To Brand or Not To Brand: That Is the Marketing Question

If someone in your town hears your name, do they instantly know what you do, or are you still the best-kept secret in your own market? We get blunt about the truth of insurance agent marketing: you are always branding, even when you think you are not. The only question is whether you are building your own visibility or accidentally building a carrier’s visibility with their logos on your slides, handouts, and giveaways. 

We walk through a practical branding strategy for insurance agents who do not have a massive budget. That includes how we think about promo items and office materials, why quality matters more than quantity, and why disposable items often fail as long-term brand marketing. We also dig into the “avatar” question: what would your Medicare, life insurance, long-term care, or P&C prospects actually keep and see again and again, and what will end up in the trash before your name sticks? 

Then we shift to the foundation of modern visibility: can people find you online. If someone types your name into Google, what shows up, and what does that signal about credibility, authority, and trust? We share why branding your name first can be the fastest path to recognition, and how to transition from a personal brand to a company brand as you grow a team and a clear reputation for solving specific problems. 

Subscribe for more real-world execution, share this with an agent who feels invisible, and leave a review so more insurance business owners can find the show. What are you known for in your community right now?

Transcript

Brand Or Not To Brand

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to the Invisible Agent Podcast, the show for insurance agents ready to go from unknown to unstoppable, where visibility, strategy, and real-world execution meet. Hosted by Dave Cheetham and Mike Sorensen.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Welcome to the Invisible Agent Podcast, where we help insurance agents going from unknown to unstoppable. I'm David Cheatham. I'm your host on this episode. Brand or not to brand, that is the question. So I have been talking to a lot of insurance agents, and I just wrote an article about this uh about uh a couple months ago, uh, maybe a couple, maybe a month ago, I'm not really positive, but hey, here's the deal. The article really asks this question. If I asked 100 people in your area your name, hey, do you know David Cheatham? And they say no, uh, there might be a question. If I ask individuals, hey, if you were going to go work for a X look for X type of insurance agent, Medicare insurance agent, a life insurance agent, a property casualty insurance agent, whatever that is, would your name come to the forefront? And a lot of times we find that most insurance agents are not even found or recognizable. They are completely unknown in their own market. So, how do you brand yourself? We want to talk about three areas, uh, but it kind of reminds me of a story in uh when I was writing business and I had all these companies coming to me and said, Hey, Dave, uh, we have all this material that you could use. And and believe, believe me, I I loved it, right? I didn't have to pay for these different things, uh, pens, uh, giveaways to whatever it was. And uh, and and I really, I really liked that. But what I also found is I would do these meetings and they would give me PowerPoints.

When Carriers Brand You Instead

SPEAKER_01 2:05

And the PowerPoints or whatever they gave me had what company logo, not mine, not me at all. And in fact, it even got worse because my name was even on some of that company logo. So, what did individuals associate it me with? That brand. And I don't care what the carrier is, when they when you're speaking in front of a PowerPoint, and or people are looking at a PowerPoint and seeing the material, whatever that material is, and their company's logo or that company's um you know handouts or whatever that is, you are branding that company. That's the reason they're willing to give the that information out, right? So, brand or not to brand, you're actually always branding. The question is, is who are you branding? And I hope that you are gonna be branding yourself, not somebody else. We're gonna talk about three things today. One is that we're gonna talk about the first one, is the budget. You don't have the budget to brand like these huge companies. Uh, so let's forget the insurance space. Let's think about other people that brand. If I give you a logo, do you usually know that company? A lot of people do, but at the same time, there are some logos that you don't know. Why? Because they are not marketing to you, they're marketing to somebody else. So that's a marketing distinction, not a branding distinction necessarily. However, the brand itself. So if if I say golden arches, you're gonna think McDonald's. If I say polar bear in the winter, many of you might think of a couple of different things, but I think of Coca-Cola, right? Uh because I was of the generation which had the Cola Coca-Cola um polar bear with the red scarf around it, right? That said Coke. Now, there's other companies that have used that as a mascot, right? If I say the Swish, you might think NAC and Nike. Um, there's different logos that people use for their brand. Well, guess what? They those companies have millions and millions of dollars to spend on branding that they can brand a slogan, a logo, or something like that. Most of us as insurance agents do not have that type of money, which is one of the reasons why it was so intriguing for me in the beginning to go buy items from or get items for free from the carriers. Um, I'm not going to name a carrier's name because I don't want to call any of them out, because they're doing things that they think are correct. And the reality is they want to brand them, right? That's the reason why a lot of the carriers that will give things to you at no cost. Um, I would go through Expos and there's a certain company that would give these little plush animal dolls, right? And those were great. I love them. Um, now the reality is that it says the company name on it. And uh we are they would be there. Some of them are in my office to this day. Why? Because I I think they're really cute, they're cool, but I don't hand those out, right? But it says the company name on it. If you go into my office, if you were ever in there, you'll see things with branding on it because there are things that I do, there's things that I like. So, but there's also things of mine in there, my company, right? Family Financial Solutions Group, we brand FFSG. So, what branding do people see with you? And I didn't have the money to go buy all these different things. So I'll tell you what, I purposely figured out things that my audience, my avatar would want and keep. Sometimes we would buy things not because we think about our audience, but sometimes we go, oh, I don't have the budget for that. I don't have a lot of money for that, right? So, first of all, before you buy something to give away one, please make sure it's quality. Um, you don't it represents you and your company. Uh, there's things that we've purchased that I'm not necessarily a fan of because of how it brands us. It brands us, but not the way I want it to be branded. Uh, and we didn't realize that when it

