You cannot ignore the power of video! Leading insurance marketing expert shows how to make it easy for agencies.
Why are marketers swarming to video? Simple. It works. Video is 500% more likely to get engagement than messages with images, and 600% more likely to be remembered… and modern consumers expect video.
Savvy agents are jumping on video now—and getting a leadership position on a rapidly maturing marketing medium. Whether you want more customers or more loyalty from your customers, you owe it to yourself to give a few minutes to this conversation with Mike Demko, nationally recognized digital marketing expert and the founder of My Insurance Videos.
Mike’s company has helped more than 500 agencies drive growth and retention with their “done for you” video and social automation platform. He has been featured in the Insurance Journal, Agency Nation, The Insurance Agent Summit, Property & Casualty 360, Paradiso Presents, IA Magazine, Insurance Agents Alliance, Insurance Nerds, and the Insurance Guys Podcast.
- Video-made-easy: Mike gives the ‘ultimate video cheat sheet’ on this podcast. (Video may seem hard! This super simple checklist of tools, tech, and content ideas will have you shooting video by Friday!).
- The simple secrets of video promotion: where to put your messages so you get the most bang for your buck. (A few of these will make you say “Gosh… why didn’t I think of that before!).
- How you can use video to create deeper, longer, stronger emotional bonds with your marketplace.
Whether you’re an agency principal or an agency marketer, this one conversation will solve your video problems. This is THE masterclass in video for the independent insurance agent. Listen today and get ideas you’ll put into practice immediately!
What are other agents & brokers doing to thrive? What are the biggest trends affecting the retail insurance agent & broker? What are the most important strategies and tactics you need to grow faster? Find out here in the Connected Insurance Podcast, where Michael Jans discusses the biggest issues affecting the independent insurance agent and broker with the industry’s leading figures.
Transcript
Michael Jans: Hello, Mike Demko. How are you?
Mike Demko: Doing fantastic. Thanks for having me on Michael.
Michael: I’m thrilled about this because it’s a big topic. I do think that clearly, from time to time we’ve got to get our feet on the ground. I think video is a really good example of a tactical practical technology or medium that can be used so many places, and it’s getting so much traction. Boom, you’re the guy, right?
Mike: Well, I couldn’t agree more about the medium. I know that at the end of the day, agents are looking for better ways to attract, engage, retain clients. They’re trying to create deeper relationships, they’re trying to empower their teams to better educate and sell. Video’s not going anywhere. It’s only getting even more present. It’s ubiquitous in many industries, and it’s gaining a lot more traction in the P&C insurance space. We’ve been helping agents with our Done For You platform, and encouraging agents to do tons of video content to achieve their goals. I’m delighted to speak about some best practices here and tips on how agents can embrace this to attract, engag, retain clients.
Michael: Let’s make it happen. Starters, my thumbnail sketch, how did Mike Demko get to be Mike Demko?
Mike: Well, in the context of this conversation and video, it’s secluded throughout in some regard. I was working in a different industry actually, commercial real estate development, and of course, I embrace video to help attract, engage, retain clients, better explain the concepts about the asset, lease versus buy analysis, all that stuff. I had a friend who is an agent who was a pal of mine. From time to time, we would talk about his business, how we could help him grow, and I said, “Hey, are you doing any video?”
He said, “No, I’m not.” I said, “Well, why don’t we think of the FAQs that you always answer in the agency so that we can create a response to those.” He would appear on camera and some grandiose plans about how this would be an awesome idea that would be scalable for both of us. At the end of the day, what we discovered is, yes, videos a very powerful medium, but it’s not necessarily the most scalable tool for most agents. What we did was we brainstormed some ideas for getting him on camera.
He was a pretty ambitious guy and would go to greater lengths than the other would to create some really good well produce video content. I would help him with that. Then what happened thereafter was gosh, other agents wanted to leverage the power of video, but didn’t have the resources at the time, the expertise or energy to do it, so we created a Done For You service with videos that agents can use on their website when communicating with clients via email and texting and other things.
Effectively, what I did is I took my love of video and applied it to an industry, whereby a lot of people have some confusion about insurance. Most consumers don’t understand insurance at all. The CSRs and independent agents and captive agents for that matter, they are the subject matter experts. It’s sometimes hard to get people to pay attention to the important details about insurance, and video content is proven to be an effective way to do that.
