The Insurance Buzz
The Insurance Buzz shares top tips for Insurance Agents on how to maximize their entrepreneurial journey. Sales training tips, mindset, and motivation and learn from some of the best in the industry and experts in the field as they share what they have done to be successful as an Insurance Agent.
The Insurance Buzz
482. Marketing Part 1: Stop Creating Content, Start Marketing That Actually Converts
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What's in this episode:
Most insurance agents are creating content, not marketing, and it is costing them business. In this episode, Michael and Courtney Weaver break down the critical difference between chasing likes and views versus building a marketing strategy that actually drives revenue for an insurance agency. Courtney, who has led marketing and branding for Team Weaver for over 12 years, explains why vanity metrics like virality and engagement mean nothing if they don't convert into real, paying customers.
Listeners learn how to start with the end in mind by defining a clear call to action, identify their ideal customer by product, age, and platform, and write copy that speaks to one person instead of a crowd. This is part one of a two-part marketing series, with part two diving into buyer psychology and message-specific copywriting.
[00:00] Stop creating content, start marketing that converts
[01:00] Courtney's 12 years as Team Weaver's chief content officer
[02:00] The cold call disaster that started Courtney's marketing career
[04:00] From a top 32 agency to a 7-figure Agency Coach AI
[06:00] Vanity metrics vs revenue: the difference that matters
[07:00] Marketing starts with the end in mind
[08:00] Your CRM email list is a marketing asset you already own
[09:00] Why this is a two-part episode on marketing
[10:00] The gas pump video that went viral but sold nothing
[12:00] Content for ego vs content for your ideal customer
[14:00] How to define your ideal customer in three questions
[16:00] Choosing platforms: why Facebook and Instagram win
[18:00] Building one post: hook, pain point, call to action
[19:00] The copywriting rule: always say "you," never "you guys"
[20:00] Ditch insurance jargon: say "car insurance," not "auto"
[21:00] Why pain plus ease makes a DM strategy actually work
[22:00] Consistency: run it for 90 days before you judge it
[23:00] The price of embarrassment and climbing Cringe Mountain
[25:00] Building a personal brand inside compliance limits
[26:00] Marketing vs virality: the real point of this episode
[27:00] Why your personal brand outlives any one job or carrier
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If I measured success based on vanity numbers, vanity numbers in social media or in emails or or anything where you can track data would be likes, virality, um, your peers commenting on that. Anything that doesn't equate to revenue is just for your ego, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_00Hey, welcome to the insurance buzz. We are your host, Michael and Courtney Weaver, and today we're going to be talking about stop creating content, start marketing so that you can drive more ideal customers. Your way, that is what the episode is today about.
SPEAKER_01We are getting into it.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, marketing baby. And this is your baby. This is my baby. This is her baby. For those of you who do not know this, uh Courtney is the queen of marketing. She has been our marketing, honestly, department executive leader from the beginning. 2014, when we started agency, we had no money. I tried to stick her on cold call. She may share the story, she may not. I have no idea.
SPEAKER_01Hold on, let's back up. All right. So I if I had to create a CEO role for me, it would be chief content officer. And it has been that for a really, really long time. I'm in charge of uh all of marketing at all things teamweaver. So if you have seen a piece of content, an email, a text message, I have watched all of that come across my desk for 12 years now. So everything that I'm going to break down from a marketing perspective is coming from lived experience. And this is not the direction that I saw myself going 12 years ago when we opened our Scratch Insurance Agency. Actually, I remember the interview. We had this panel of people, and Michael and I are in there, and we're trying to get a job as insurance agents, and we're going to do the thing. And they asked us for our marketing plan. And I said, I will wear a t-shirt and I will run around town if that's what it takes. And then I had to put my money where my mouth was because the story that Michael was getting ready to share was he was a big fan of cold calls. And so when we started, he handed me a list and it had about 50 names on it. And I got about 10 names into it. And I thought, this absolutely sucks. I am not this kind of girl. I'm going to come up with a different way to bring in business. And it's not going to be this. And so I committed to learning, obsessing over, really diving into all things marketing, which led me to building personal brands for us, but also building a brand for our insurance agency at the time. So fast forward, it wound up becoming just it's it numbers and data and psychology all blended together. We wound up becoming a top insurance agency out of 20,000. I went on to start a personal fitness business that was all online, completely organic. I grew it to six figures in less than six months. Then we started an SEO business. Then we started Weaver Cells Academy was born. Then I went into network marketing in a beauty industry, became in the top out of 18,000 there. Then we started the insurance bud buzz podcast, became the number two insurance podcast. Thank you for listening. We appreciate you so freaking much. And now with agency coach AI, which has grown to a seven-figure business in less than 10 months. So where Okay, hold up.
