8 Steps To A Winning Insurance Agency Marketing Strategy In 2025

You’re an insurance agent, not a marketer. And that means you naturally prioritize selling insurance policies over doing marketing tasks. Maybe you’re holding out hope that the mystical “word of mouth” advertising will eventually…someday…take effect, so you never have to devote time to attracting new customers.

Worse, maybe you’ve already been halfheartedly shoveling money toward ad campaigns you’re not even sure are working.

At EverQuote, we know marketing your agency can be tricky.

However, it’s also vitally important, and it’s only getting more crucial as the years pass and consumer habits evolve.

Three of our most trusted experts when it comes to insurance agency marketing —both online and offline—are Scott Grates, Danielle Waller, and Ryan Chao. These folks are pros at teaching strategies for building a strong presence for your agency, generating hype around your services, and attracting interested customers, which is why we’ve used their expertise to compile this list of crucial marketing strategies.

Follow their tips to get your agency noticed both online and in your local community.

Does the thought of managing online paid ad campaigns fill you with dread? Sit back and let EverQuote’s expert digital marketing team* do all the hard work for you. We’ll handle the planning and implementation; all you have to do is keep writing policies.

Build An Insurance Agency Marketing Strategy In 8 Steps

Before we go any farther, what is Insurance agency marketing?

In a nutshell, it refers to the tactics you use to promote your services, engage with prospective clients, and keep current customers coming back for more.

The best strategy is one that combines innovative digital marketing practices with a traditional real-world approach. You’ll want to understand your market, get an edge on the competition, and study your customers’ behavior both on- and offline.

You can cover all this ground by completing the following eight steps:

1. Identify your target market.

Before you can market your agency, you must identify your target audience.

Who are they? What kind of insurance do they want to buy? What are their needs, and what kind of pain points have they experienced while trying to find good insurance coverage?

Do NOT skip this step! The answers to these questions will drive the rest of your marketing efforts.

2. Build your brand identity.

You’ll need to understand your brand just as well as you understand your target customers.

What’s your message? What sets you apart from the competition? What kind of brand voice and visual identity do you want to cultivate?

Danielle Waller says, “I think it’s great when people are inspired by other agents and other businesses. But just make sure that, whatever you’re doing, you put a twist on it and really make it your own.”

As you start to market your agency, make sure this messaging is consistent across all the channels you use.

3. Develop your online presence.

“We’re in the digital age nowadays,” Danielle says. “People are looking you up before they ever decide if they want to work with you. They’re going to look you up online, they’re going to look at your reviews, they’re going to figure out who you are and what you do before they ever give you an opportunity.”

People are looking you up before they ever decide if they want to work with you.

Digital marketing has many facets, some of which are very complex. However, the basics listed here should get you started down the right path.

Optimize your website and business profiles.

Make sure your website is user-friendly, easy to navigate, and responsive for mobile users. Additionally, keep your website content up to date, and list your agency name, photos, and contact information on Google’s business profile platform. Your website and profile are the first contact points customers will encounter when they find you online, so they need to be clear and engaging!

Additionally, you’ll want to cultivate some online reviews to show prospective customers that your business can be trusted. Scott Grates says, “The easiest way to start is to have a claims process. And for every positive claims experience, make sure you’re asking for a Google review.” This ensures that you’re helping your customers efficiently and that you have a built-in method for obtaining reviews from satisfied customers.

Leverage social media.

Staying active on social media can help you build relationships with potential clients and continuously engage with your existing customers.

Danielle Waller says, “Think of the impact you can have when you post something and hundreds of people share it online. You’re just posting something simple, and it can be seen by that many people! It increases your brand awareness and promotes your business at zero cost.”

The key is to post consistently, she says. “You don’t have to have perfect pictures or perfect lighting. Just show up consistently, like you show up for work every day.”

One more valuable piece of advice from Danielle that might surprise you:

“Stop talking about insurance! When I follow someone on social media, it’s because I want to see what’s going on with them and what’s happening in their life. You don’t have to constantly talk about insurance or products to get engagement.”

Scott Grates adds that if you do a lot of outreach in your local community, you should definitely post about it.

“I spend a lot of time with schools, getting in front of kids, which also puts me in front of their parents, the staff, and the teachers. It’s great content for social media. And ultimately, these kids are our future customers. After fifteen years of this I probably have thousands of customers who once sat in one of my career day seminars, financial literacy workshops, or driver safety workshops.”

Use content marketing to help your audience get to know and trust you.