Michael: All right. Well, let’s talk a little bit about why it seems to me that to some extent video now is a right time right place. It’s not that it’s brand new. Clearly, there’s been an explosion of video. The platforms that feature video have exploded and growth, the social media platforms. The social postings that have video are statistically demonstrated to get higher traction.
Obviously, there are a lot of technological breakthroughs that have happened in the last whatever many years that have allowed this to happen. It’s available and yet, industry across industry ours or another you don’t see a lot of small to medium-sized businesses really exploiting it? My first question to you is, what do you think the psychology is behind it? Why do you think video is so powerful?
Mike: Well, I think there’s really studies. Because I’m in this field and I just love the medium, I know it works. We use video in our business every day to connect with prospects and clients, but really it’s the combination of voice imagery and text. Most people are visual learners, and studies after studies will say that it’s just a more powerful way to deliver a message.
I’ve seen a study that I cite with regularity that says, ‘the combination of voice imagery and text has six times better attention than voice alone, and then as well as text.’ In some cases, it’s even higher than text alone of course. It’s just those combinations. It used to be radio and then there was TV. Then you think, “Oh my gosh, now we’ve got these images to support the dialogue.”
It’s just a much more impactful way to deliver a message. The effectiveness of video is quite clear. It’s like you said, getting small business owners to embrace the tools to be able to do it cost-effectively, time-effectively. It’s just getting easier and easier and even a distribution video, it’s basically free with YouTube and Facebook and some other platforms.
Michael: Before we’re done here Mike, folks are going to know how to do it. Again, I really want to go from big picture to small picture, like really understanding the principles down to the how-to. It would seem that clearly, psychologically, we have a very strong connection of the human face. It’s the first image that babies recognize. The human voice, in fact, is shown to carry more emotional content than visual.
We’re really delivering a very powerful opportunity to communicate, but with all things new, there are probably a lot of reasons not to. Now, I’m not saying good reasons but what you and I would call objections. When you talk to insurance agents about communicating to their marketplace whether it’s prospects or customers using video, what are the objections? What are the reasons that they’re either uncomfortable or just don’t want to?
Mike: Well, the number one reason is, “I don’t want to appear on camera,” and I get that. It’s tricky to produce quality video content that is share-worthy. When I say tricky, meaning just like anything else. There’s probably 10, 20 things to think about as it relates to appearing on camera and really producing quality content. Whether it’s the sound quality or the actual video flow, whether it’s the script or supporting with post-production type features such as branding intros, outros.
There’s a reason why broadcasters go to broadcasting school, or they go to [crosstalk] master clients, because it’s not that easy to talk about any topic for say, a minute, two minutes without the um’s, and the ah’s and things like that. That’s why people use teleprompters. Newscasters do, so they look like they’re geniuses and even they screw up from time to time. Unless you have this skill set or you have easy access to video editing then there’s a lot in it.
There’s some use cases that I’m happy to bring up that are easier to use because it doesn’t have to be perfect. When I say perfect meaning if someone’s talking about the benefits of umbrella insurance or flood insurance or uninsured motorist coverage or things of that nature, number one, we want to have a tidy script. Number two, we don’t want to make any mistakes in the communication of that policy in those purposes.
There’s a lot of things in it especially in insurance, where there’s clearly the communication of the information is massively important for accuracy. There’s a lot of reasons that agents have told us because we encourage agents to use our platform for certain things and we encourage agents to use video to create video quotes, to create testimonials of happy clients, to create a birthday or a holiday video.
Those are things that we can give people suggestions and guidance, but at the end of the day, we’re not really in their office to interview their customers with a glowing testimonial. Number one reason, people don’t want to appear on camera. Number two reason, the complexity of what to do next as far as editing. Number three is, what’s the best way to use the video to attract engage and retain clients. “I don’t even know how get video on my website.” Mike, is what I hear.
Michael: I actually listed four things, four objections that you’ve heard. Number one, “I’m uncomfortable in front of a camera.” Number two, the technology, “I don’t know the technology solutions because there’s this, that and the other,” and there are. Number three, you have to pay attention to the quality of the content. Number four, once I shoot it what do I do with it? Which is probably another technology question. Let’s if we can, let’s at least speak briefly to those objections. Number one, agent says, “I’m not that comfortable in front of a camera.” Boom. What do you say?
