The more I hear agents talk about what they need to be doing to market their business online in 2015, the more I want to find a second story window and jump out of it.

When you don’t understand something, you have a tendency to start with the first thing you hear.

“It has to be a good idea if you keep hearing people talk about it, right?”

Not always.

While it’s great if you do get started -and you’ll have a hard time finding me arguing against the importance of taking action, we get into trouble when we start buying the sizzle of digital marketing. We hear Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. and think they are the first responses.

While I know a few agents who have been able to leverage the networking ability provided in these social networks, most of those efforts will eventually reach a saturation point and rely too much on reinventing the wheel each time out.

If you truly want to win the “Content Warfare” you first need to understand the power of search engines, but even before that, you should know the secret to selling insurance online.

How Do You Sell Insurance Online?

There many different ways to do it, look no further than the previous few paragraphs. But so much of that is focused on the medium, not the message.

Regardless of when you got started in the “insurance business” there was one word that stood out above the rest…

That word was (and still is) trust.

We have gotten so busy chasing these trendy tips and tactics, we forgot or never learned how to translate that trust building into a digital setting.

How to Get Started

The only question you need to ask yourself is “how do I want to teach?”

Teaching creates trust and trust creates a relationship and a relationship creates business.

See what we did there?

Once you have that figured out, the “how,” “when,” and “where,” you create your information (or content), will almost be decided for you.

If you’re fighting every urge to punch your monitor right now, I understand, it’s a fairly normal reaction. It’s also a good thing we’re not standing face to face having this conversation. I have a feeling my face would be standing in for the monitor…

Your violent outburst aside, you are no longer a seller, you’re an educator but you don’t have to do it for a public school salary.

Why Search Engines are So Important?

Coming back to idea of search and the sustainable role it plays in online marketing.

When you create something that ranks well in Google, it stays there for a long time. If you picked the phrase people are searching for, it should also make a lot of people want to talk to you.

But if you haven’t taken the time to develop a truly authentic way to build that trust as fast as possible, your inbox will be empty, your phone won’t ring and no business will be written.

If you Google “how to get approved for health insurance” right now, guess whose name will will be the first result?

That’s a right, a little old seven person family insurance agency 50 miles east of Cleveland, Ohio.

The sad part about that, I can’t track a single client who found us through that article.

Now if you Google Anthem and the Cleveland Clinic, guess again who’s number one?

You got it.

But the best part about that phrase, it has been one of the most profitable pieces of content our agency has produced.

While it’s not as sexy as the first phrase, it actually pays the bills.

The Bottom Line

I don’t want to distract you with developing keyword and search strategies. The most important thing I want you to take away from this article and implement is crafting that trustworthy, relatable message digitally.

It doesn’t matter if it’s in writing, audio, video or even visual. You just have to do it and do it in the way that comes most natural to you.

So I’ll repeat my question from earlier again, how do you want to teach?

Answer that and you will know where to get started.