Budget Branding With Quality Giveaways

SPEAKER_01 6:05

came through. It was um, I'm not gonna say deceptive, but there were some questions on that. The second thing is like uh I'll give you an example, a pen, right? When I when we buy pens, I want the pen to be useful and able to be written. Pens are one of my one exception for a disposable good. I normally don't want items that people are gonna use and then throw them away. Um, back a couple of years ago, we had COVID and during the COVID era, we had all this hand sanitizer. I did not buy hand sanitizer with my logo on it. We just had hand sanitizer. Uh, and it was in our office. I didn't, we didn't have expo events or anything like that, but we had we had in our office. A lot of companies had hand sanitizer with their logo on it. Hey, uh no problem with that, just not something I am going to purchase because it's a disposable. Once it's out, you throw it away. So I always try to buy things that are not disposable. So it might cost a little bit more money. The second thing is you have to think about your avatar, the person that you're trying to reach and connect with, what would they keep? Not what I keep, but what would they keep? So you notice I wear glasses. Some of you can see this uh on the video that we do as well, right? But I wear glasses. So I I had people that were given those microcloths away, and I didn't buy those for the longest time. And a friend of mine said, you know, Dave, uh, you're not the only one that wears glasses. Other people wear glasses, sunglasses, and many, many people wear sunglasses. And those microcloths are great for them, but who are you trying to reach? Well, for a long time, I was trying to reach the population that was going on to Medicare. Um, and most of that population are older, and many of them wear what my we sometimes call cheaters, right? So they go to the store and they buy those, and some people have 20 of them around their house because they always get lost. I know this because I have family members. They they're where are my glasses? And I'm not talking about prescription glasses, I'm talking about those cheaters, right? So you'd be able to see closer or items clearer for you because a lot of times font is too small or whatever that is. So I say that is what item are you handing out and what would your consumer that you're trying to reach keep? If they don't want to keep it, it's gonna do you no good, right? So think about that. Uh other items that I never thought they were going to be that good um end up being good. Sometimes you have to test that. Uh, so there's other ways of testing that as a whole, but something that you really want to be paying attention to, right? So I really come down to um it's not just your logo or who you are, but if they hear your name, you probably don't have the budget to be able to show people your company name and they say Family Financial Solutions Group, David Cheatham. A lot of people don't do that. Now they do because my clients are I have I have a lot of clients, and they talk about that. They see my logo, they see my company name and all those things. In the very beginning, when I was branding myself, my branding was me, my face, who I was. It was about relationships. Why? It was cheaper and it was more meaningful. So here's the other thing brand your name in the beginning, not a company name. If you're smaller, that's what you need to do. The second thing, I see people that have uh they they actually work um and are with companies and they have to fly that banner. That's fine. But if you have your own office, I some of the companies I see, they have the company name and then the agent's name afterwards or the agent name before, usually not, it's usually afterwards. People know you by your name, not necessarily by the company. I don't want to brand the company name because then that is what they're gonna go to. Now, if it's my company, my personal company, which mine is, how many of them are gonna remember that name, right? So that's also a key on that. Um, they're not always gonna remember your name all the time, but if you're out in the community and you're at events and you're always doing things, brand your name. In the very beginning, when I had pens, my pen had my name and my website, right? My website had my logo and all these other things. Information that I would send out to people that asked for information absolutely had my logo and my company name on it. But in the beginning, it was all about relationships. I needed people to connect that, right? So I would joke around. I would joke around with my name, I would joke around and tell stories. I tried to make myself memorable in different ways and really make a connection and a memorable connection with people. So think about in the beginning when you're out there doing whatever you're doing, um, you're you're doing it by your name. Most people are gonna look up your name.