Mike: I would say to them, “Hey, you know what? Get a webcam for 20 bucks off Amazon I can give you a link.” Literally, it’s $20 as a suitable microphone, and use free software at lum.com. Is an amazing tool for screen recording or screen recording and appearing on camera. Listeners don’t necessarily know a screen recording or screencasting it’s called, it is effectively you get to record everything that’s on your screen while you’re talking. This wonderful software it’s free.
You can also, should you care, which I encourage is to appear on camera in the lower left-hand corner of that screen recording of that video. A great use case for this is I would say, start with inexpensive tools to cut your teeth on something that could have an immediate impact on your business. That video that could have an immediate impact on your business among others is preparing a video quote.
What I mean by that is it could be literally 30 seconds of you appearing on camera saying, “Hey Michael, it was awesome to talk to you today about your auto home policy today. We’re in the business of protecting what you worked so hard for. Here is the quote we discussed. By the way, you asked about the increased uninsured motorist would have on the premium, here’s that line item.”
Now, you’ve done a couple of different things. You’ve appeared on camera, you created that deeper personal connection, and you’ve added value to the conversation that you had because that customer had a question about a certain line of coverage or endorsement, or where maybe. It can be a fantastic way to get your feet wet with something.
Michael: There are a lot of reasons to overcome the psychological objection. I think maybe this is a shortcut version of the objection, or how to deal with the objection of not being comfortable in front of a camera. One is, I really understand it to get over it. [laughs]
Mike: Right. Absolutely.
Michael: It’s just your face and your voice, and you’re going to give your face and your voice to somebody if you see them in the room. If you are with them physically. With this one you actually can edit it or throw it away and do another one, we don’t overthink it. In regards to the technology tools, let’s talk about that for a moment. Actually, I want to raise a related topic here, Mike. I want to get your insight on this because there’s really high quality.
You guys in your studio, you shoot a really high quality video, or broadcast TV that’s real high quality. I have noticed there’s an emerging trend, not brand new but there’s a trend in marketing, communications. You’ll see it on social a lot where there’s actually, as opposed to high production value there’s an intentional low production value. Where almost as if you know that the subject is not just shooting it on their own, they’re not editing it, they’re not throwing bottom third, they’re not throwing logos onto it, it looks and feels like, “Hey, this is so important I just want you to be here in the room with me while I tell you this stuff.
Mike: Sure.
Michael: I’ve seen that technique being used by very, very successful internet marketers, digital marketers as well as– you’ll see it on social a great deal. It seems to be a growing trend. It emphasizes those values of transparency and a little bit of vulnerability and they’re like, “I’m not hiding behind my production I’m right here.” Let’s start with that one first because I want to get under the tools and that seems to be relatively easy. First, can you comment on the emerging trend of low production value video?
Mike: Sure. People are calling it pattern interruption. That is, many of the videos you see are going to be high production quality, or perfectly scripted, or whatever it may be. Whereas, if you want to capture someone’s attention let’s think of ways to differentiate that video style. It could be, “Hey, this brilliant idea just popped in my mind. I was at the beach looking at the ocean, I had clarity.
Michael: [laughs] Yes, right.
Mike: “I had to share this with you right now because it was an epiphany.” Right?
Michael: Yes.
Mike: “I couldn’t wait.” It speaks to the fact that to your point people want to relate with the messaging, and they want to relate to the deliverer of that messaging. “Hey, I’m not always super polished.” People will say in some videos, “I’m polished,” then other ones say, “I’m just like everyone else. I put my pants on the same way. I’m not this Internet marketing guru, I’m just this guy.”
In the context of that because you see those types of videos in that space quite a bit, because those people want to be relatable. I think that’s a great tactic for certain video types, but insurance, of course, is a different animal, different subject matter so it would work less effectively in other video topics.
Michael: Let’s talk about how it can be done, and then I can talk about how I use it. The tools, the technology typically, done with an iPhone or a Droid, right?
Mike: Yes. Here’s the thing, webcam is perfect, I love the webcam for starters for just that agent, because it’s so much easier to control a lot of things. If you’ve got an Android and an iPhone, you might have a lively mic, you might have a selfie stick thing which a lot of people use then you’re worrying about sound quality and wind and certain things like that.
