8 Digital Marketing Tactics to Try in 2020

It’s still time to incorporate these ideas into your marketing plan.

By Ashleigh Rothhammer Johnson

How will you grow your business in 2020? Although the year is already under way, that doesn’t mean you can’t set new goals or try new marketing tactics. Look at your marketing plan and business goals for the next 12 months and see if the following digital marketing tactics could fit into your plan.

1. Optimize for Search Engines. How does your insurance or financial-services website show up at the top of online search results? It doesn’t just get there. Your website must be optimized to appear in search engine results pages for Google and Bing. The good news is that now is the best time to improve your SEO thanks to the rise in popularity of voice search, digital assistants, smart speakers and featured snippets.

2. Create a Blog Series. Position yourself as an industry thought leader and start a blog post series. Pick a topic you can speak about with authority across several blog posts. Try to select a topic that is relevant to your clients and prospects or your target audience. Don’t forget to share new posts on social media and in your email newsletters to promote them.

3. Do a Website Content Update. If you haven’t had a chance to update your website’s content in the past six to 12 months, now is the time to do so. Make it a point to revisit each page, refresh the wording, add better images and update links. Not only is this good for online visitors, it’s also an important ranking factor for SEO. Search engines like to display websites with recent and relevant content in search results.

4. Add Engaging Website Features. While you’re at it, why not make your website more interactive to increase engagement and the amount of time people spend on the page? Add an embedded insurance calculator, a poll, an event calendar or even a countdown clock. A recent survey by G2 Crowd found that chat bots will power 85 percent of customer service this year. And with advancements in artificial intelligence, people prefer communicating with today’s chat bots to a real person.

5. Run an Email Marketing Campaign. If you have your clients’ names and email addresses, you have enough data to run an email marketing campaign. You even have enough data to use personalization tags that increase open rates when used in a subject line. If you have a marketing automation system, set up multi-message campaigns that provide a slow drip of information over time. Use these to welcome new clients, tell them about your agency’s history and how to submit a claim, or you can use campaigns to nurture prospects into clients.

6. Live Stream. If video isn’t part of your business’ marketing plan, it should be. The prevalence of mobile devices and Wi-Fi makes it easier than ever for people to watch and record streamed video. And, if you find it easier to talk on the phone than to type an email message, video should be your content medium of choice.

7. Claim, Monitor and Manage your Online Business Listings. Have you claimed your Google My Business listing? Do you appear on your local Better Business Bureau website? What about Yelp? If your insurance agency or financial-services business is listed anywhere online, it’s time for an audit. Make sure your business name, address, phone number and website appear the same across all listings. Post some new or recent photos and respond to good and bad reviews. In addition, set up alerts so that you will know when a new review is posted.

8. Use Your Business Data. Forbes reported that 78 percent of organizations already have or are developing a customer data platform to help manage, analyze and leverage their data. Do you have an agency management system or a customer database? If you do, it’s time to start using the data at your fingertips to make smart marketing decisions. Start with basic demographic information to learn who your target audience is and then go from there.

Ashleigh Rothhammer Johnson started in the insurance and financial industry in 2007 as an annuity/mutual fund wholesaler. She writes for many industry publications, hosts webinars and promotes industry events. She is a past President of WIFS Denver, a 2018 NAIFA YAT Ambassador, a 2019 Woman of the Year Nominee and serves the Denver NAIFA chapter.