How to Make the Most of Life Insurance Awareness Month

September is here, and you know what that means! It’s national Life Insurance Awareness Month (LIAM) and the perfect time to discuss life insurance with your current and prospective clients.

If your clients use social media or watch television, they’ll probably see LIAM advertising, priming them to the idea of life insurance. As a result, when you reach out to them, they should be more receptive to learning about their options.

What are some different ways you can make LIAM work for you?

Listen to this article:

Take Advantage of Existing Marketing Tools

Don’t reinvent the wheel. Utilize the LIAM marketing tools already out there.

Life Happens, a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness about life insurance, offers many marketing materials you can utilize during September. For instance, they have customizable educational flyers, brochures, and graphics. They also offer videos, needs calculators, resources featuring real life stories and their 2017 celebrity spokesperson Danica Patrick, and social media posts and images you can share.

The beauty of Life Happens’ marketing tools is that they’re impartial — they don’t promote any one specific product or carrier. Rather, they educate consumers about the need for life insurance. Their Real Life Stories and images help to trigger an emotional response, engage people, and make them open to hearing more about how you can help them meet their life insurance needs. You can also add the Life Happen’s logo to the bottom of your emails and link it to their site to provide your clients with access to more information and resources.

Additionally, most life insurance carriers develop and offer resources you can use throughout LIAM. Log in to the websites of carriers you’re appointed with, and see if there’s anything you can put to good use. (In case you didn’t know, many carriers also offer sales incentives during September you can use to further boost your income from new sales!)

Most life insurance carriers develop and offer resources you can use throughout LIAM.

Create and Send out a Newsletter or Flyer

Life insurance plans can be complicated and confusing to consumers. Creating a newsletter or educational flyer gives you another impartial piece for your supply of LIAM marketing materials. And, sending it out helps you build your clients’ trust and faith in you to help them make the right choice.

Creating a newsletter or flyer gives you another piece for your supply of LIAM marketing materials.

In your newsletter or flyer, include imagery and a story (or stories) that have an emotional appeal. Show families together, account how having life insurance helped someone in a particular situation, or describe the struggles someone faced because their loved one did not have a policy. Also, include some recent life insurance-related statistics to drive your point home. Such information will help get your audience thinking about their own personal needs.

LIMRA and Life Happens’ annual Insurance Barometer Study tracks the perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of U.S. shoppers and can be a wealth of information for you to use to better understand your clients. Each of the following statistics, from the 2017 Insurance Barometer Study, can illustrate a very compelling line of reasoning.

• 70 percent of people say they need life insurance, but only 59 percent actually own it.
• 22 percent of people with individual life insurance policies and 39 percent of people who don’t have life insurance believe they don’t have enough coverage.
• Close to 40 percent of people wish their spouse or partner would buy more life insurance.
• 69 percent of people would feel the financial impact from losing their primary wage earner in two years or less.
• 24 percent of people who don’t have life insurance have insurance for their mobile devices.

As you’re writing the document, consider providing information on the many ways the living can use life insurance as well. There are many benefits of having life insurance that consumers are not aware of, such as cash values and riders that cover medical costs if an owner becomes terminally ill or confined to a nursing home. Posing a question, like the one below, might eventually help you to begin a conversation with grandparents regarding life insurance for their grandchildren.

Did you know that purchasing a life insurance policy for your grandchild could help them buy their first home?

Though you won’t really see immediate results from incorporating a newspaper or flyer into your marketing strategy, it will help establish your credibility and knowledge on these types of products.

Contact Clients for a Free Policy Review

So many of those with life insurance policies have not reviewed them since they were purchased. Another way to make the most of LIAM is to reach out to your current clients for a policy review.

Life policies purchased prior to a marriage or the birth of a child may no longer provide adequate coverage. Your clients’ designated beneficiaries may need updated or their insurance needs may have changed. Moreover, they may have term life insurance that’s nearing the end of its term. Setting up a policy review will let you determine if your clients’ current coverage still makes sense for them. If it doesn’t, you can ensure you’re the one to offer them help.

Setting up a policy review will let you determine if your clients’ current coverage still makes sense.

Remember, the most important thing during these meetings is to listen to your clients. As they talk about their family — their parents, children, or grandchildren — they’ll give you a clear picture of their priorities. You can open up the conversation by asking open-ended questions, such as:

• If something were to happen to you, who would need financial help? How much would they need to survive for a year, two years, or longer?
• How much income does your family need on a monthly basis to cover expenses? How much is your mortgage payment?
• How much in premium could you easily afford to pay annually or monthly?

Ritter Insurance Marketing’s simple, one-page fact finder will help you to facilitate this discussion and keep track of your clients’ answers. Download it now

Maximize Your Presence on Social Media

Social media allows you to keep a topic at the forefront of others’ minds. It can be a powerful tool to engage clients and prospects on a personal level during LIAM.

Use Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to post stimulating images and tips that will get your clients’ and prospective clients’ attention on life insurance this month. Gear what you publish towards the people who are most likely to need life insurance, such as couples with young children or a new house or seniors who may have lost their group coverage when they retired.

Social media can be a powerful tool to engage clients and prospects on a personal level during LIAM.

Consider your audience in your posts. Share imagery and words that will elicit an emotional response from them. For example, you’ll most likely have Millennials and middle-aged Gen Xers reading your posts on Facebook and Twitter. Rather than posting a message asking “Do you have final expense insurance?” a more thought-provoking question might be, “If something were to happen to your parents, would you be able to cover funeral expenses?”

Here are some other social media guidelines:

• Be socially active and ensure that you’re posting consistently. Post at least once or twice a week and make sure to check, at least daily, for comments or questions. Answer any questions promptly.
• Try to open up a discussion with your readers, but avoid any kind of hard sell. Use social platforms to educate and engage your audience and build your brand.
• Avoid exchanging any kind of personal information over a public platform. If someone is interested in learning more, have that conversation offline via email, telephone, or a private message.
• Remain compliant. Don’t consider a like or follow as permission to contact. Always ask a commenter if you can contact them with additional information. Don’t mention or include carrier-specific names, logos, or product information without approval from the carrier.

Keep in mind, you should not be using social media platforms to pressure clients into buying life insurance from you. Treat your profiles as public relations tools. Use them to let the world know about your services.

LIAM is all about making sure people understand life insurance and the importance of getting it. When you use the momentum from this big push, you can establish yourself as others’ go-to resource for more info and set good things in motion for your business.

Want more LIAM marketing ideas or one of Ritter’s experienced staff to review your portfolio? Find out who to call.