Whereas, if you’re in your office environment–
Let’s start with our training wheels on, let’s build on successes we have, let’s start in the office with a soundproof room, hopefully your office is soundproof and you’ve got a decent quality microphone on a webcam that’ll cost you anywhere from literally $20 to $48 a Logitech webcam is great. You have the immediate ability to upload that video while you’re sitting plugged in to your devices.
Whereas, smartphone video whether it’s iPhone or Android phone there’s amazing quality video recording tools on these devices these days. That speaks to the fact that now we’ve got these HD imagery, or even just higher quality that people can create content all the time, because they’ve got these high powered tools in their pocket. As it relates to the continuum of ease, let’s build on success.
First thing I always do a webcam, then secondarily you think about, if you want to produce on camera video content in the wild so to speak then you’re going to need to consider the sound quality, of course, and you can have someone else do that and do a lot of live on mic or you could hopefully find a place that’s not super windy, because wind is the first thing that’s going to impact your outdoor in the wild.
[crosstalk]
Michael: Lavaliers for your smartphone are cheap. This is not an expensive technology, right?
Mike: No. $20 your lavalier mic.
[crosstalk]
Michael: $29, decent, pretty good lavalier mic, for about the same price a really good stick, if you want to be spontaneous. Boom, you’re pretty much ready to rock and roll there and in some cases, you may not even need the lav and in some cases you can’t. For example, let’s say you want to do a little spontaneous storytelling, let’s say the agency made a contribution to the community to a charitable organization in the community.
Maybe somebody from the organization comes over, gets a check or something. In those cases, a little bit of spontaneous storytelling works really well. Of course, you can’t mic up because you won’t hear the other guy, but if you talk to the other guy you could pick him up and so boom. A few minutes later, you got a pretty good video with a pretty good story.
Mike: Absolutely.
Michael: I have a question for you, then I’ll tell you how I solved this problem. What do you suggest to people like, “Okay, I got this little video.” Maybe it’s four minutes and I got a minute or 30 seconds. What do you suggest agents do? Unless it’s a small shop typically they don’t want to do it themselves, they’ve got an agency to run.
Mike: Right. A lot of people are outsourcing this to Upwork, which is a web–
Michael: Fair enough. That’s what I do. I’ve got on my team, a video editor, not expensive very fast turnaround doesn’t need a lot of guidance. For low production quality stuff, I have that guy. For high production quality stuff, I have another guy. Yes. Upwork delivers. That’s how we do it.
Mike: Absolutely. At the end of the day, there’s going to be required video edits for a lot of videos. In the sense that unless you have this skill, this gift to be amazing on camera without the ums, and some bloopers and things of that nature well. We know that you’re going to make mistakes on video. That’s partly why I love Loom videos, because in order to rerecord it real quickly you don’t have to do much.
Michael: You just push a button. [laughs]
Mike: Push a button, delete videos, it’s free, “Let’s take two,” kind of thing. Yes, absolutely. I think having a video editor, who is a part of the team, an extension of the team is a perfect solution and Upwork is a great place to find one.
Michael: Alright. Let’s talk about the different places that video can be used.
Mike: We always start, “Hey, get video content on your website.” It could be explanation of coverages, it could be testimonials, those are kind of two use cases. It could be what happens when a claim happens? Or, “Let’s meet the staff.” “Here’s a brief bio of a CSR that’s going to be handling your account.” There’s a lot of different ways to get video on to incorporated into that first landing page, or that first connection you may have with the prospects. Video on your website is a great thing to consider. Again, if you don’t feel like you have the confidence to record a two-minute video about Umbrella Insurance, start with staff Bios. Everyone should be able to talk 30 seconds about themselves.
Mike: By the way, as an aside, because we had a platform where we could monitor statistics and usage for all of our clients, when I was the CEO of Agency Revolution. I can tell you that in our experience statistically, the second most visited page after the homepage was the staff page. People want to know about the people.
Mike: Yes, without question. There’s an agent in California. Patty Lares. L-A-R-E-S. It will be Lares insurance I believe, or AA Lares insurance. She has a page dedicated to staff, of course, but just as I mentioned it’s a brief video, and I mean brief. Meaning under a minute, that just talks about that staff person on camera, talking about their experience what they like to do outside of work. Humanize the experience, create a deeper connection and just the insurance aspect.
