Pivoting to online platforms to connect with protection customers in their homes when the pandemic hit helped adviser Robyn Allen engage with a younger demographic.
And Allen, owner of Robyn Allen Solutions, has taken that further by embracing social media to keep growing her younger audience and to instil an understanding of protection.
Speaking at the Protection Review’s ProtectX6 event, social media advocate Allen told the audience that in 2020 she was all about face-to-face conversations but the pandemic changed everything.
“I’m going to hold my hands up and say if you told me to go online, I would have told you to jog on – that’s the nice way of putting it,” Allen said.
“But now I’m converted – Zoom is my home. Other media platforms are available but it’s the one that people can easily relate to. It’s making them comfortable. They’re in their own homes.
“So I pivoted during the pandemic – I had to and it has meant that my demographic has got a bit younger.”
And Allen added she very recently completed a case of a 21-year-old buying their first home.
“They were incredibly lucky in terms of deposit and where it came from and they know without that additional support they wouldn’t have got there,” she said.
“But they also understood because of their parents how important the protection was that they had to put in place.”
Social media kickstarting conversations
According to Allen, those conversations need to start at a much earlier age as while young people tend to know if they want a phone, pet or a house, they need to insure it, they do not tend to know about the importance of taking out protection.
Being active on social media has helped Allen kickstart these conversations. Her Tiktok account has amassed more than 12.3m views, with videos ranging from fitness challenges to what she does for a living.
“It’s why I’m such an advocate of social media,” Allen said.
“We create something where we speak to them in their language because that’s how they are brought up.
“I had a phone growing up but we didn’t have internet. I was limited to 300 texts a month and they were normally gone in two days. Now the world is at their fingertips.
“So when it comes to how they go and get this advice – first of all we need to make the conversation normal. I hate using the word. We need to make it part of day-to-day life.”