Know Your Avatar Before You Buy

SPEAKER_01 10:55

So if I do marketing today and we do marketing and we coach agents all the time on marketing, uh, if I typed in your name into Google um around your area, so would you come up? Right. And where do you come up? Are am I just on in your Chrome browser on Google? Am I on you know LinkedIn? Are you am I on Facebook? Am I on whatever areas that your name would show up? For a long time, my name would show up associated with the college I went to, because uh we would we would travel and and do and go to debate tournaments and things like that. And uh, and so I would type my name and for a long time that would show up. And my debate partner and I uh doing different things in the debate world uh when I was in college. After college, it still showed up, right? Because when I was in college, again, it's just when the internet was going. But years afterwards, 10 years out of college, if I would Google my name, uh, I would every once in a while I would show that. But I also had my name that was associated with other politicians, which I am not a politician, but they would be associated with politicians. So I had to still make myself memorable in what I was doing. Uh, luckily, there wasn't too many people with my name in Illinois where I was growing my market. But if I would go to the state where that legislator was, I might change it. So, what did I do? I put my name as what I like to be called by. So I didn't say David Cheatham, it was Dave Cheatham. My email is Dave, right? I I started branding myself as Dave and Dave Cheatham, right? I did that so that people would recognize who I was. And if they would type that in, they would have a better chance of finding me because it made a difference in what you were looking for, who people are looking for. Um, but so can people find you just by typing your name into a search engine? I hope they can. If not, you have to work on that too. And that's another thing we coach agents on on a regular basis because you have to be found. Now I call it that's the new brick and mortar, right? Um, not everyone's gonna buy online, but if they don't find you online, what kind of credibility do you have? Uh, what kind of expert, what kind of authority do you have? There's probably a question on that, right? So, so we have you probably don't have this huge budget, right? That you can buy all the types of things out there and you can't just put a logo and just splash your logo all over the place and they know who you are. That's not gonna most likely work. The other thing is, right? You who do they know your name and what you do? And then the last thing, it's really about your company, right? So everything you do is about your company. You create the standard for your company. Who are you? What does your company stand for? Uh, so I always say, if if they say, if they see Dave Cheatham, right? Uh, and that's not my company name, but if they say Dave Cheatham, they should see that I work with in certain areas, right? So um, infinite

Brand Your Name And Get Found

SPEAKER_01 13:55

banking concept, Medicare, long-term care, those are things that I I did for in the 20 plus years I've been doing this business. Those are the areas that I really focused in on. And specifically, I even was even more narrow than that. But if you talked about just insurance products, no, infinite banking concept is not an insurance product, it's a concept. But people have found me because they were interested in that concept. Uh, people have found me because they were interested in Medicare insurance. People found me because they had questions about long-term care or if a long-term care premium went up and that at times they would find me. What did my company stand for? Um, if you if you market for everything, you market nothing. It might sound odd. Um, I have found that you don't just have to be a one-trick pony. You don't have to just do one type of insurance. I'm not saying that. However, what I am saying is be known for something. Make your company known for some type of thing to solve a problem. And that's the point. And when you're marketing and branding yourself, you want to do that. So, again, if I'm gonna give hand handouts to people, we were just talking about this in uh and looking at what kind of handouts we want to give. Does that handout match who we are in some way or give a vision of what our company is about? And so uh there's certain things that we're looking to purchase that we haven't found yet. But when we find it, we're going to buy it and we're gonna put our logo on it and get it out there. Why? Because that is gonna brand a part of who we are and people we want people to find us. So when you think about your company, uh, you want to think about your company as a whole and you want to introduce your company and start phasing in your company, especially as you grow who your company is. So I'm gonna go back again when I just started in the business. I was marketing Dave Cheatham. That's what I was marketing, who I am. I was in the community, I was meeting people, centers of influence, whoever I could talk to. And if they said my name, my goal was that they would know what I did and the problems that I could solve. Not the insurance I was selling, but the problems that I could solve, right? That that's what I did for when I was doing branding. The second thing I did is then I made a transition. The transition was then to my company. And how do you do it? You introduce your company. Today, Family Financial Solutions Group isn't necessarily working with all new new clients. Matter of fact, we don't take new clients, we help we service our clients that we have because that's a commitment I made, and I love doing that. Um, many of my clients are are are friends of mine. They're they're just really good people, and I've gotten to know over the years since I've been doing this a while, and I will always service them. I love doing it. But our our what we do now is we truly help agents going from unknown to unstoppable and growing an insurance business. That is what we're known for. That is what we do. Uh, and in that, what our website does talks about that. And and that is the key in everything that we're doing today. So now it's not branding Dave Cheatham because I don't want to be the attractive character to my business because I have a staff. My staff, we do it.

