Much of our working lives now revolve around the internet, whether that’s for reading emails, researching prospects or looking at the latest insurer news. However, the 24/7 mentality of the internet brings with it changes to the marketing landscape. With social media and email campaigns targeting tens of thousands of prospect in a relatively short space of time, digital marketing is seemingly more popular than ever.
Despite this, we see many insurance brokers attempting to run with digital marketing, before they can walk.
In fact, the current crop of digital marketing skills in the insurance broker market actually presents itself as an opportunity to really get yourself noticed and send something out that’s altogether different to your competitors. After all, receiving an inventive, relevant and beautifully-designed piece of DM (Direct Marketing) or an email would make a nice change to the plethora of unimaginative emails that plague your inbox.
Set clear objectives upfront and ensure you are clear on how you will measure these. Outlining exactly what you want to achieve will help you to narrow down the message and vehicle. What will be the call-to-action? Do you want recipients to sign up to a newsletter, register for a free review, or just remember your brand when they are next in the market for your product or services? Make sure that whatever it is, you will be able to measure the results.
Define, and were necessary segment your target market. Set clear criteria for the companies you are targeting, as well as the people within these companies. Who are the decision makers? If you end up with a huge amount of data, consider a way to split the companies into tiers to make it more manageable, for example by location or company size, investing most of your time and budget in tier one and a little less in tier two. This will help you focus your efforts on those you want to work with most.
Carefully researching your target audience is the key to success. Undertake a marketing audit of your audience. Are they likely to have been targeted by other insurance brokers? If yes, how often? What can you do to stand out? What grabs their attention? What are their most pressing concerns at the moment? Does this present any opportunities for you to address?
Make sure your campaign is engaging. Use a powerful opening line, going straight to the heart of the recipient’s most pressing problems that you identified in your research. For example, if you’ve completed some research, lead with a fascinating fact or provocative question or play on their fear of missing out on something. A generic campaign, from a cold introduction is unlikely to gain many results, so think about how you can engage with them to move your prospects through the lifecycle.
Effective personalisation goes far beyond addressing your recipients by name. Treat them as an individual. Your research will help you make your communication more relevant. The more bespoke you can make it, the higher the response rate. Make your audience feel good, for example, congratulate them on a recent award win. Show that you have done your research and they aren’t just one of a hundreds you’ve contacted that month. Always be careful, however, not to make any assumptions, this can reduce your time to rubble.
The most effective campaign is one that is part of an integrated campaign. It’s merely the first brand touchpoint of many, or perhaps the second or third, depending on your campaign. Key elements of an integrated campaign can include a landing page, content, social media, advertising and events. There are plenty of ways to follow up the leads your DM will create for you. As tempting as it may be to try to convert these leads at the first opportunity, if this is only the beginning of the client journey; appropriate, subtle communication methods are more likely to bring home the bacon and secure a long-term relationship.
So you’ve got your data, your idea is fully implemented and ready to go out the door with a detailed follow-up campaign planned. What’s stopping you from starting your campaign? If this is the first time you are executing this idea, it’s probably wise to send it out in batches. Should there be any problems, for example, The Royal Mail hasn’t been overly careful and your well thought-out DM arrives in pieces, you will have the opportunity to tweak it as necessary. Whilst, smaller numbers will make it more manageable to follow up, smaller samples also give you the opportunity to test and learn to see if your DM stage is having the required effect.
Take a step back and approach your marketing efforts as if you were the prospects. How would you react to your materials? Is the offer strong enough? Does the email/landing page/brochure/postcard/flyer look credible? Is the call to action obvious? Now, run it by co-workers and get their honest reactions. If you can’t convince them, you need to tweak your campaign.
In summary
In summary, whilst the above key principles are what every campaign should be made up of, it is very easy to let your day to day activities take your time away from planning your campaign. When this happens, it is likely that your campaign will not be as successful as it could be, because you simply haven’t put the time and effort into it.
We would be pleased to talk through the options with you, give us a call on 0161 831 7199.