Using Educational Videos to Boost Your Insurance Agency’s Success

Creating short videos that answer common insurance questions is one of the most effective ways to establish yourself and your agency as an expert and continually attract new prospects. Plus, as you gain traction over time, leads start coming in and the sales conversions can make a  meaningful reduction in your overall customer acquisition costs.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating and maximizing video in your insurance agency.

Identify the Insurance Questions Your Prospects Are Asking

Before creating any video, start with the writing down the questions your audience is already asking or searching for online. Your videos should address real concerns and provide direct answers and solutions.

• Medicare Topics: “What’s the difference between Medicare Advantage and Medicare Supplement?” or “How do I enroll in Medicare?”
• Insurance Basics: “What is burial insurance and how does it work?” or “Does my insurance policy include a gym membership?”
• Specific Scenarios: “What happens to my insurance plan if I move out of state?” or “How does hospital indemnity insurance work with Medicare plans?”
• Client Pain Points: Address frustrations or fears, such as “How do I avoid unexpected healthcare costs?”

A really easy way to search for these types of questions is using tools like Ubersuggest, Google’s keyword planner or paid services such as Ahrefs.

SMA Insider Tip: If your agency is already contracted with SMA, simply contact us here or send your account manager an email and ask our growth team to help you with this. 🙂

Insurance is Confusing, Keep It Simple

Remember, you speak fluent insurance, but your customer’s and prospects do not.

Insurance topics are overwhelming to most people. Your videos need to break down complex ideas into bite-sized, easy-to-understand explanations.

• Use Everyday Language: Avoid jargon. Instead of saying “annual out-of-pocket maximum,” try “the most you’ll have to pay in a calendar year.”
• Use Examples: Scenarios resonate with people, such as how a Medicare Advantage plan might cover for a hospital stay or ambulance ride, or urgent care visit on a weekend.
• Be Authentic: Speak directly to the camera in a conversational tone.  People want to do business with those they can trust, so it’s important you are authentic in order to build real connections with your prospects.

Simplicity will always make your content approachable and build trust with your target audience.

Plan Your Insurance Videos Ahead of Time

Don’t let “planning” scare you.  Planning can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it.

While it’s tempting to jump straight into filming, a little bit of planning will go a long way in creating effective videos that convert to leads and sales.

• Create an Editorial Calendar: Consistency is king with video.  If you’re going to be consistent, then you need to plan out your topics by creating an editorial calendar.  This will allow you to structure your video frequency, content topics as well as seasonal topics and opportunities when to loop back to old topics is necessary.
• You Always Need a Hook: Hooks are designed to grab attention in the first few seconds by addressing a pain point or posing a question: “Have your recent hospital stay costs shocked you too? Let me break it down for you in 2 minutes or less.”
• Structure Your Content: Introduce the topic, explain it, and summarize key points and solution at the end.
• Always Include a Call-to-Action (CTA): This is an easy mistake to make.  You must always encourage viewers to take a next step, such as visiting your website for more information, call your agents today, schedule a consultation, or follow your social media channels.  You have to pick some type of measurable call to action.

Your first video is going to feel terrible, but that’s okay.  Even after practicing a few times, it’s going to take a few episodes to work the jitters out to the point you feel natural and fully confident.

Based on the complexity of the topic, you should choose a day to batch create videos so you can get them scheduled to post and not always feel pressured by having to do each video at the scheduled frequency.  I would add this to your agency’s annual end-of-year planning exercise.

Get the Right Tools for Video

You don’t need a pro film crew, but investing a little bit in the right tools for the job will make a big difference.

• Microphone: If you don’t buy anything else, you need to buy this. Invest in a clip-on or USB microphone for clear sound. You can spend more for wireless model or get one with a long wire that plugs directly into your phone and just hide the wire in your shirt.
• Camera: Use your phone and turn it sideways, it will work great, I promise. There is no need to buy a fancy camera when you’re first starting.
• Lighting: When possible use natural light.  If not, there are affordable ring lights that do a great job and keep shadows to a minimum.
• Editing Software: I’m a big fan of IMovie because it’s intuitive and readily available on iPhone.  You can easily clip, split, overlay text, add titles, insert additional images and adjust sound levels. Otherwise, your computer likely has a native video editor that will work.

Branded intros and outros add a professional touch and reinforce your agency’s name and logo which helps with building familiarity, a stepping stone to trust.  An easy way to get this completed is finding a freelancer online to help you put it together.

Post on Multiple Platforms

Creating your video is only half the battle, now you have to distribute it effectively to ensure you reach your target audience. Here are 5 easy steps to posting on multiple platforms.

1. Pick Your Primary Channel: Youtube is probably the best place to start as it’s the second largest search engine to google. Create your channel and post your video there first.
2. Your Website: Embed your videos on the relevant topic pages, such as FAQs or blog posts. You can easily add content to set up the video when it’s embedded into your page to supplement the topic of the page.
3. Social Media: Add to your agency’s social channels (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn).  If the videos are particularly short, you can add them as reels as well as posts.
4. Email Campaigns: Include links back to your primary channel (YouTube) in newsletters or client updates to add value and keep your audience engaged as well as continually driving channel subscriptions.
5. Google Business Profile: Upload your videos to your Google Business Profile.  This is one of the most underutilized social channels and in many cases has the biggest opportunities for visibility and lead generation.

Lastly, optimize video titles and descriptions with relevant keywords, such as “Medicare Advantage explained” or “How to enroll in Medicare in [City].” If you need help with keyword research and are already contracted with SMA, contact us here on the website or send your account manager an email and we can help.

Let Analytics Drive Your Decisions

Over time you will capture critical engagement data that will serve as the foundation for how your videos evolve.

• Engagement Metrics: Specifically for social channels, monitoring views, likes, shares, and comments will tell you which topics are most important to your audience. On your website you’ll want to track traffic, click through rates and bounce rate to understand if your video titles are driving click throughs and how long they are spending on your page. If they drop off early, consider shortening your videos or getting to the main point faster.
• Conversion Rates: Measure how many viewers take action after watching. Depending on your video you can measure web traffic, completed forms or appointments set, link clicks or even downloads if you’re offering helpful checklists or guides.

This is going to take some level of experimentation to find what works best for your audience. Start by checking your analytics monthly if you’re just doing organic (non-paid) traffic.  If you are running ads to your videos, then you need to be monitoring daily.

Conclusion:

One of the best pieces of advice I have ever been given in the insurance business when launching new strategies was “put the boat in the water”.  Don’t over complicate getting started, just get started and then you can figure out the next step.

Educational videos are more than just a marketing tool, they’re an opportunity to showcase your expertise, build trust, and strengthen your agency’s brand.

By answering common questions in simple terms and respecting your prospect’s needs, you’ll position yourself as the go-to insurance resource for your community.

Start small, refine your process, and STAY CONSISTENT.