Michael: That gets to another medium, and by the way, I guess full disclosure Mike, you and I met years ago when I was the CEO of Agency Revolution, and you were helping joint clients embed videos in emails. Talk about the use of video and email?
Mike: That’s right. We always start with the fact that if you are going to send emails, send better emails.
Michael: [laughs]
Mike: What does a better email look like? Well, if it’s to a prospect, you need a subject line that’s going to boost the open rate. Well, including the word video in the subject line boosts the open rate, by 20 plus percent. That’s a neat way to reach out to prospects and boost that opportunity, or improve that opportunity I should say, but we think about– we’ve topped the P&C insurance space about the importance of a signature block.
Whether it’s using our video content to boost the effectiveness of that or a link to your Facebook page, or referral program whatever the heck you want to communicate to your clients and prospects, do not ignore the importance of optimizing your signature block. You’re sending 20, 30, 40 emails a day, and this is just a simple way on autopilot to improve the effectiveness of that.
We start across the website, then the second thing would be in the signature block. Then the third thing for more advanced agents, such as an Agency Revolution client or anyone who’s doing any sort of marketing animation, with onboarding email sequences, or drip marketing, or broke a glass, for holidays, or monthly newsletter.
We’re talking about insurance a lot of times. Most people are going to engage with video content, much more deeply versus text content. We encourage people to use video content and say in Agency Revolution drip campaign, or an easy linked one, or infusion soft or whatever the heck you’re using. Consider using video, if you want to use the open rate if you want to boost the engagement rate. Ultimately use a better medium to educate himself.
Michael: I notice for example in your email signature you’ve got a little, like a video icon. Click on that, and it takes you to a video, which presumably you got it hosted on your website somewhere.
Mike: Correct and that’s what we tell people is that, ‘use the eye candy’. If you have the ability– A text link is okay, a text like is fine, but–
Michael: I see you’ve got a little Bitly link, and you’ve got an icon, a graphical link.
Mike: Correct.
Michael: By the way, do you know which one gets clicked on more? Is it the graphical link?
Mike: We just started adding the text link, as an option and we don’t have enough data to really–
Michael: Not enough data yet.
Mike: Yes, not yet, but it’s the eye candy. We encourage agents to put a photograph of themselves in the signature block because it’s a deeper connection. You see a picture of me, I feel more connected to you. Then, of course, if you’re going to improve one of our videos, or anybody else’s videos for that matter when you create yourself, create a thumbnail image. That’s the eye candy that encourages the recipient to take action.
In this case, we have a thumbnail image that will say, how Umbrella Insurance can protect you from financial hardship. It’s got a big play button on it, click here. Encouraging the recipient of that email to take action, so that they watch that video content and learn more about what they’ve already purchased. What the CSR or the producer is discussing. It’s a great way to create new rounding opportunities. It’s a great way to reinforce conversations you just had.
This is insurance and some people may hear the messaging or the importance of insurance, three, four or five times before they take action and buy something. Then the last reason why video can be a great thing is it’s good for E&L part, you know. Many agents, in fact, we didn’t even realize this was such a big benefit to our service until agents told us that it was a big benefit. That is, “Hey, we love to send out the Umbrella video in our signature block to every single one of our clients because now we know we have sent them information.”
Michael: [laughs] Yes, right. Okay.
Mike: We’ve got the website, we’ve got email, whether signature block or different campaigns, whether it’s agents revolution platform or others. That’s a great way to leverage video content. Then there’s the social side.
Michael: Talk about social.
Mike: Social is interesting because our service, we started out as a video library for agents to use content on the web, and emails, and email campaigns. Also on social media. They could use our video content anywhere they’d like and we’d encourage them to, but what agents said to us is, “Hey, social in and of itself is a great way to attract, engage, retain clients, but I may not have time for this.”
What we did, is we said, “Wait a second. We know that video content is the most engaging type of content, but most agents don’t have the time, energy, the tools to create quality video content.” We took our video platform, and we amplified it with additional video content that is short form for social media. The reason, you asked about social media, you got to be producing video content in social to stand out from the crowd.
You just have to. Static messaging on facebook for insurance posts. You are going to have a hard time getting people to pay attention to an infographic about term versus permanent insurance because it’s really not what they’re on social for. You can sprinkle in that content from time to time, to remind people about the importance of it, but if you’re the one to capture the attention of the audience on social, on Facebook generally speaking it’s got to be animated and hopefully it’s a bit funny.