SPEAKER_00I'm gonna brag on her for just one second because she's not bragging enough. So the insurance office, we were number 32 out of 20,000 insurance professionals, and we were spending not very much money on marketing at all. It was all from cold calling and social media and marketing driven from her. She grew her personal training business to over a six-figure income. In less than six months of starting that, she joined a multi-level marketing company where she was number 14 out of 40,000 individuals within that company, and she accomplished that within the first 12 months. Weaver Sales Academy, we built to over a seven-figure business in two years. Agency Coach AI, we've built over a seven-figure business in less than 10 months. And this is all from the marketing and branding that she has learned along the way through life lessons. So while she may not have a marketing degree, she has over 12 years of experience. We've invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in investments for her to learn from courses to masterminds to some of the most well-known marketing gurus in the country, in the world, she has actually been able to talk to, learn from, have relationships with, and then obviously all of the data throughout over the last 12 years of what worked, what hasn't worked, helping business owners just like yourself do the exact same thing. So while you may not want to actually give those numbers, I will because she is an absolute crusher at what she does. She's a monster in the marketing space. She, I would put her toe-to-toe with the best of the best marketing so-called gurus out there and executives out there. And so if you are going to tune into this episode right now, get locked in, get a pen and paper. Your pen is probably going to be smoking at the end of this. This is the one thing every agent always wants more lead generation, more leads coming into the bus this business, but not just more leads, more quality leads, the type of leads that want to work with you. And that's exactly what we're going to be sharing or what she's going to be sharing. There is no we. She is the marketing uh expert in this business relationship. This is not mine. I'm just here for fun to ask questions and to learn along the way. You're probably going to be you're going to see my pen smoking at the same time because every time she talks, I learn something new from her when it's uh around marketing. And so I'm going to tee you up because you're really, really great at what you do. And so now let's let's get into it a little bit.
SPEAKER_01So at the beginning I said that I would be the chief content officer. And I'm going to pivot just a little bit and tell you that as an insurance agent, one of the things that I see done wrong consistently is that right there when it comes to content. So you actually are not creating content. That is not what we are going to be doing today. Today, you are going to learn marketing so that you bring in business to your insurance agency. And it's very, very important that we start and we separate those two very quickly. Because if I measured success based on vanity numbers, vanity numbers in social media or in emails or or anything where you can track data would be likes, virality, um, your peers commenting on that. Anything that doesn't equate to revenue is just for your ego, unfortunately. So I want to I want to separate those right off the bat because if you are marketing is always starting with the end in mind. So whatever your objective is, you optimize for that. Okay. So a prime example would be one of the things that we optimize for and that I'm very proud of, is that we have an email list of over a hundred thousand email prof or insurance professionals. So I have optimized as that as my objective over and over and over again. It's very easy to get distracted when you are on your phone because you are being targeted all the time on all of these quick hit courses and tips and hacks of hooks and calls to action. And you need this editor and you need this backdrop and you need these words and you need this font, and you need these colors, and that becomes very overwhelming. And that's the thing that I don't want to talk about today because that's not what you're focused on. As an insurance agent, whether you're a producer, you're in the sales role, whether you're a CSR, you're a manager, or you're just building your brand because you have other businesses outside of that, you are looking at this as part of your marketing plan. What you are looking at is how do I bring business in? So that's tip number one. Marketing always starts with the end in mind.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Whatever our objective is.
SPEAKER_00Can I add something just real fast? Yes. So some of you right now might be saying, Well, a hundred thousand insurance professionals on your email list, that's great. I don't have an email list. Yes, you do. Yes, you do. Think about the list of prospects and current customers that you have in your CRM. That email list is right there for you for you to do something with of individuals that said they were interested in potentially working with you. You have their emails, you have them in your system. Now they're more than likely stuck on like an automated generic email campaign that you probably need to go, actually, not probably, I'm gonna eliminate that, that you need to go in and you need to edit and make it more specific to that person from the lead that they came in, whether they were auto lead, home lead, whatever, but you do have email list and you own that list, you own that person where social media you're renting people. But I just wanted to clarify that real fast. Um, and I'm gonna ask you a question.
SPEAKER_01Before you get to that, I'm gonna do a two-part episode. So, this one, I'm not gonna break down messaging, but I will do another episode. It's gonna come right after this one. Ooh, where I will actually you're talking about how to create copy and content for that specific buyer. What I'm gonna do is actually break down like different types of buyers and the messaging and the psychology and the words that you need to use. Okay. I'll do that in the second episode. Right now I want to stick with like do's and don'ts of marketing to get it set up to we can to where we can really just start dialing in on who we're speaking to.