“People want to do business with someone they know, like, and trust,” Danielle says. “Sometimes it’s not even about the products you offer, it’s about you as a person.”

Sometimes it’s not even about the products you offer, it’s about you as a person.

Posting content allows your audience to get to know you, develop a sense of your personality, and eventually trust your knowledge and expertise.

As you create content, keep the needs and pain points of your target audience in mind. What do they want to know about? What kind of knowledge would make their lives easier? And what kind of expertise can you bring to the table to demonstrate why you’re a thought leader in the insurance industry?

These are the kinds of posts that will resonate with your audience and help you bring in the type of customers you want to target.

Write your content with SEO best practices in mind.

As you post on your website, business profiles, and social media pages, you’ll want to use effective keywords and other search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to make sure Google and other search engines can find your content and recommend it to users.

Here’s a brief overview of the process you’ll follow if you choose to DIY your SEO:

• Conduct some background keyword research to identify relevant terms and phrases that your target audience is searching for.
• Optimize your website content and meta tags to include these keyword phrases.
• Build high-quality backlinks to improve your website’s authority and ranking.
• Track and measure the results of every change so you can optimize your strategy over time.

4. Try a variety of lead generation strategies.

Set up email marketing campaigns.

If you’re not already collecting every email address you can, it’s time to start. Assembling an email list means you can always reach out to potential clients, create targeted email funnels that nurture leads into becoming customers, and stay in touch with your existing customers and acquaintances as you build a referral network.

As you collect emails, categorize them into segments that make sense for future communications—i.e. “Follow up,” “Say thank you,” or “Send a reminder.”

For best results, use an automated program to personalize, optimize, and distribute your email campaigns on a pre-set schedule.

Give your audience something to interact with.

Interactive tools—think insurance calculators or quizzes such as “How much coverage do I need?”—can provide personalized advice and guide your users to reach out for further help.

Additionally, you might want to create a resource center on your website. This will answer some of your audience’s questions, and also position you as a helpful authority in the industry.

Purchase leads and get new business almost instantly.

As valuable as the other marketing strategies are, there’s simply no replacement for having a full pipeline of leads at your fingertips whenever you need to drum up some new business immediately.

Purchasing leads gives you the freedom to never worry about staying busy during the slow months or stress over whether your latest marketing campaign will be successful. As long as you can dial and answer the phone, you’ll always have a guaranteed source of leads ready to go at any given time.

EverQuote offers a few different options, so you can pick the lead generation method(s) you prefer.

1. Real-Time Leads

When online shoppers searching for a new insurance policy fill out one of the forms on our landing pages, we receive that information immediately.

Within seconds of the user submitting the form, you’ll have the prospect’s name, contact information, and the details of the policy they’re looking for. You’ll have everything you need to call them and start making sales right away—while they’re still actively shopping.

You don’t have to wait around for other agents to contact them first; you can jump right in and start helping your new customers right when they’re in the mood to buy.

You can select the lead management system of your choice when you set up an account with us, but we recommend using our Pro LMS to receive all your lead information. Our Pro platform will send you an email in real time every time a new lead wants to be contacted, and you can track each prospect’s details effortlessly in one place.

Regardless of the LMS you choose, you’ll be able to opt in to receive lead alerts during a customizable range of working hours, within a specific zip code, or according to any other parameters you set. We want you to have the best possible conversion rate, so we can even tailor the leads you receive to meet the risk profile criteria you select when you sign up.

2. Lead Connection Service

Want all the benefits of real-time leads without the hassle of dialing? Our lead connection service lets you have exactly that.

Instead of dialing out to prospects who have entered their information online, our experienced outreach agents will do the busywork for you. They’ll reach out to new leads within 30 seconds of a form being submitted, so there’s almost no chance of missing out on an interested potential customer.

They’ll screen every person they contact to make sure their needs are a great fit for your services, and then they’ll pass the most qualified, highest-intent buyers on to you. Once your phone rings (or your email box pings), you can answer and work your sales magic.

If a prospect doesn’t answer on the first try, don’t worry. We’ll reach out for up to seven days using a well-researched outreach cadence proven to get the best results. You can still opt to receive the list of leads and all their contact information if you want to do follow-ups on your own schedule after the first week.

3. Consumer-Initiated Inbound Calls (a.k.a. Live Transfer Calls)

“I love any type of live lead transfer,” Ryan Chao says. “That’s why I use EverQuote. I also use their web leads for when live leads are slow.”

