Get Creative In Opening The Life Insurance Conversation

By Brad Cummins

Life Insurance Awareness Month (LIAM) is something every life insurance agent should welcome. It’s a time when you can break the silence surrounding the hard-to-talk-about subject of life insurance.

Almost one-third (30 percent) of Americans believe they need more life insurance, according to LIMRA. So whether you believe it or not, people want to talk about life insurance and LIAM is a great chance – and a real opportunity – to get people to open up to have this conversation. With that being said, the conversation isn’t going to happen on its own. So how do you get it started?

Social media is a great place to start. I’m not talking about spamming all your friends on Facebook. In fact, you may be surprised at how many of your friends will talk about life insurance with you, if you approach them in the right manner.

How to Leverage Social Media

Create images that will engage your prospective buyers. I wouldn’t hesitate to put some quotes and a contact number on a post, or a link to a landing page with a call to action. Building awareness can start with an image.

We know life insurance is about protection, so high-quality images of a family are a good place to start. It may help people relate to why they buy life insurance, and why they need to be aware of life insurance in the first place.

Boost your post. Organic reach is getting more difficult on Facebook and Twitter, so you may not get the organic reach you have in mind, especially with a small fan base. So here is a good way to maximize your results. Boost the post with paid advertising. It’s cheap.

For example: We spent $5 on the last Facebook post we boosted and we reached over 3,500 views. Not a bad return on your marketing dollars. Boosted posts can help get your message in front of a larger audience quickly.

Leverage hashtags to get better organic reach. Proper hashtags can even reach people beyond your network. Leveraging the proper hashtag on Facebook and Twitter can help you get more attention for your post.

It’s usually not as easy to get a life insurance topic or article trending as it is to get attention for a piece about Justin Bieber or Miley Cyrus. But by using the hashtag #LIAM15 this month, it could be a little easier to get some traction for a post relating to life insurance. You may pick up a little more reach with your post just by using that hashtag. So using the right hashtag can get you more engagement and possibly more shares, likes or retweets.

Don’t be afraid to get creative. Being creative is easier than you think. Take, for example, a post we did called 30 Days of Memes for Life Insurance Awareness Month. This should help get your creative juices flowing.

We created 30 memes to make you laugh, think, and act. These are funny and can easily make people relate, and possibly laugh at, an otherwise difficult subject. The memes may help create awareness, and possibly open up a conversation. You don’t have to take this much time to come up with something, but anything can help.

If you don’t have the time or creativity to come up with your own idea, that doesn’t mean you cannot participate in LIAM. Don’t be afraid to piggyback off someone else’s idea and share it.

You can always add your own message in a post and share someone else’s idea or campaign. You don’t always need to have a post linking back to your brand or your landing page in order to be successful. Another great place to find awareness campaigns is at Life Happens. It is a great resource with images you can share and leverage.

I hope this helps get your Life Insurance Awareness Month campaign off on the right foot. If you have any more tips, please leave them in the comments section. I’m sure the readers would love to learn about them.

Brad Cummins of Columbus, Ohio, is the founder of Local Life Agents and TermLife-Insurance.com. Brad may be contacted at [email protected].