SPEAKER_00Perfect. Okay. Um let me ask you a question An agent posts a video at a gas pump.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Six dollar gas. Okay, goes viral. Okay, three million views.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Or they post an insurance-specific product topic on social media that gets maybe 250 likes, but they have one person out of those 250 that reaches out to them for a quote. Which one, if you're the agency owner, which which one are you focused more on?
SPEAKER_01I have never been able to pay my mortgage on views.
SPEAKER_00Mmm.
SPEAKER_01I haven't. Not once. I've had videos. I have had videos go viral. I mean, we just had one go viral. It has, I think, almost 11 million views, and it's you shoveling snow, and it's talking about um we're having like a marriage, like I cannot emphasize this enough. Don't marry the bad boy, marry the guy that shovels the neighbor's driveway, right? Has nothing to do with our deal, our deal customer. I was just doing it for fun, wound up going viral. Did that create any business for us?
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_01None that I tracked. I didn't optimize for it. I didn't have any kind of back-end tracking, I didn't have any kind of call to action, I didn't have a funnel into where they were going. So no.
SPEAKER_00So this is okay. So, and the reason why I asked that question is because that's what I view, and I don't know if this is the right view, the difference between just putting content out there and putting um targeted marketing out there towards your customers. And there's so many, um, and look, guys, I know it's really confusing because you have a lot of so-called gurus out there and even peers that are doing really well. They're like, oh man, I got all these views on this video. Well, shit, that didn't equate to any business. I don't care. And so um, that's why I asked that question because there's just so many different takes on this. And through working with you over the 12 year over the last 12 years, I've learned that it's not about um going viral, it's about talking to your to your ideal customer in a way that's going to actually have them engage with you. And I know you're gonna get into it sounds like the messaging in part two, which I'm very excited about. But let's get it back into um because I'm I'm probably throwing us off topic.
SPEAKER_01You're not throwing us off topic. I and I think that's an important thing because um I I will say too, it's easy to get caught up in likes and views and to start second guessing your content or trying to tweak a bunch of things, but I want you to imagine that you're in like a high school gymnasium and you have the opportunity to speak to a hundred of your perfect customers. And we'll get into like who your perfect customer is. Or you're in Madison Square Garden and you have 40,000 people who cannot buy your product. You have to remember that the why you're doing this thing, the why you are taking the time, the effort, the energy, you're learning all this stuff is to grow your business. And you can do that in a lot of really, really fun ways. But I think starting with the end in mind of what is the action that I am trying to get the person to do. Okay. And I think this is huge because the first thing I said is we're trying to create content for virality that doesn't that that's not our objective. That's the first thing I see wrong. Second thing I see wrong is you're creating content for either your own ego or your peers.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So again, if we're trying to move our customer through this process, where does your customer fit in in that?
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So when I say start with the end in mind, here's what I mean. Are we trying to get them to book a call, fill out a quote form, send us a DM, visit our website, apply for our job? Are we trying to get them to come to our event? What are we trying, what is the action that we want them to take? That's the first thing before you even create anything. That's the question that you're asking yourself right now. And if I had to guess, most of you are focused on bringing in new business or creating awareness so that you have more retention. Those are usually the two things that we are focused on. So start with those as your call to action. That's what you're gonna start with the end. What am I trying to get them to do?
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SPEAKER_01Okay. So then you're going to back up and you're going to say, How do I get them to do this thing? Right? So when you think about who it's for, I want you to check again, is this about my ego or is this for my peers or is this for my ideal customer? And before I do like a deep dive, let's just do like a high-level overview of who your ideal customer is. Who you like working with, the products that you can actually sell, people that can actually buy them. That's an easy, easy place to start. Now, part two, I will get into the actual words that they use, how you how you source information, how you create campaigns around that. But that's where I would start. What product do you sell?
SPEAKER_00Yep. Who you like to work with, what products, and people that actually buy.
SPEAKER_01Yep. So when you think about that, let's just go for let's go um book a call. You're trying to get them to have a call with you. Give me a product that you're trying to sell.
SPEAKER_00Um, let's do auto insurance.
SPEAKER_01Auto insurance, okay. And then who are we trying to sell to?
SPEAKER_00Um, let's do a uh I'm gonna go for who was my target market back then. So that would have been an auto, somebody owned a car and a house that had kids, and so that's who I'm gonna want to talk to.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so you own a car, house, have kids, and you're trying to sell them auto insurance?
