Insurance ≠ Cool and other marketing problems

Today I had a conversation with a friend of mine that reminded me of a long term problem I've been contending with as the owner of an insurance agency- No one cares about insurance. Oh, sure, a few of you will say you do. The reality is though, with evermore interesting things to read and watch, insurance has fallen lower and lower on the list of preferred subject matter.

This is somewhat of a marketing and advertising challenge for me. Especially with regard to new media. What exactly do you put on a Facebook fan page for an insurance agency? If people don't care about insurance, why would they want to "Like" an agency fan page?

Despite my best attempts at generating interest, I don't anticipate insurance is ever going to be a hot topic on the social networks. So with that in mind, what do we do to engage clients? One approach we've taken is case studies. Shining a spotlight on real life families and their financial situations. We've removed all sales-e-ness, and I just report on the situations we come across in our office. It allows people to observe these financial topics as spectators. They then get to respond in two ways- "glad I've got that covered- wouldn't want that guy's life" or "hmmm. Probably should look into that myself".

Another approach we've taken is simply to get off the topic altogether. For us, one competitive advantage we have is how we make people feel. So we put photos of community events we do, photos of clients, we link to clients' websites and talk about stuff we're sponsoring in our community.

I rarely get a new client or a call from an existing client off our of "insurance" postings. However, common feedback from new clients is, "if we've got to pay for insurance, we'd prefer to pay you and have our stuff with you."

My advice if you've got a "non-sexy" product or service, focus more on the relationship and less on the product. I'll mod a phrase form Teddy Roosevelt- "They don't care much about your product, until they know how much you care."