Michael: Okay, [laughs] talk about a case study or, an example of an agency that really is executing best practices in video.
Mike: This is not a customer of ours, so that’s fine because this agent has really said, ” want to be an absolute monster when it comes to video.” Meaning they’re going to apply every single use case and I’m delighted to share this. It’s an agent out of New York named Mike Crowley, it’s C-R-O-W-L-E-Y. He’s kind of the, you know this go-around version of Ryan Hanley, when people probably remember Ryan Hanley created 100 videos in 100 days, five years ago which was really cool. Ryan basically said, “Hey, I don’t care about production quality, at the beginning he said, “I’m just going to do this.”
Michael: Ryan and I talked about that several times and one of the jokes was– he got great traction from it. Was that he told that story 100 times. I said, “How many agents actually did what you told them to do?” He said, “Probably none.”
Mike: Michael that’s why I warmed this.
Michael: No, I get that. Hopefully, it’s easier now. I mean that was a few years ago. What’s Mike Crowley doing? What kind of videos is he shooting?
Mike: His goal for video includes, “I want to rank organically for certain keywords, and I want to better connect with my clients and prospects. I want to save time by educating.” One of the things he’s doing is, he’s basically answering rather FAQs, Frequently Asked Question about insurance. Then he’s using regional risk. Frozen pipes is going to be a big deal up in his neck of the woods versus Southern California. Where I’m at, it’s not right. This isn’t rocket science, you think of all the questions you get as a insurance professional and you say, “What’s the frequency of me getting these?” Well, the ones that bubble up to the top become your priorities as far as video content you want to create.
Michael: Talk about keyword for a second on SEO. For example, Google is not listening to my podcast, but because I have it transcribed, they can read that. With Crowley, or what do you suggest?
Mike: Yes, putting the keywords that you’re hoping to rank for, it could be Workers Comp in San Diego California. That’s probably going to be challenging because Hanley got a huge geographic area. One of the things that– people love the free leads from the Internet by ranking organically. I mean that concept, it’s free, but you got to put in the work. The idea here is, I would suggest, this is just SEO 101 that go longtail, which means go out into terms that we’re going to have less search volume, but less competition.
You can rank for that and put your hyper, your location in it. I’m in Del Mar, California, which is an area of San Diego. I wouldn’t want to put San Diego because it would be as hard as heck to outrank. Sometimes people in that, so you want to put your city or your geography rather, and then, of course, something that is very specific. You probably not going to rank for auto insurance unless you live in a really small town because there is huge providers out there that are going to outrank you, they’ve been doing this for a while.
Michael: Let me just throw a very short tip. A transcription service that I use, which is really, really cheap. I can take, for example, I took a 15-minute video that I shot and I dumped it into an app. In 10 or 15 seconds, the entire thing was transcribed, it did need a little bit of cleanup, but it was really fairly a remarkable case of modern technology.
The app is Descript, D-E-S-C-R-I-P-T, so boom. If that’s useful to anybody, it does make transcription really fast.
Let’s say you could deliver a message. Like boom, all of a sudden you have cracked everybody’s computer in the insurance industry. Or all of the Independent Insurance Agency principles, and you could take over their computer or their wallpaper. They show up to work and there’s a message from Mike Demko. What do you want to say? It’s got to fit on one screen and it’s got to be relatively shorter, they’re not going to read it.
Mike: Well, if it’s from my lens of building my business, it would be, “Video works. We make it easy.” That’s what I would say to everybody.
Michael: The first part might be the non-commercial version of it video work, because you don’t do– Let’s talk about that. The distinction between video that can and probably should be produced locally by the enterprise or the agency. Then share with us what you do? What’s in the library? What do you think should be done in the agency?
Mike: Absolutely, and it’s a Continuum right? Again, let’s get our footing here. I love customer testimonials because if you have a customer in your office and generally this works better. If someone is in your office or go out to the restaurant, you just write the post and say, we’re delighted that you’re on board with our agency. We hope to have you as a customer for the next 20 years, whatever may be.
Could you say a couple of words on camera about how Mike handled your policies? It’s not always about saving money, it’s about help me understand the complexity insurance, responsive with my claim. You don’t want to have to save money sort of videos as your only ones because obviously, I can’t save everybody money. This is about the experience they had with your agency or why they’re doing business with you or whatever may be.