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so uh, do you have an age group?
SPEAKER_00Uh ideally in that age group I would have targeted 25 to 40.
SPEAKER_01Okay, and what are the primary social media platforms that you hang out on?
SPEAKER_00Um, I found that Facebook was where most of my prospects hung out that I wanted to work with. So I would have done either Facebook. I I still would do Facebook. Um yeah, that's where I personally.
SPEAKER_01Okay. I think Facebook and Instagram are probably your number one and number two when it comes to getting business. Um, I think LinkedIn is a great way to network for sure. Um to where you can start building centers of influence. And I think LinkedIn is a great place to um you could do some fun things around recruiting that could also become your customers there. That's a that's a good thing. So when you're looking at Facebook and Instagram, that tells you what kind of content that you can create. So right now, everyone listening to this episode could create one piece of content. It can literally just be your face, it could be your professional picture, it can be a logo. It doesn't matter any of that. The thing that you have to remember is what am I trying to get them to do? You want to be able to answer this question. This is for this person experiencing this product, and they should be doing this action. Okay. So this is for a 30-year-old woman who wants to buy auto insurance for her family because her rates are too high, and I want her to take this action of send me a DM.
SPEAKER_02For sure.
SPEAKER_01That's where we're starting.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01So everything stems from that.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So if you had those three objectives of like, okay, this is my person, I'm going on this platform, and I want them to book a call. What do you think your next step would be?
SPEAKER_00Um, if I knew that, then I would create um probably some type of post or marketing material to try and talk to that person's pain point or would attract that person to actually like give me five seconds of their time.
SPEAKER_01Okay. How would you do that? A video? A post?
SPEAKER_00Um, I personally would probably do a it's hard. It's okay. Based off of what I know now today. Yeah. Um, based off of what I know now today, I would have an attention, I would make a static post.
SPEAKER_01Um I would create Static post means that there's no movement. There's no it's not a video, it's not a roof.
SPEAKER_00So I would create a graphic uh and I would have an attention grabber from the very get-go. Like I would almost say, Um, are you with are you 30 years old or whatever I want to whoever I'm trying to target, I would have like an attention grabber and all caps, and then I would have like a two to three sentence thing that would talk something about their pain points, and the graphic would be devoted towards that person that I was trying to market or get to click on, and I would have a call to action that would say, Hey, click here for an easy two-minute conversation to see if I can help you out today.
SPEAKER_01Okay, I'm gonna give you one assignment, and then um we can kind of that may or may not be right.
SPEAKER_00You're the one that does all this.
SPEAKER_01I'm just on that I I love this. So I'm gonna give you a tip. Um, if you want to speak to somebody on social media, use the word you. Singular you.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01So it's not you guys, hey friends, I know some people, it is you. We do not we do not scroll on our phones in a community. We scroll on the toilet by ourselves in bed, one at a time. We are all looking at our phones as individuals. So when you create content, it always is you. I am talking to you. So you could say you know, if you are a 30-year-old woman or whatever like this, how I would say this is I would position it as the pain first. And I would say, you pay too much for your auto insurance.
SPEAKER_00Now you guys see why she's the expert here?
SPEAKER_01I would call call out the pain point right away. Now, I said something there that don't do. Okay, what did I say? I said you pay too much for your auto insurance. Does the customer refer to it as auto insurance?
SPEAKER_00Car insurance.
SPEAKER_01They call it car insurance. That's the second thing that you have to remember. So call it out. The person that we're trying to really work with, the the next thing that I see done wrong in insurance is we use insurance terms. We use things like auto insurance, legacy planning. The normal person on the street does not know what that means. Okay, that makes sense. So I would say, if I'm creating this, you pay too much for your car insurance, and I know a better way. Give me 15 seconds of your time. Give me 30 seconds of your time, and let's see if you're paying too much for your auto insurance.
SPEAKER_02Boom.
SPEAKER_01Send me a DM. That can literally just be a selfie. Post a picture, get it done.
SPEAKER_00I hope that one of you right now do this today. I hope you do this right now today. What she just said, I guarantee, I guarantee that will create some type of engagement. One person will reach out to you and be like, what are you talking about?
SPEAKER_01Okay, so it works.
