Insurance Agency Brochure

Why Have an Insurance Agency Brochure?

You’ve made all the phone calls following leads, hit the streets in search of clients and even placed an ad in the yellow pages. With all of these methods for reaching customers, why should you also have a brochure?

The reason is because it makes your agency look professional. Having well-designed marketing collateral such as a brochure won't make you an authorized insurance agent, but it will make your agency seem very professional. Even if they never read the brochure, customers expect there to be materials they can take home.

Some customers will even ask for a brochure so they can review your agency and the products you offer on their own time. If you don’t have something to give them, you can be sure that customer will find a different agency. Don’t let potential business walk away like this, especially when creating a brochure is fairly simple.

What to Include in the Brochure

Your brochure should be attractive to look at and include well written literature. Sell both your agency and the products you offer.

Provide a list of benefits to the customer in your brochure instead of listing features. You can even focus on just one benefit — one that is important to customers.

A headline that reads “Free 24 Hour Road Side Assistance” is very clear to you, but customers may not fully realize what that feature of the insurance means. They may miss the benefits to them.

Erasure their confusion by writing something like “One Call and We’ll Send a Tow Truck—For Free—24 Hours a Day” instead. This highlights the benefits of the insurance product instead of just listing features.

This doesn’t mean, however, that you should completely ignore a list of features. Some customers are more insurance-savvy than others and will be looking for a complete list. Give them the information they request, such as:

• The insurance companies you represent (if you’re an independent agent)
• Information on how to get a quote
• Pictures of smiling people
• Customer testimonials
• Side-by-side feature comparisons

How to Make the Brochure

You can try making a brochure yourself. Desktop publishing software is very powerful and moderately easy to use. Some versions of Microsoft Office come with Microsoft Publisher, which is a basic publishing program. On the Mac, the iWork suite includes Pages, which is an easy to use, template-driven desktop publisher.

To create more advanced brochures, you’ll need to use more advanced programs such as:

• QuarkXpress
• Adobe InDesign
• Adobe PageMaker

To properly format and edit photographs, you may want to use Adobe Photoshop.

Once you create the brochure, you then need to print it. If you have a quality inkjet printer, such as ones that can print photos, you can try using that to see what kind of results you get. If you are not satisfied, consider taking your brochure to a printing company who will produce your brochure using high-quality printers.

How to Distribute Your Brochure

Place your brochure inside your agency, ideally in a high traffic area such as at the reception desk, in the waiting area or by the front door. Also have copies positioned on your desk near the customer so they can easily reach for one. Include some spares in your desk in case you run out.

Take some brochures whenever you visit customers in the field. See if you can display your brochure at other locations as well. Finally, if you have a website, create an Adobe PDF version of your brochure than can be viewed and downloaded by visitors to your website.