detached and will often share their negative opinions with others. They have on average 13% lower SOW.
It is important to keep the focus on the clients’ experience. These are some of the impressions you want your clients to express:
- My agent always delivers what they promise.
- I feel proud to be a client of my agent.
- The agent is a perfect fit for people like me.
In order to successfully implement a relationship marketing strategy, there are three primary areas that need to be given extensive focus and energy.
- Align Brand Promise With Clients’ Needs
- Provide Delight Through Meaningful Communications
- Personalize Client Journey With Tiered Content
Align Brand Promise With Clients’ Needs
Brand alignment is the act of matching your values, features, and benefits with the needs of your niche client. Brand Alignment is a process by which an agent shows that their insurance offering is the best solution to meet a client’s needs.
You can break your insurance offering down into gain creators, pain relievers, and products and services. It is then imperative you match those brand elements to the real-life needs of your ideal client.
Provide Delight Through Meaningful Communications
The communication patterns you establish with your prospects and clients will become the primary avenue for you to establish your relationship marketing.
For communication efforts to be successful they must:
- Occur on a Consistent Basis
- Provide Unique and Tangible Value
- Be Personalized to Fit Clients’ Life and Needs
That is why an automated set of tools like the ones provided in the Agency Revolution software is so crucial. They will allow you to maintain a level of communication that the average agent does not have the bandwidth for. 77% of marketing professionals use automated technology to both simplify and enhance client communication, you should too.
Personalize the Client Journey with Tiered Content
It is important to recognize that prospects and clients will be in different places and that the content you provide them must reflect their current concerns or else it will not be perceived as providing true value.
The client journey is a series of touchpoints typically experienced by a prospect on their path to purchase and beyond. The traditional breakdown of the client journey down the funnel is Awareness, Interest, Decision and finally Action.
At each point along the journey, it is important to ask:
- What is the concern I am speaking to?
- What are the platforms and delivery methods the content will be distributed through?
- What call to action will lead them to the next touchpoint on their client journey?
By using automated focused campaigns you can keep your marketing machine running 24/7. 53% of agents use focused content campaigns to collaborate, maintain, and deepen client relationships.
Focusing on relationship marketing is a proven strategy that you can use to grow your portfolio, increase your client retention, and create a more enjoyable insurance practice for your clients and yourself.