SPEAKER_00There's a few reasons why I'm pumped from I'm pumped for session two already.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna start teaching you how to pull levers. Okay. So it works for a couple different reasons. Number one, it it's a call out, because I'm saying you are paying too much for car insurance. Okay. So I'm calling out a pain that they're already experienced. So I've pulled the first lever, which is pain. Then I've said, hey, give me 30 seconds of your time. Cool. So I've made it really easy. So I've pulled the ease lever. So I've called out pain and I've called out ease. And then I'm making it even easier of like, shoot me a DM. I'm not pulling them off of the app that they're already on.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna keep them right there. Now, this is something to where if you don't have the time or the back-end support to be able to do this, maybe that's not your move. Long term. But here's the thing about content. This is this is where I really want you to double down before we get into all the fun and fancy tricks. Social media, marketing, branding, advertising is all about consistency. It is a consistent message over time. Most importantly, you, the person putting out content, has to continue to put things out. I am telling you right now, if you run a campaign for 90 days, you will absolutely see what works and what doesn't. You can say the same message over and over and over every single day, and that will give you more insight than anything else will. The second thing that happens with that, that a lot of us struggle with when it comes to putting out content is we're not confident about it. We are afraid of looking dumb. And I have said this a million times on this podcast, but the price of embarrassment is really what it costs to have success in business. You have to be willing to be cringe. You have to be willing to put yourself out there. If you do not tell people what you do and how to work with you, they will not buy. But here's the thing I have never ever met somebody who is criticizing me that's doing better than myself. Nobody that criticizes you is doing better than you are. If somebody is criticizing you for putting yourself out there, it's coming from their own place of insecurity. That's right. And that's where I really want to establish this because before I start getting into psychology and messaging and how to hit on different levers of like urgency and pain, you have to understand that what is required here is for you to consistently show up and put your brand out there. I will teach you what your brand can be. You will self-discover with all of these questions. I'm going to ask you some questions that you've never been asked about your brand. But the biggest thing is you could have the most beautiful marketing plan, but if it's just sitting in a file on your computer, it's never going to work. Like you have to be willing to put yourself out there. So marketing step one is you have to remember that this is one big giant science experiment. And we're going to practice different things. There have been things that have flopped majorly for us. I learned so much on those things. I learned so much about offers and timing and captions and subject lines and ideal customers and don't say this word and say this word. So that's the biggest thing is to remember that it is all about consistency and being able to climb cringe mountain. And it does not matter if you're captive, if you're independent, whatever limitation that you have on compliance or branding or logo or guideline or all of that, none of that matters. That's just your constraint. And within those constraints, you can build a personal brand that has nothing to do with the colors of your logo, compliance. It's literally about who you are, what you're passionate about, and why you want to work with certain people. That's what your brand is. And we will absolutely get into that. But I first wanted to establish we are not trying to go viral. We are not doing this for likes. We are creating content that converts into real customers and dollars.
SPEAKER_00Real revenue, baby.
SPEAKER_01Real revenue. So I would love to know like your biggest takeaway from just this pre-quall of like, okay, we're feeling good about marketing. That's really what we're gonna dive into is the how of it, but right now it's really about the why. Marketing and going viral are two different things.
SPEAKER_00And I'm glad that you hit on that in this first session because it's you can go viral and it just uh it doesn't make any sense to me. Like I want to talk to the individuals that I want to work with. I don't want to talk to people seven states over that I unless it's just for fun and things like that. And then you just have to make um you just have to understand that from a marketing perspective. But you hit on a couple really good things here, and the one thing that you hit on, I wrote a whole page of notes, but consistency. It's just like everything in life, everything in business is it comes down to discipline, it comes back to consistency and the importance of building a brand and just not building your company's brand because that's uh like building your own personal brand that is relatable to the individuals that you want to attract and and work with and becoming that known brand within your community or surrounding communities.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, building your own personal brand is something that will be vital as we continue to move forward because it gives you different skill sets, but it also gives you the option to do other things. And as we continue to evolve in the insurance industry, you might want to be known for a certain product or you might jump ship and go to a different carrier or whatever that looks like. But you, as your personal brand, will always follow you around. And whether or not you are actively building it, you have a brand right now. There is something that is being said about you when your name and your agency is being brought up. What we're gonna do in the next one is really craft that message so you're telling it over and over and over again so that when they speak about you, they have their thing that you have said over and over so they already know what to say. So you know what your brand is being put out into the world without you even having to be there.
SPEAKER_00Fantastic. I'm I'm ready for episode number two. So uh as always, we appreciate you all. If you do work up the courage to make the post where you're like, you are paying too much insurance, DM me below. All I need is 15 seconds of your time. Make sure you let us know the outcome of that. Text us 816-727-76. Other than that, I hope you're as excited about episode two as I am. So I will see you, or we will see you on the next episode. As always, time and attention are by far your most important asset. Go out, crush today. We appreciate you. See you soon.