Personal Branding For Insurance Agents

Your carrier’s name might be famous, but your neighbors buy from the person they trust. We’re talking about the power of personal branding for insurance agents and why “just using the corporate logo” isn’t enough when multiple agents in the same town represent the same big-name company. I share how I like to position an agency brand so your name leads, your community remembers you, and your online profiles reinforce that recognition with consistent keywords and a clean, local identity. 

We also go deeper than fonts and colors. If your name is the brand, your real-life behavior becomes part of your marketing, whether you like it or not. I unpack how everyday moments in public can either strengthen trust or quietly chip away at it, and why being authentic matters more than trying to look perfect. Your business values and personal values need to match, because people notice the gaps. 

Then we hit a major reputation risk that can blow up fast: social media. I tell a true story about a business getting slammed with one-star reviews because of a racist comment tied back to them online, and what it took to clean up the mess. We close with a practical safeguard every agency should have: a written social media policy or contract clause for employees so expectations are clear before something goes sideways. 

If you want stronger local insurance marketing, a better reputation, and a brand people actually ask for by name, press play. Subscribe, share this with an agent friend, and leave a review with the one branding change you’re making next.

Transcript

Why Personal Branding Matters

Stand Out From Corporate Competitors

Your Behavior Shapes Your Brand

Employees And Social Media Risk

Simple Safeguards And Closing

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Hey y'all, what's up? It's Shelby here. You have tuned in to another episode of the Insurance Marketing Playbook. I hope you are enjoying this podcast. I absolutely love sharing all of my tricks and tips for marketing for insurance agents. I do a lot of marketing for insurance agents across the nation, and I am here just to give you free advice. Maybe you're an agent, maybe you're someone that works for an agent, or maybe you're a marketing agency trying to get into the niche of insurance marketing, and that's what I made this podcast for. So let's dive on in today on the power of personal branding for insurance agents. You guys, this is so important. Let's think about all of the brands that we know, right? We know them by their name, by their logo, by their colors, by maybe uh their slogan, something like that. And as a business, we also have to make sure that our branding is very, very good and niche down. We want to make sure that we are branded for ourselves. Some of my real estate clients, I will go and brand their name, and then I will have their broker next to it on their graphics. A lot of my insurance clients, we get to do the same thing. Some of my farmers clients, um, we actually get to go by an actual agency name, so like their last name with agency behind it, and we don't have to really associate with farmers. My state farm clients are the same way. I actually will brand them with their name and agency behind it, or however they've developed their LLC, and then I will have State Farm and like some of the keywords. I'll have it in like their bio, I'll have it on their title of their page. And the reason why we want to make sure that we are branding ourselves outside of these really big nationwide um corporate names is because we are in our communities, right? You are right there in your small town or your big town, and you want people to know your name. You want them to know you. If you've been in the business long enough, then you have a team that works for you, but they answer the phone, Shelby McFarland Insurance Agency. So it's always your name is out there. Every time you are at a ball game, every time that you take lunch to teachers, every time that you do a big donation, it's in your name, and that's why it's so important to personalize your branding. You may think, well, you know what, this company I work for or I partner with, they really are one that does all the marketing, so why not just be associated with them? Well, I get that, but think about the mindset of that big company. Are they actually marketing for you? Are they marketing for themselves? And also, don't you have a competitor that works in with the same partner in your town? Because more than likely you do. It's very rare if you don't have two or three agents of the same big nation uh wide, not nationwide insurance, uh, big nationwide corporation in the same community. So why not set yourself apart? But when we're talking about personal branding, it also brings up another subject. If we're branding ourselves and we're branding our name and we're branding us as a person, we also have to be good people, right? Like we also have to make sure that when we're out in public we tip well. We have to make sure that when we're at a local sports game, we're not screaming at the ref, even though they pissed us off and they screwed over our kid at, like, you know, yard 20 or something like that. We have to make sure that our personal decisions are a reflection of us and how we want our business to be known. So, whatever your business values are should also reflect what your personal values are, and vice versa. We want to make sure that we are the person or we are the brand, and our brand is us. So, whenever you go out in public, I want you to be true to yourself. Don't be fake, don't act like, oh, I'm better than everybody. Like, it's okay to be authentic, it's okay to make mistakes, but also you need to own up to that