The Insurance Marketing Playbook
The Insurance Marketing Playbook is your go-to podcast for insurance agents who want to attract more clients, close more policies, and scale their business with modern marketing strategies. Each week, we break down proven tips on digital marketing for insurance agents, including SEO, social media, email campaigns, Google Business Profile optimization, paid ads, and referral systems.
Hosted by Shelby McFarland, The Marketing Broker, who specializes in helping insurance agents grow, this show gives you actionable marketing strategies designed specifically for the insurance industry—no fluff, just play-by-play tactics you can implement right away.
Whether you’re a new agent building your book of business or an experienced producer looking to modernize your marketing, this podcast is your competitive edge. Subscribe to The Insurance Marketing Playbook and learn how to generate quality leads, build your brand, and grow your insurance agency with confidence.
Episodes
32 episodes
Recruiting is Marketing: How A Recruiter Sells A Career Without Feeling Salesy
Recruiting can feel like a totally different world from marketing, until you hear how Demi Mathis actually does it. Demi is a business development officer at Northwestern Mutual in Arkansas, and her day-to-day sounds a lot like what marketers p...
What A Real Marketing Agency Does Behind The Scenes
Everyone can post a photo. That does not mean they know how to market a business. We take over the mic this week and pull back the curtain on what real marketing work looks like when it is done by an actual marketing agency, not a “pop-up” mark...
Hiring Help When Your Business Hits A Bottleneck
You can feel it before you can name it: the calendar is packed, your brain is fried, clients keep coming, and the business still won’t move to the next level. We sit down with Leia, an adult ADHD and executive function coach, to talk about the ...
The Four Biggest Marketing Myths Holding Back Your Business
Everybody has a “rule” about marketing, and most of them sound right until you try to build a real business with them. We sit down and call out four popular marketing myths that quietly waste your time: the idea that you must be on every social...
How One Business Owner Turned A Book Into Clients, Credibility, And Revenue
$48,000 in two weeks sounds like a book sales story, until you hear the truth: only $710 came from selling copies. What changed everything was treating the book as a marketing tool that drives real business revenue, not as the revenue itself. W...
The Good And Bad Ways To Use AI In Small Business Marketing
AI is already in your customers’ feeds, your competitors’ workflows, and probably your own browser history, so the real question is whether you’ll use it with intention or let it dilute your brand. Shelby McFarland, marketing boss at The Market...
What Crisis Reveals About Your Business Plan
One day you’re grinding 60 to 70 hours a week and planning expansion. The next day the world shuts down, your clients panic, and your business has to reinvent itself before the bills hit. I’m Shelby McFarland, the marketing boss, and I’m tellin...
Human Connection Driven LinkedIn Marketing For Entrepreneurs
LinkedIn can feel like a noisy room full of “experts,” automation, and awkward cold DMs. We want to cut through that with something more useful: what’s working right now when you’re a real person trying to grow a business, land better opportuni...
Inside A Women’s Business Showcase
A packed room, quick questions, and the kind of answers you only get when people stop performing and start telling the truth. We’re in Conway, Arkansas at a Women in Business Showcase talking with founders, operators, and creators across interi...
You Don’t Need More Leads, You Need More Conversations
If you’ve ever paid for marketing and still felt like nothing changed, we’re saying the quiet part out loud: marketing can’t replace selling. Shelby McFarlane sits down with Arkansas insurance agent Nick Tubberville to unpack the difference bet...
Why Your Insurance Marketing Is Blending In
If your agency’s marketing sounds like “great service” and “competitive rates,” you’re not building trust, you’re blending in. On this episode, Alexis and Mattie step in for Shelby and get blunt about the phrases that make insurance agents invi...
Turn Client Questions Into Weekly Insurance Content
Your next month of insurance marketing is hiding in the questions your clients ask you every single day. If you’ve been stuck trying to “come up with content,” we’re flipping the process: we start with real conversations from sales calls and tu...
Three Posts A Week That Grow An Insurance Agency
Random posting doesn’t fail because you’re not trying hard enough. It fails because it doesn’t give people a reason to trust you, understand you, or take action. We share a simple framework built for insurance agencies that want consistent lead...
Insurance Marketing Myths That Waste Your Time
You’re posting, you’re trying to stay consistent, and the likes are still… not there. If you’re an insurance agent staring at low engagement and wondering whether social media marketing is a waste of time, I’m going to challenge three myths tha...
Organic AI Visibility For Insurance Agencies
If you have ever wondered “Is AI going to take my job?” I want to flip that question into something practical: how do we make AI work for your insurance agency. I share my no-hype approach to getting found on ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and whatever...
How Insurance Agencies Can Track Social Media Results
Your social media can look quiet and still be doing its job. We’re pulling back the curtain on Meta analytics so you can stop guessing and start managing your insurance agency marketing with real numbers.We walk through where to find yo...
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 sam...
Find Your Ideal Clients And Show Up Consistently
Marketing keeps changing, but most small business owners are still stuck with the same problem: trying to do everything at once and ending up exhausted. From a super casual recording spot while I’m volunteering with a local nonprofit that suppo...
From Hobby To Business: Building A Real Marketing Budget
The hardest truth in business might be the simplest: if you’re not funding visibility, you’re funding invisibility. Shelby opens chapter three of Market Like a Boss and takes us straight into the mindset shift that turns “How much does it cost?...
Using AI To Grow Your Insurance Agency
Curious why AI summaries seem to spotlight other agencies instead of yours? We dig into how tools like Google’s AI Overview, ChatGPT, and Grok actually choose their sources—and how you can become one of them. Our focus is practical and tactical...
How To Teach AI Your Brand And Turn Keywords Into Clients
Feeling lost in the AI noise? We cut through it with a clear path that blends proven SEO habits with smart, practical use of AI tools like ChatGPT and Grok—no mystery fees, no jargon. Shelby shares how to lock down your foundations first, then ...
How Video Marketing Grows An Insurance Agency
Tired of posting and getting crickets? We break down a simple, repeatable video strategy that turns attention into trust and trust into bound policies—without fancy gear or a production crew. Shelby McFarland, The Marketing Broker, shares how s...
How Insurance Agencies Turn Reviews Into Real Credibility
Tired of saying “we’re honest” and getting crickets? We go straight at the trust problem insurance agencies face on ad-saturated feeds and show how to replace vague claims with proof people believe. Shelby breaks down practical systems for coll...
Learn How To Turn Local Attention Into Real Sales
Trapped indoors by a winter storm and buzzing with pent-up energy, we mapped out a practical visibility blueprint that helps local insurance agencies get seen, heard, and chosen by the clients who actually live in their service area. The heart ...
Five Reasons Your “Too Expensive” Excuse Is Costing Your Insurance Agency Growth
Fear of “spending too much” on marketing is one of the fastest ways to stall growth. We dig into five practical mindset shifts that transform scattered tactics into a focused system: reframe marketing as an investment, stop paying for cheap sho...