Insure the Future Launches Insured.By to Help Consumers Find Local Insurance Agents

April 11, 2012 - PRLog -- Insure the Future has just announced its new site InsuredBy.

Insure the Future's Managing Director, Joshua Unseth, said "our goal is to connect local insurance seekers and connect them with local insurance agents in their community. Our hope is that before walking into an insurance agent's office, and even before a person picks up the phone to call a local agent, they get to know a bit about the personality of the agency using our site."

The site is currently a beta, and far from complete. As such, there are only about 40 agents from mostly throughout Florida who have been signed up. What is there, however, looks very promising, and their offering becomes very obvious after spending just a few minutes on the site. For example, Nancy Wolfe-Smith--a State Farm Insurance agent in Plantation--has a short, very personable video interview attached to her insuredBy profile.

It's a nice touch that tells someone who ends up on her page a little bit about what a consumer might get out of using her agency above others in her area: "We are people that care about people... the most important thing to us is that we take care of our clients." On the other side, is a smart looking moving montage of photographs from her office. While the video is not on every page, InsuredBy plans on adding these interviews to whomever will allow the InsuredBy staff to come into their offices and interview them.

Another really neat feature of the site is that clients can actually contact featured agents right on their profile, allowing those who stumble upon the insurer they might want to work with to contact that agent's office right away. If Nancy is as nice as she seems in her video, it wouldn't be surprising at all if a person looking for insurance in Plantation would get in touch before leaving. Now, at the moment, almost all listed agents are in the state of Florida, though there are a few exceptions like Chicago agent Cater Minnis, but InsuredBy's intention is to quickly add more agents from outside the state.

Unseth said, "We didn't build this program just for Florida agents. We built it for insurance agents everywhere. We thought that there has to be a better way for consumers to find insurance, and there has to be a better way for agents to find those consumers. We really hope that InsuredBy helps them meet in the middle."

Apart from the obvious benefits of getting leads, Unseth says that InsuredBy provides other, more intangible benefits as well. "The site will be getting updated regularly. We want the site to be filled with great content. We are working to make sure that the site is perfectly optimized for the search engines, and that the traffic to it grows steadily over time. We also believe strongly in the power of social media, so we've connected each agent's InsuredBy profile with their Facebook account. We just want to remove the barriers, make it easy for those who want to be friends with their insurance agent to easily make that happen."

InsuredBy's goal for agents is for their sites to rank better in search engine results, improve their social media placement, and interact more easily with those who want to find them. Agent's Facebook pages can even be liked right from their InsuredBy profile.

"We understand that consumers have more options now than they ever have. The incredible value of having a knowledgeable friend administering insurance is incalculable. Every agent on this site is going to be encouraged to communicate with their communities, and add incredible value to those in their surrounding area by hosting events, answering questions, and more," Unseth said. InsuredBy has an event management and Press Release tool that will allow agents to tell their communities about how they are planning to contribute. "These modules are already incredibly robust, but we want to make them even more powerful."

All an agent has to do is login to their account and submit a press release. This release will be looked over by InsuredBy's team, links will be inserted, edits will be made, and it will then be submitted to more than 100 different sites including those in the insurance agent's area.

Unseth said, "our hope is that insurance agents get creative and create newsworthy events and that local newspapers start a relationship with these agents, covering what they do in and out of their agencies. We think this is an exciting proposition to agents."

News about an agency is free press, but the only way an agent can get news is if they do something that is valuable and newsworthy.

"We're not asking agents to act like Richard Branson and bungee jump off bridges, although we wouldn't discourage that and we'd be happy to help them let their communities know that they're doing that if that's something they want to do. It's a lot easier than that. Agents know their communities and they can participate in the life of their community with very little effort. One of our agents is amidst a community of Cubans. She regularly organizes dominoes tournaments and has more than 20 people show up to each one. Some agents do one-offs. One agent we  know organized a giant superbowl party. More than 100 people showed up to her office in her small town. Most of them weren't even her clients. These agents provide valuable services to members of their community whether or not those community members are part of their insurance family."

InsuredBy embraces the new era of marketing. Bestselling books like "Trust Agent" posit that long-lasting business relationships are the result of selfless actors giving free information and building a rapport with those who might be their consumer base.

Unseth added, "insurance agents aren't in the marketing business. They are really nice people who know more about insurance than anyone could ever imagine. That knowledge is an asset and we know that giving community members the chance to get to know these agents rather than just seeing their face on a bus bench will translate into sales."

If you're interested in finding a local insurer in Florida, InsuredBy may be just the place to start. Or if you're an agent looking for a creative way to connect with everyone in your community, this might be the place for you as well. As they grow, and as InsuredBy is improved, there is little doubt it will become increasingly more useful to both consumers and Insurance providers alike.

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InsuredBy is a website focused on getting people around the nation the simplest way to find an insurance provider in their area. We believe strongly in people to people businesses, supporting local business owners and giving their communities a chance to get to know who they are both as local business owners and as providers of insurance.

InsuredBy gives local insurance agents a simple way to connect with members of their community and community members a simple way to get in touch with their local insurers. We encourage agents who are listed to use a combination of social media, press releases and local news in order to participate in the life of their local communities. We help them host and promote events, and give those in their communities a simple chance to get to know them both as personable people and business owners.