Making the Most of Marketing for Your Agency

Brand awareness is a critical component to the success of insurance agencies and the agents who work in them. Access to the right marketing can be the difference between reaching your target audience and missing the mark altogether. For marketing to be effective, agencies need to dedicate resources like time, money, and effort.   

A marketing plan that lacks design and planning will fall flat with little generation of sales. Understanding that marketing is a representation of the agency and the agents is critical to creating a workable plan. Let’s look at a few essential elements that require review when developing a marketing plan.  

What is the ideal audience, and where do they hang out? 

Selecting and understanding an audience is vital to the mission. Without this information, the only option is to start throwing different marketing at the wall and seeing what sticks. One of the problems you’ll quickly discover is that it’s impossible to track what is working and why and replicating the most effective parts becomes nearly impossible. The “shotgun” approach is ineffective, and expenses can start to add up very quickly with no direction or clarity gained and, therefore, no way to get things narrowed down and costs under control.

Instead, choose a focus. Decide on your target client. If it’s personal lines, start narrowing prospects down to a specific demographic. If working on business accounts, start looking at specific classes or types of businesses, an ideal premium size, and other characteristics that help create a meaningful marketing plan for the specific needs of that type of client. 

What cost is involved, and what is the desired return? 

As noted previously, marketing can be costly. Even items that seem minor can come with a considerable price tag. Without parameters, marketing can quickly start to eat into the agency budget. Agencies must be focused and intentional with marketing spend.  Starting with understanding who you want to reach and where to find them will help reduce waste in marketing efforts, be it time or money. During the client research phase, it is essential to figure out the best way to reach them. If most of your audience is located outside of your community, taking out billboard ads will not generate much activity, and it would be much better to invest in a digital strategy. Knowing how and where you can get your audience’s attention is critical to ensuring you get the most bang for your buck.   

A marketing plan also needs to include the expected return to understand its level of success. The expected return could be an estimated number of leads and the percentage of closed sales desired. Failing to define these parameters will leave an agency guessing what is useful and what is not. Taking time to specify anticipated outcome means agencies have a marker for measuring results. It also means agencies can identify what methods are working, where adjustments are needed, and any marketing efforts generating little to no return. Once this happens, campaigns can be even more focused, further reducing wasted time and money invested.   

How much is the agency or the agent willing to invest? How should expenses be handled?

Knowing how expensive marketing can be, there must be budgetary guidelines set by the agency. Unmonitored marketing will start to eat at company resources very quickly. Considering this information, agencies can decide what makes sense when it comes to cost. Agencies can allocate budgets in several different ways, but anyone relying on marketing to grow the business must be aware of how the structure, including producers.

Providing support for a marketing campaign is essential, but there should be controls. Producers do not necessarily know what will or will not be effective. Guidance from an individual with marketing expertise paired with an expense limit is necessary. Whether an agent is joining associations, attending meetings, taking out digital or paper ads, all of this is part of marketing. Setting a budget will help keep the producer in check and protect the agency’s bottom line. If a producer feels the budget is too low to fit their needs, consider negotiating this with a reduced commission or allowing them to invest their own money. When producers add their own money to the pot, they have an increased interest in seeing their investment pay off. It provides flexibility in the budget and allows the agency to maintain necessary control which protects the interest of the agency and the agent. 

Marketing is an essential element of agency growth.  Developing a marketing plan with appropriate guidelines can help agencies and their agents work together to identify and achieve common goals. 

For more on this topic, check out the full episode of The Independent Agent here!