We’ve written multiple times about the importance of providing news and information to your clients through regular blog posts on your website, client newsletters, and social media updates. The benefits of this marketing strategy are numerous:
Some brokers, though, find it difficult to come up with content ideas, so we wanted to share a few tips that should help you deliver informative and timely updates to your clients and prospects in just a few minutes a day.
Many brokers pride themselves on the customer service they provide. When they get a question from a client, they spend a substantial amount of time researching the topic so they’re sure they’re providing the client with a correct and complete answer. If this sounds like you, why not post the answer for everyone to see? Usually, with only some minor modifications, your answer can be turned into a blog post, newsletter article, or tweet. The more general the question, the easier it is to repurpose it. Questions that are very specific to a particular client don’t work as well, and of course you want to be careful not to reveal any identifying info or PHI.
If you keep up with news related to the health insurance industry, particularly news out of Washington, DC about changes to the Affordable Care Act, you should consider passing this information on to your clients in an easy-to-understand format. The key is to tell them what happened and how it relates to them. Be sure to credit any sources that you use. If you feel the original article is fair and accurate, you may also want to provide a link so your clients can continue reading if they want more information.
Government agencies like HHS, CMS, the IRS, or the DOL frequently publish press releases, notices, bulletins, and FAQ documents. All of these can provide great content for your client communications. A press release can be published as is on your website with credit to the source. You can link to notices and bulletins in a Twitter or LinkedIn post. And some of the questions and answers in an FAQ piece work great as a stand-alone article in your client newsletter. Often, these FAQs might answer a question you’ve previously received from a client, which allows you to elaborate on the answer in your post and say something like “Just the other day, I had a client with this exact same question.”
We’ve had a weekly blog for a couple years now and have more than a hundred articles designed to educate the agents we work with about all aspects of health insurance and ancillary benefits. Some of our posts (like this one) provide ideas and tips to help you sell more business, so they would not be appropriate for client use. Other articles, though, are written in “end user” format and would be great content for your website or newsletter. For example, in June we wrote a “done for you” post with three articles that you can copy and paste. Our only request is that you credit AHCP if you do use one of our pieces.
Some agents go overboard with the information they pass on to clients and prospects, constantly retweeting news articles or sending email updates several times a week. In general, you should avoid this temptation. It’s far more effective to select content that is applicable to your clients and that will further their understanding. If you provide too many updates, or if those updates don’t seem to apply to them, they may stop reading. On the other hand, if you develop a reputation for delivering timely, accurate, and useful content, you’ll be rewarded with loyal readers who view you as their go-to source for information about the health insurance industry.