I think that’s just a dynamite: one, because people aren’t expecting huge video quality with that. That’s the type of without your camera, I recommend shooting landscape which is East-West orientation, not north-south and just whip that out and then ask the question, “Hey, Michael, how was your experience working with the Demko agency?” Maybe tee them up for a couple things you like and say, “Hey, give us ideas of what would be nice including a testimonial.” Then bam, there you go, 45 seconds later you got it.
Michael: You got it. If you need to edit it, send it to your guy in Upwork.
Mike: Correct. That can go to Yelp, that can go on your website, that can be in the signature blocker of your email, that can be a lot of different places. “Hey, we got testimonials.”
Michael: Maybe at some point, I’ll refer my guy that I’m keeping pretty busy right now. Video works, it makes an emotional connection that’s really quite immediate. Doesn’t it?
Mike: Absolutely, so I would I would think about the staff bios, I would think if you have a referral program. It’s a lot more impactful to talk about the referral program if you the agency principal, or staff members talking about it, best practice would be, “There’s a lot of agents that are doing this now.” Mike Strom is one of them. There is a friend of mine also a client, he goes on Facebook live every quarter to do a Facebook live video that announces the Referral Rewards Program winner.
Number one, appreciate your clients. Number tw, he has a charity which is a part of the Referral Program, so he’s not only giving the recipient something, but he’s also making a donation on behalf of the recipient to that charity, so that’s neat. Reinforce your influence or your connection with the community that way, and then he’s also including a staff member. That’s another thing. That’s a great one. Again, that’s appearing on camera, it could be Facebook live, it could be not live.
You can record it and just put it up, but it’s a neat way to gain leverage the power of video to create a deeper connection and market your agency. Last one I would say, video quotes. We talked about that a bit. Again, this doesn’t have to be just for quotes. It could be for handling the claim. It could be, “Hey, we just wrote your policy. I just want to say a quick hello on camera,” so you can put a name with a face.
Then the last one is, explanation and coverages, so this a continuum. We talked about the easier ones because the testimonials, 30 seconds. We didn’t talk much about birthday and holiday videos, but those are simple. Then when it gets down to it, an agent like Mike Crawley is doing a great job of creating explanation of coverages. There are probably less than 50 agents in the entire country, they’re doing it. That’s why we’re in business because we know that’s important.
I always say this to agency owners, “Do you want your staff to more effectively communicate their value and the value of insurance?” If the answer is, yes, we’ve got a tool for you. If you give your staff better tools to do their job, in this case, a brief video that talks about certain risks. Well, that’s going to produce greater results for the agency and also a better customer experience. Your customers now understand why a policy can be so powerful to protect what they work so hard for.
Michael: Bingo. A very short story and then I’m going to ask you one last question about how people can find out more about you, and how they can make contact with you. Some years ago, we had an Agency Revolution client that really loved the video capabilities, and shot a birthday message. The first year it was the whole team. There is big team whatever, 30 people. I think maybe they sang one line a happy birthday and then confetti all over the place and noisemakers and blah, blah, blah.
It got such a great response. The next year, while they were doing the happy birthday greeting. They had hired the high school band to March behind them playing happy birthday. It was tremendously creative and it literally lit up their clients day, because they put some effort into it, so boom. There’s a lot you could do with video and you can have fun. Mike, if people wanna learn more about you, if they want to learn more about my insurance videos, what should they know, how can they reach you?
Mike: Of course, I’m on LinkedIn. Just Mike Demko, people probably have that spelling from the slide on this.Of course, you can visit myinsurancevideos.com, that’s with an S on the end. It’ll tell you more about Our Done For You video platform. We have over 50 videos that are going to be in the website, can be used to boost the productivity of your staff, used in drip campaigns. We also have incorporated an automated social platform that posts to Facebook, as well as LinkedIn, Instagram.
Automation along with better premium content. That’s the key there, is that you have to really about, “Hey, how do people distribute video content or any content?” You need to incorporate tools like Agency Revolution or things like that to boost the effectiveness of your campaigns and leverage automation as it relates to either– Agency Revolutions has got a great platform for email and other platformers as well. We’ve got a Done For You video social platform that is very much appreciated by our customers rather.
Michael: Boom. All right. Hey Mike, master class in video for independent insurance agencies. Really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Mike: Thank you.
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