Making Your Dollars Work Creative marketing and effective advertising By: Jackie Johnson When you think of marketing, do you instantly see dollar signs? Did you contemplate the $90,000-per-second it cost to advertise during the Super Bowl? Or, are you still having trouble just thinking about the cost increase of sending out direct-mail promoting your agency? The good news is marketing is much broader than paid advertising, and in some cases, marketing actually can be done for free. Creative Marketing So let’s start with the “free” part. One of the most affordable and effective forms of marketing actually is word of mouth. Creating a buzz about your agents or your agency can be done without large costs and also can have the best results - you do this in a creative but methodical way. First, identify individuals with the most opportunity to talk about your agency to your potential customers. These “centers of influence,” as such people commonly are called, include family, friends, employees other salespeople (i.e., car dealers, lawyers, accountants, doctors and mortgage brokers.) You should create a relationship with as many of these influencers as possible and provide them with a positive reason to talk about you and your agency. In fact, ask them to speak positively about you, and coach them on the type of prospects/clients your agency seeks. Give to receive; the best way to develop and retain a center of influence is to reciprocate. Learn what clients they are looking for as well, so you can serve them with free referrals. You will all benefit. Marketing is all about getting yourself and your agency in front of potential clients, so you may want to include speaking engagements, or writing an article in your marketing mix. Seek out opportunities for you or your agents to speak at community interest meetings or other local organizations that allow speakers to demonstrate your expertise and provide individuals or businesses with some helpful information. Also, you or your most experienced agents can write articles for various publications, or even your local paper. Just think about penning a featured article on insurance tips (submit articles you are considering for publication to your legal advisor prior to publication). Successful marketing these days often hinges on, how effectively a company is using the Internet. How easy is it to find the agency Web site? Making the agency Web site attractive, interesting, helpful and easily located can improve the odds that clients will visit your site. Also, do you have a “forward to a friend” link on your site? Helping create the opportunity for others to share your name and information is, and always has been, a marketing key. In addition, is your agency using e-mail as a marketing tool? Sending e-mail newsletters to your existing customers that contain insurance tips or risk management tools can be a welcome service that helps reinforce your relationship. You can also encourage them to forward your message to others, which will further increase your visibility. How would you gauge your community involvement of your agency? Not only volunteer work, but sponsoring community events also brings attention to your agency. Whether it is a local soccer team wearing your logo, banners with your agency name proudly displayed or even church bulletins with agency ads, community sponsorship can create good will and added name recognition dividends for a small investment of time and money. Your agency should try many and as often as possible. Sometimes agencies do these things without considering possible benefits, when they easily can be made a part of an effective marketing strategy and accomplish more. The use of leads is another area in which strategy and creativity can make a small investment go further. Have you or your agents ever purchased leads, called them and failed to get even a single appointment? Or, are you sitting back still waiting for your leads to call you as you asked in your mailing to them? Instead, try combining marketing with proactive sales activities to get the best results. A formal marketing campaign to “warm up” that lead can help make that follow-up phone call more effective. Your marketing should include two to three branding pieces, scheduled very closely together. For example, sending out a customized post card one week followed by a second post card the following week and then a letter the third week helps the prospect recognize your agency name and potentially creates some interest. Your agency’s marketing pieces should be unique, grab their attention and also provide them with a “what’s in- it-for-them” message. After the third mailing is received, you are ready to start making calls that will likely have a much higher success rate than before. Effective Advertising Is your agency using its advertising dollars effectively? Does agency advertising consist of an ad in the phone book? If so, do you know how much business actually results from that ad? You should be able to measure the return on your investment from any marketing activity that your agency does. Doing formal advertising on the radio, print ads or television may be great methods to market the agency; but, you should be able to determine the amount of business it is providing. Simply tracking your agency’s “source of sale” will help you decide where and how to spend your marketing dollar on advertising. Once the process for capturing this information is established, the challenge is getting agency staff to be diligent in tracking it. Making source of sale tracking a priority, and showing them the importance will. Regardless of the size of your agency, the amount of money you have to invest or your level of marketing expertise, you should be doing some form of marketing if you are looking to increase your number of prospects. Before you can decide on the appropriate marketing activities, you first need to develop a marketing plan that will lay out the specifics for each of these procedures: activity; person responsible; target date; expected cost; and outcome. Generally, the more diversified the marketing efforts, the more likely your agents are to find leads and score successes, and the better able your agency will be to determine which efforts bring the greatest return on your investment. Even difficult-to-measure activities, such as a banner at the next community event, should be considered as strategic marketing initiatives are evaluated. Many agents take a “reactive” approach to prospecting, typically commenting that their source of new business is “referrals”. This is great if the agent truly is creating that referral process. However, if he or she is not seeking consistently new sources of leads, such as the centers of influence we mentioned earlier, those referrals will soon dry up. The most successful agents put together a written business plan with a corresponding marketing plan, and they use them. Once those plans are written, everyone at the agency has some level of responsibility for executing the plan. At least once a quarter, plans are reviewed and adjustments are made as necessary. Repeatedly following ineffective business models only makes people busy, not successful. Make someone responsible for monitoring and analyzing the results, so you can accentuate the activities that are providing you with the best return on your investments– both time and money. In this aggressive and competitive insurance marketplace, being identified easily as a premier agency is essential. Every day, direct writers and captive agents are marketing to your existing customers and future prospects. Your marketing efforts also will demonstrate your commitment to the future of your business and help you be recognized as a leader in your industry. While you’re not going to spend $90,000-a-second on your marketing, your goal still is the same! Jackie Johnson is Senior Vice President of Business Management Group (BMG), a full-service consulting firm for insurance agencies and brokerages and a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc. Jackie focuses on sales consulting and training and is responsible for providing agents with a variety of services that concentrate on sales management, leadership, coaching, sales planning and business development. She can be reached at 800-772-0208 or informationrequest@bmgconsulting.com The information in these materials is provided for informational purposes only. Readers seeking resolution of specific business issues or concerns regarding this topic should consult their attorney or business advisors. BMG does not warrant that the implementation of any view or recommendation contained herein will (i) be an appropriate legal or business practice; or (ii) result in compliance with any local, state, or federal ordinance, regulation, statute or law. BMG assumes no responsibility for the legal compliance with respect to your business practices, and the views and recommendations contained herein shall not constitute our undertaking, on your behalf or for the benefit of others, to determine or warrant that your business practices are in compliance with any law, rule or regulation. Previously Published Professional Insurance Agents/April 2008