In today’s competitive health insurance landscape, brokers face the challenge of not only understanding complex health plans but also marketing them effectively to the right audiences. Health insurance marketing may require a careful strategy, as brokers must remain compliant with regulations while effectively engaging and educating potential clients. In this article, we’ll go over what health insurance marketing is and the support you can get from an agency, whether it’s from a third party firm or Word & Brown General Agency.
What is Health Insurance Marketing?
Health insurance marketing refers to the strategies and methods used to connect with potential clients, communicate the benefits of health insurance, and build lasting client relationships. Unlike traditional marketing, outreach in health insurance involves a blend of education, compliance, and service, aiming to help clients make informed decisions about their healthcare options.
How Health Insurance Marketing Agencies Support Brokers
Given the complexity of health insurance, many brokers choose to work with specialized marketing agencies that understand the unique demands of this industry. Health insurance marketing agencies are dedicated to helping brokers navigate these complexities by providing customized solutions designed to attract, engage, and retain clients. These agencies combine strategic planning, targeted outreach, and ongoing client engagement to ensure brokers can focus on building relationships while their marketing needs are professionally managed.
Marketing agencies offer essential services, including:
- Strategic Planning and Branding: Agencies help brokers build a recognizable brand identity and craft a marketing plan tailored to reach their target audience effectively.
- Content Development and Digital Outreach: They create custom content for websites, blogs, social media, and emails, designed to educate potential clients and highlight the value of different insurance plans.
- Lead Generation and CRM Support: By implementing lead generation campaigns and client relationship management (CRM) systems, agencies help brokers maintain and nurture relationships with prospective and existing clients.
Here are a few marketing agencies or support options:
- Engage a marketing services partner like Agency Revolution or Media Logic. These firms (and others) offer marketing solutions for independent insurance agencies and brokers. Services include strategic planning, branding, direct marketing, and sales support such as websites and custom content development, audience segmentation, lead generation, emails, videos, and social media. Costs vary based on the extent of services provided and can run into hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
- A second option is an insurance-focused, third-party firm. One such company is Quotit, which offers brokers an insurance quoting, enrolling, and lead management solution. Quotit says its platform delivers solutions to transform your customers’ experience with convenience, personalization, and automation. Quotit includes health plan data access, a professional quote engine, a compare and enroll feature, client-driven shopping, end-to-end customer relationship management (CRM), and streamlined enrollment capabilities. For independent insurance agents, Quotit pricing starts at $99 a month, with standard and premium options at $149 and $199 per month, respectively. There’s also a one-time activation fee of $150. Agency packages start at $199 per month and top-out at $459 per month. These accounts require a $300 set-up fee. Quotit competitors include Flexible Benefit Service Corporation, Sunfire, WiredQuote, and W3LL, among others.
- Another option is to align yourself with a Field Marketing Organization (FMO). An FMO provides insurance brokers with support and connects them with a roster of insurance carriers – offering a range of products and services. Some FMOs even offer training and education, certification assistance, marketing expertise, and other services. A 2024 article published by PeopleKeep features an overview of FMOs and the role they can play for insurance professionals. Most FMOs do not charge brokers for their services. That’s because the FMO shares in the commission paid by carriers.
- A fourth option is to partner with a General Agency (GA), like Word & Brown. You’ll able to remain independent and earn full commissions, but you gain many advantages with a GA. These include insurance company appointment support; a broader portfolio of products and services; sales and marketing assistance on new business and renewals; underwriting assistance; quote engine access and quoting support (you can run and customize your own quotes or we’ll do it for you); access to additional broker technology (like provider and Rx searches); and product, service, compliance, and Continuing Education training.
How Word & Brown Supports Brokers in Health Insurance Marketing
It is important to note, though, that not all general agencies are the same. Word & Brown really stands out from others – and we’ve been known for our “Service of Unequalled Excellence” for nearly 40 years. With us, you get access to a diverse roster of products and services, quotes with highlighted plan differences, built-in safeguards to ensure accuracy, a single-page overview to simplify plan choice, the ability to generate quotes in 30+ layout choices, and more. We also make it easy to access the forms and marketing materials you need – ours and our carrier partners’ – directly in our online Insurance Forms Library, available 24/7/365.
The choice is yours. You may prefer to go it alone or to partner with others to get the marketing and additional support that could benefit you – and those you serve. To learn more about how Word & Brown can elevate your business, call us at 800-869-6989, or complete our online form.
