As Al Diamond tells it, a marketing campaign combines art (getting your message across effectively) with science (doing so frequently enough and in a form that will familiarize the prospect with you and your product). If either the art or the science is flawed, the campaign is useless.
Many agents and producers mistake a marketing letter for a marketing campaign. A marketing letter is just that — a letter sent to prospects (in letter, card, brochure, fold-out or any other form) meant to elicit a response and generate interest in doing business with the entity doing the solicitation.
Most marketing letters are ignored, never read, never even opened. They comprise the “junk mail” that you and I get in our mailboxes every day. Imagine how you respond to this junk mail when you review your mail every evening. Now, imagine your piece coming into a business, large or small, in which the recipient isn’t usually the first one to see the item (or might never see it) because the mail is reviewed, opened, scanned, and sorted before the desired recipient is given those few pieces that their employees think are appropriate for them to pursue.
On the other hand, a marketing campaign is a process of getting your message out to your intended market strongly enough and frequently enough to: (1) Get them familiar with your name and identity and (2) to get them interested in doing business with you.
No marketing campaign will ever be effective in a single-shot delivery of a single message. The consuming audience is far too jaded with billions of pieces of advertising for any single-shot message to make a difference.
A marketing campaign combines art (getting your message across effectively) with science (doing so frequently enough and in a form that will familiarize the prospect with you and your product). If either the art or the science is flawed, the campaign is useless.
THE SCIENCE OF MARKETING
The science of marketing defines how best to reach your target market and how often in order for them to recognize you as an expert in your field and be familiar enough with you to permit you to offer them your products and services.
Major advertisers respond to marketing frequency with mass marketing: TV, Radio, magazines and direct mail (by the millions of pieces). They “shotgun”‘ their market because they have trouble segmenting it sufficiently to do “rifle” marketing. The local independent insurance agency operates quite differently. For example, because we can determine that we have an excellent product and market (carrier) for business property, we would hone our marketing to that specific target and achieve economies that are impossible for Anhueser-Busch. At the Super Bowl, Busch spent millions on a few ads for beer. But they know that only parts of their viewing audience are beer drinkers. They’d throw away their money by only showing their product to teetotalers. What if they could have shown their ad only to beer drinkers, allowing the non-beer drinkers to view an ad for soft drinks, instead? They would have gotten much more bang for their advertising buck. That’s what we can do as insurance agents who target our markets toward the products and suppliers that can best serve a market segment.
Could you imagine Busch showing a beer commercial just once? Of course not. With their production cost, they must show it enough to get people to think of their brand when purchasing beer. That’s why they hire the best creative people and design “cute” ads meant to entertain as much as to sell concept.
Similarly, a “dry” letter introducing yourself might seem stoically professional to you — but will probably seem too dry to a consumer or business owner who doesn’t even like insurance. So, take a hint from the “big boys.” To draw attention to your products and services, make your advertising and marketing cute and attractive.
Many agents have bemoaned (or boasted about) the results of low-cost advertising that was sent to a great many people with little response, or was viewed or heard on radio and television many times — but at 3:00 a.m. (with little positive response). They use these examples to claim that advertising and marketing don’t work.
Have you ever seen the highest profile ads on TV at 4:00 a.m.? Probably not, because you, like most other folks, are asleep at that time of night. But the other reason that you might not see the best ads at that time is that advertisers know when you’re likely to tune into see a show whose advertising will impact you. If you want your advertising and marketing to work, don’t pay for off-hour advertising or use little-read magazines, counting on frequency to replace high impact. It won’t work!
The best advertising science for the insurance industry (translated as the most effective) uses multiple contacts with your prospects frequently enough to familiarize them with your name and to saturate them with your message in a variety of ways.
Of course you can’t expect a marketing campaign to be constructed (or to work well) for one (or a few) prospects unless the return for writing their business is very high. In most cases, a campaign needs at least a few hundred prospects to justify its cost.
You need to pre-construct your campaign, completing all of its elements before you implement the first part. A good mix will include letters, brochures, newsletters, postcards, drop-in calls, and appointments.
Multiple touches in a one, two, or three-year period work best because the prospect will probably hear from your agency many more times in that period than they hear from their incumbent agent. We’ve had our best results from a five-step, one-year program and a 15-step, three-year program. If a prospect doesn’t respond to our effort after three years of contact, we feel that they’re not interested in our offer.
DRIP MARKETING
Perhaps the most important part of the Science of Marketing in the insurance business is to implement a Drip Marketing, rather than Mass Marketing, approach to advertising and marketing. This means that instead of sending 500 letters and waiting for the phone to ring, you’ll enjoy far better results from sending 10 letters at a time and following each letter with a call two days after the correspondence (or any other form of contact) to elicit a response, answer any questions, or suggest a meeting.
Timing is essential in a Drip Marketing Campaign. However, the timing is not evenly spaced. For instance a one-year drip campaign can look like this:
Day 1 Letter One
Day 40 Brochure
Day 100 Newsletter
Day 130 Drop-In
Day 200 Letter Two
Day 270 Post Card
Follow up every contact by telephone within two or three days to confirm the piece’s receipt and invite a meeting.
By using a skewed schedule, you’re likely to hit everyone at least once or twice each year when they’re thinking about their insurance.
THE ART OF MARKETING
This concept of marketing is deceptively easy: You must make your message appealing to the audience that you wish to impact. This means that you can’t write about insurance from the perspective of an agent or an underwriter. The desired customer doesn’t care about your views and perspective — they only care about their own.
As with any other form of art, when professionals do marketing it looks easy. But when you sit down to write a marketing piece (a part of a marketing program), the result might look as different as the Mona Lisa next to a stick figure with a smiley face — both might have enigmatic smiles, but one reminds you of the mysterious nature of woman, while the other reminds you of Wal-Mart’s sales specials.
Unless you’re skilled or talented in creative writing and advertising, we suggest that you use a professional to design your marketing products.
A combination of consistent and frequent drip marketing with interesting and entertaining messages and means will provide a solid return that will add far more revenue to your agency than the cost of the program. Missteps will be expensive. Shortcuts always take longer. And you’re personally as likely to create successful marketing for yourself as you are to successfully pull your own teeth.
Let professionals who know how to attract insurance customers help you with the Art of Marketing. Follow our advice on the Science of Marketing in order to achieve strong results from every campaign that you implement.