Consumer-initiated inbound calls (CIC) offer such an incredible return on investment that many of our clients only use CIC to fill their lead pipelines. The up-front cost can be higher than other lead generation methods, but the payoff comes from an average 20-30% bind rate—and the fact that you don’t have to put in any outreach effort at all.

With CIC, interested customers aren’t just filling out forms online. They’re actually picking up the phone and calling to speak with an agent right now. They’re highly motivated to buy, and they want to get their questions answered now—which means you’re in a prime position to help them find the policies they need just by answering the phone.

Just like we do as part of our lead connection services, our team will do the busywork for you on the front end. We’ll answer the prospect’s call, gather their information, and send the best matches to your phone line right away.

You’re in control of when you receive calls, how many calls get sent to you, and any other demographic and risk criteria you’d like to set. Let us know your preferences, and we’ll make sure you get the high-intent leads you want, when you want them.

5. Build a network of partners and referrals.

Established properly, a solid referral network can become one of your best methods of bringing in new, high-quality prospects. Scott says, “When someone has referred to you, you’ve already received an endorsement. Someone the customer knows, likes, and trusts has told them, ‘Hey, you’ve got to go to this person for insurance.’ So they’re starting the process wanting to do business with you.”

The key is to develop partnerships with parallel professionals—think real estate agents and mortgage brokers—who can point to you when their clients need insurance services. In return, you can refer back to these partners when one of your policy holders needs something they provide.

It’s also a good idea to attend conferences and other industry events to build relationships with folks outside your local circle. You never know when all that word-of-mouth advertising will result in a new customer!

“Once you establish relationships,” Scott says, “It’s like a flywheel with momentum. We’re just consistently showing up, adding value to peoples’ lives, staying top of mind, and people want to refer to you because they understand the value you can bring to their customers and they know you’ll make them look good.”

6. Try paid search advertisements.

Paid search ads can help you reach high-intent buyers who are searching for insurance in your region. These folks have typed keywords like, “affordable home insurance for new homeowners” or “cheap car insurance for good drivers” into a search bar because that’s exactly what they’re looking for.

By purchasing an ad campaign from Google, you can make sure your ad listing is featured at the top of the list for users to find immediately.

A lot of factors can make or break your ad campaign strategy. For example, you’ll need to optimize keywords, correctly target your desired audience, set a budget, and use ad extensions to improve your ad visibility and boost click-through rates.

Mastering the art of building successful paid ads can be time-consuming, but we’re always just a phone call away if you’d rather pass the busywork off to our team of pros.

7. Use sponsorships to make your business visible in your community.

Sponsoring local events and charity initiatives is a great way to increase your brand visibility and generate positive buzz around your business. Partner with local businesses to reach new audiences, build relationships, and amplify your message within your community.

Scott says helping out schools and kids’ sports teams can be a hugely successful way to build trust in your brand. “As a father of three, I can tell you, you can flatter me all you want and it’s great. But when you recognize my kids and you help them out and make a difference in their lives, that’s how you really endear me.”

8. Track your efforts and measure your results.

The key to finding a successful marketing strategy is in the numbers.

Ryan Chao recommends writing down all your numbers starting on day one and doing some monthly math to make sure you’re hitting your goals.

“For me, if I want to bring in a hundred thousand dollars, I’d start by finding the average premium in my book. Divide the number of items in your book by your average premium and that will give you the premium per item. Then take the number of households in your book and divide by the number of items to find the average items per household. With those numbers, you can figure out how many households you need to find to hit your goals.

“Then, take the number of households you have written for, say, one month, and divide by the households you’ve closed within the same month. That will give you your close ratio.” He also recommends keeping track of the sales you make per every lead you contact.

If you pour money into a particular insurance marketing strategy—for example, paid ads—it’s crucial to track your investment in comparison to your results. This isn’t just a one-time process; you’ll want to track how these numbers change over time to make sure you’re always making forward progress.

Get your agency noticed with professional digital marketing from EverQuote.

Some of your insurance marketing efforts have to come from you to be authentic. You’re the one sponsoring community events, reaching out to valued business partners, and sending personalized emails, after all.

But the vast majority of your digital marketing strategy can be handled more quickly and easily—not to mention effectively—by a team of experts. There’s no need to learn all the ropes of digital marketing from scratch when you can get up and running quickly with EverQuote.

Download our free Digital Marketing Playbook here to learn more about making your agency stand out online, or contact us here to get started with our marketing team today.

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