It may come as a surprise hearing this from someone who runs an inbound marketing agency, but it's unlikely that insurance agencies can hit their growth targets with inbound marketing alone. On the other hand, it's increasingly difficult for insurance agencies to hit their numbers without inbound marketing. When done properly, inbound marketing should supplement your other sales activities to create synergies that help you hit your sales goals.

Inbound marketing is a series of tactics that combine to draw potential buyers to your website, convert strangers to sales leads and create opportunities for producers to close deals. The data-driven nature of inbound marketing lets you measure your activity to optimize results. Blogging, search engine optimization and social media create website traffic. Premium content like eBooks and webinars convert website visitors to sales leads. Email marketing and marketing automation move leads through the sales funnel to create opportunities for your producers to close deals. Marketing analytics tells you what's working and what isn't so you can focus your resources on tactics that produce results.

Insurance agencies, like other professional services businesses, are naturals for an inbound approach. Business insurance and employee benefits are complicated services that every business needs. Buyers look for answers to their questions on the web and social media - savvy agencies get found when potential buyers search for information. That's why I say that it's increasingly difficult to hit your numbers without inbound marketing - if buyers don't find you when they look for information, it's unlikely that you'll make their short list when they narrow down purchase options.

Here are some tips on how to use inbound marketing in your insurance agency.

Use paid advertising to accelerate results

It takes time for inbound marketing to produce results. You need to develop domain authority, social media reach and to create enough content to show Google that you're an expert in your industry before you will produce business results organically. I have yet to find a business owner or executive that's content to wait around for inbound marketing to produce results organically. So how can you generate leads quickly? Let's first take a look at the inbound marketing lead generation process:

To generate leads, you need to drive potential buyers to a landing page where they complete a form with contact and other information to access your eBook, webinar or whitepaper. In a mature inbound marketing environment, a buyer will land on one of your blog articles as a result of a search eninge query or social media referral. They will then click through to a landing page to get more information from a premium content offer. They become a lead when they complete the form to access the content offer.

Paid social media advertising jumpstarts the lead generation process. For insurance agencies, this usually means paid LinkedIn advertising. Create an attractive promotional graphic that links to your landing page and and publish it in a LinkedIn update. Use LinkedIn's sponsored update feature to get your promotion in front of your target audience. LinkedIn let's you define your advertising audience by industry, job function, job title, geography and seniority level. If you want to limit your advertising to C-suite executives in the technology industry in the Birmingham, AL metropolitan area, you can do so.

To paraphrase HubSpot's Dharmesh Shah, paid advertising is like renting an audience. The minute you stop paying rent, your audience goes away. A well-written piece of content that resonates with your target buyers will produce traffic to your website for years. The blog article that consistently drives the most traffic to my site was written in June, 2013.

Use your website and marketing content to support your producers' outbound sales activity

Your producers are out in the marketplace making things happen, right? If they aren't, you have a problem. Does your website and marketing content confirm the good impressions your producers make with prospect? I'm going to be honest with you - many agency websites suck.

Picture this scenario: a producer meets with a CFO and has a great conversation. The CFO has a need and your agency can help him solve his problem. Your producer leaves his office and he checks out your website. Yikes!  The CFO sees a website that looks like it was pulled out of a time capsule from 1992. He throws your producers card in the wastebasket and looks for someone else to implement your producer's ideas.

The impression your website makes can be the difference between your producer moving forward with the opportunity or not. A great website can make a small business look bigger. A crappy website can make a business look small. It's up to you to decide how you want that scenario to play out.

Good marketing content can support producer sales outreach. Here's what I mean. Your producer has a conversation with an HR VP about cost management strategies to consider for her technology company. She follows up the conversation with an email that links to a blog article on your website talking about how your technology clients have managed costs. Your marketing content confirms the favorable impression your producer made and shows the HR VP that you've helped other companies with the same problems she faces.

Summary

Inbound marketing is an essential business tactic for the modern insurance agency. Marketing content that resonates with your target audience serves as a "free sample" of your expertise and draws leads into your marketing funnel. Done properly, it supports and magnifies your producers' outbound sales activity as well. If you're not using inbound marketing to drive business results, you can bet that your competition is.