Make Your Mark

Megan Schofield

In today’s hyper-connected world, social media has become an indispensable tool for small business owners. It has leveled the playing field, allowing entrepreneurs to reach larger audiences, foster deeper client relationships and compete with larger corporations all without requiring massive budgets.

However, succeeding in this crowded digital space requires more than just creating profiles and posting sporadically. It demands building a personal and authentic brand that resonates with your audience. For that to happen it must be a genuine representation of yourself and your practice.

Branding is much more than a logo or a catchy tagline. It is the sum of how your audience perceives your business, the values you stand for and the emotional connection you create. For small businesses, creating a consistent look and feel ensures consistency, professionalism and recognition across all marketing and social media efforts.

It all starts with the leader and the tone of the organization. We’ve all heard about the importance of first impressions and how hard it is to change them, yes? Research tells us that it only takes the duration of one eye blink to make a first impression on trustworthiness. Cognitive biases, or snap judgments, happen in that short time. Those decisions, whether they are truly accurate or not, mean that being on-brand requires living authentically in-brand all the time.

In 2020, prior to opening my agency, I had a consultation with House of Colour, which offers an international color analysis process that helps you learn about color science and the psychology behind how people perceive it. Not only did this process change my perspective on how quickly first impressions matter, but it allowed me to be completely authentically, bright.

It is essential for you to understand that different colors can impact the way potential clients perceive a brand. When you match the sentiments you are trying to portray to your audience with consistency, the immediate reaction/response from consumers is that they are authentic and trustworthy, and the best part about the equation is you haven’t even started to talk yet.

When putting pen to paper to create your personal brand story, it’s about crafting the new elevator pitch without the “ick” that everyone feels when they hear those words. Your introduction should be consistent with current clients and prospects—the excitement and preparation should be felt by both groups.

First, know your origin story. Why did you start doing what you do? For me, working with Country Financial’s corporate office in marketing for 10 years showed me how important local agents were to their communities, and I was excited to become that partner with our clients and their policies.

Second, define your values. Personally, I feel strongly that folks need to have the right policy, at the right premium, regardless if that is with my agency. I want clients to leave my office understanding their coverages to make the best possible decisions for their families.

Third, highlight your achievements. Self-admittedly, this one makes me the most uncomfortable—it can feel like bragging. But highlighting your achievements doesn’t have to mean being boastful—you’re simply providing people with independent recognition of your capabilities. In our short tenure servicing Clark and Vigo Counties, our agency has been named the National Champion Rookie of the Year (2023) and the National Champion New Agent of the Year (2024), for agencies open less than four years.

The fourth component is to curate your visual identity as I did with House of Colour. Finally, your personal brand story must stay true to your story. In an era when consumer trust is hard to earn, an authentic and relatable brand can be your most valuable asset.

Here are a few reasons why that matters:

Creating guidelines to establish a uniform look and feel, from logos and colors to typography and messaging, makes your brand easily recognizable.

A well-defined brand looks more polished and trustworthy, helping to build client confidence and brand loyalty.

With clear brand rules, you and your team can create content quickly without second-guessing your color, fonts or even tone of the imagery—saving time and effort.

As your business expands, having brand guidelines ensures that team members maintain the brand’s integrity across all platforms, in the everyday and digital world.

Benefits of branding

In my agency, we rely on personal relationships and community engagement to thrive. Social media offers the perfect platform to build and nurture these relationships that don’t just stay on the screen. All of our social media campaigns include community engagement, or even originate from a local event we highlight to help share their great work along with establishing a consistent partnership. The sentiments associated with supporting others, trustworthiness and consistency are feelings you can’t buy. Those same feelings are reinforced when clients or prospects see me and my team at kids’ soccer games and other community events.

A strong brand not only attracts clients but also fosters loyalty, leading to word-of-mouth marketing and repeat business. Our agency chooses to create all of the marketing within our team, but if that doesn’t seem feasible for you, there are hundreds of advertising and marketing agencies that sit at multiple price points to help you get started.

Social media platforms offer small businesses unparalleled access to millions of potential clients. Here is why social media is integral to your branding efforts:

Cost-Effective Marketing: Traditional advertising methods like TV spots, radio ads or billboard campaigns can be cost-prohibitive for small businesses. Social media, on the other hand, allows you to reach a highly targeted audience at a fraction of the cost. Billboards in my local communities can range from $1,200 to $2,000 a month. Impressions are great, but the call to action is passive. With social media we have the opportunity to create highly targeted Facebook and Instagram ads, with a call to action to “Call Now,” “Send a Message” or “Request a Quote” for dollars per day.

Paid promotions, boosted posts and organic reach provide flexibility to work within your budget while still delivering results. Get very comfortable acknowledging that you will have to tweak your strategy and know you will never get it right 100% of the time. Trial and error are a part of the learning process, and the faster you know it won’t be perfect, the better—but the more enjoyable it will be.

Direct Engagement with Clients: Social media eliminates the middleman. You can interact with your prospects or clients directly through comments, direct messages and live chats. This not only humanizes your brand but also allows you to gather feedback, address concerns and build a loyal community around your business. Our agency strives to post three to four times a week, some planned posts and others live at an event we are attending.

Social media channels are so sophisticated they can suggest when to post to your audiences based on when they are live on their platforms the most. We take a lot of social cues from Facebook and Instagram but also plan content around being in-person at events. (Note: please make sure all forms of communication are compliant with your carriers: you can take the girl out of corporate, but you can’t take corporate out of the girl!)

Enhanced Visibility: Your potential clients are already on social media. According to recent statistics, over 4.8 billion people worldwide are active social media users. Building a strong brand on these platforms ensures that your business stays visible, relevant and top-of-mind for your target audience. I recommend determining key performance indicators (KPIs) for your social media spends to keep your budget and expectations of these social platforms consistent.

Items I look for are reach, engagement (likes, comments and shares) and who is seeking us out on those channels. We also target ads for zip codes where we are most competitive at a given moment, so we track to see if our clicks, calls and inquiries from those zips increase when our spend increases.

Showcasing Your UVP: Social media allows you to differentiate your business by showcasing your unique value proposition—your story, mission and values. If you’ve had a great client review, email them for their thoughts on the appointment and ask if you can share their comments (with or without their name). If you have a client thrilled with the speed and accuracy of their claims adjuster, highlight the adjuster on social media and the great comments from the client. The partnership with everyone in your organization to make the client experience exceptional is the best (and free) marketing you could ask for.

Creating a personal brand story humanizes you, your business and an insurance industry that might feel out of touch with the everyday consumer.