Shift From Personal Brand To Company

SPEAKER_01 17:05

It's us. I run the ship, you know, because I'm the owner, I'm the president. However, our staff does a lot of things. Our director of growth and business development, they're out there helping people build their business. They're doing some of the training, they're answering phone calls, they're out there doing those things. Yes, I'm at some of the expos. I'm out there talking on stages and things like that. I'm not saying I'm not, but my staff is as well. We also have another staff that's helps with the marketing, right? They do some of the marketing, they hit come up with some of the marketing strategies. We have an insurance business growth sherpa. Well, by the way, I named that person because I don't like sales support because there's so much more than sales support, right? They're there to guide people and helping them grow their business because we partner with people to grow their business. Why do we do that? Because I that's what I wanted when I was getting going. And even today, I go to people that can help level me up, not keep me down. So we purposely are always doing things. And so people know that in the industry, people that have talked to me for over the years. What do we do? I spend money to keep learning. I am in mastermind groups, I'm in with people that are very successful, not just in the insurance business, but outside the insurance business. I want to learn from great people how they do marketing, how they run businesses, things that they are running into that we also run into in the insurance business. I spend that money. And then things that are transferable to the insurance business as a whole, I also help teach that. We coach those things, right? Those are all things that are important for what we do because it's it's giving back to the community, giving back to the one of the greatest industries, in my opinion, because we get to help people. We make impact in people's lives. So today, Family Financial Solutions Group is all about helping insurance agents grow their business. And your business should be, your goal should be to make an impact in your community by helping the beneficiaries or the clients that you serve. And in return, you're going to make an impact in your community. When you make an impact in your community, your name is gonna be now known. Your company name is now gonna be known because it's not just Dave Cheatham, it's Dave Cheatham with Family Financial Solutions Group, right? Family Financial Solutions Group, President Dave Cheatham, or whatever that is. All of a sudden, when you start making an impact in your community, you will become known. And by the way, that doesn't mean you have to have thousands of clients to do that. You can make an impact in your community with very few clients because it's not about your clients, it's who you are. So to wrap things up, right? You're always branding something or somebody. The question, are you branding you or are you branding another company altogether? That's number one. Number two, look at where you should be spending your money on branding. Don't go overboard, but look where you're spending the money. Don't spend money that you don't need to. But by the way, you need to spend money in marketing. You need to spend money in branding. You need to do that. But you can brand yourself organically as well. You do not need to spend a lot of money, but you also have to have the resources, the time to be able to do that. And

Wrap Up And Share The Show

SPEAKER_01 20:10

there's efficiencies and things that you can do on that. I'm not going to go into that today. And the last thing is your company. What is your company known for? And maybe you don't have a company name. And that's okay right now. I we I always suggest people moving in that direction. If you're in the insurance space, you should have a company, right? But wherever you are in your business today, the idea is taking steps to grow, not just grow your business from a numerical standpoint of clients and income, uh, but also grow in how you grow by learning and taking steps forward in your business. Scaling up, but by scaling up, it's by the little things that you can do. You know, small hinges can move huge doors. And uh, we look forward to helping you throughout this whole entire process, through these podcasts, on teaching you how to go from unknown to unstoppable. Thank you for listening today. We do not advertise this whatsoever. On uh it's all organic. We do not have any paid advertising. If you enjoy these, please share them with friends, hit the like, ask questions. We want to answer those questions for you. This is on YouTube and all the other um podcast stations. We really enjoy helping you. We want to hear your feedback. If you have questions, please reach out to us. We would love to help you in the ways that we can. And as always, Invisible Agent for Insurance Agents, helping you go from unknown to unstoppable. Have a great day.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

We do not do any paid marketing to promote this podcast. It only grows if you find value in this and share it. Keep following as we show insurance business owners how to go from unknown to unstoppable. Thank you for listening, and we will see you next week.