stuff because we want to make sure that when we do make those decisions in our community or as a person that we know it's gonna affect our business. I've done that in my business. I have made decisions that weren't great, I've gone through divorces, I've made terrible decisions like uh showing my ass at a restaurant or something like that, and it has come back to me on me and my business and has affected it. And that's just me being open and honest with you. Like everybody has these things and it happens, and we have our real life, and I'm not expecting you to be perfect, but I want you to keep in your mind that what you do in your personal life is gonna reflect what you what your business gets, it's gonna reflect the success, or it's gonna reflect the sales of your business. And that brings up another valid point that I like to um make sure I keep top of mind with my clients is when we are branding ourselves and branding our name and making sure that we're standing out from everybody else, the people that work for us are also a reflection of us. What they do in public is a reflection of us in our business. What they say is a reflection of us, what they post on social media is a reflection of your business. I will tell you a really quick story of a landscape company I worked for several years ago, and this company um was very well known in the community, very large, they're still in business. Um, and I helped with their social media stuff, and I woke up one morning to their page just blown up with all these like one-star reviews, like all these negative comments. I was like, what the heck happened? Um, so I'm going through, digging through everything, trying to see what's going on. We're being called racist, we're being called um unprofessional. That I was like, what is going on? So I finally found the root of the problem. There was a post made on social media, and somebody commented, and it was a racist comment. I agree 100%. It was very racist, and he just kept arguing back and forth with these people. And then I go to this guy's page, and I'm like, okay, what's going on? Like, why is this again? Why is this coming back to my this like my client's business page? Why is it, you know, even associated? He had stated on his profile that he worked for my client. So because people were pissed off at him, they go to his profile, they look and see, like, oh hey, he works for this landscaping company. They go to the landscaping company, they leave all these negative reviews because they're pissed off at this guy and all of his, and I understand, I get that, but also I was like, okay, what's going on? So I called the owner and I said, Hey, listen, this guy, this is what's going on. Do you know this guy? He's like, I've never heard of that guy in my life. And I'm like, uh, what are you what are you talking about? Like he says he works for you on social media. He's like, never, never worked for me. Don't know this guy. Oh, okay, great. So I had two options. One, I had I could just leave it alone and be like, okay, it's gonna die out, whatever. And my other option is the one I went with was, you know what, I'm gonna take a chance, I'm gonna message the guy, and I'm gonna say, hey man, like, I represent this landscape company. It says that you work for us, but you really don't work for us, so will you please just take that off of there? You have more than like all your free will, say whatever you want on social media, but now it's a reflection of this business that you've never worked for. So I sent him this message, and about an hour later, he messaged back, like, I'm so sorry. He was very apologetic about it, and he took it off of his profile. I was like, Oh, thank God. Okay, so we got that done, but I had to go back and do all of um like cleaning up of the reviews. I had to like respond to all of them, explain to them, like, hey, this guy doesn't work for us, we are so sorry that this happened, all this stuff. And a lot of people took the reviews down, a lot of people deleted their comments. I did still have a few people that just didn't believe me and acted like I was just trying to cover it up, all this stuff. So that is a really, really great example that I like to use with my clients and be like, listen, what people do that work for you is a reflection of your business and your like values as well as your branding, and it will affect your sales either positively or negatively. So, how can you avoid that? It's really simple. Have a social media um like clause or have it in the contract with your employees, or even have a social media agreement that is separate from their employment agreement so they know exactly what is expected of them on social media, and if they go against that, then they'll get marked up or fired or whatever um you so choose to do on that. So, today's episode all about let's personal brand you outside of the partner that you work with for insurance of who you sell for, because it's all about you, all about your business, all about your name in your community. That's what people care about. And then we have to make sure that when we are making decisions out in public, when we're making personal stuff go on, like personal stuff's going on, we have to know that that's gonna affect our business and our brand, and to make sure that we stay as positive as possible. And then all of our employees also have to make sure that they are understanding okay, these are the things that um this company values, and I need to make sure that I'm attracting those same things. I need to make sure that I'm putting out that same energy into the world um and not being stupid on social media. So, alright, guys, I'll catch you on the next episode of the insurance marketing playbook. Y'all have a good one.