Discover what every agent ought to know about insurance marketing and sales…

In this issue of 'Insurance Marketing and Sales Mastery'- October 2003

* Is Your Insurance Marketing Full of Holes?
* Success Tip
* Important Prospecting Update...
* Sales Tips
* Hot New Sales Opportunities

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Is Your Insurance Marketing Full of Holes?

Does it make sense to try to collect water in a bucket when it's full of holes or to catch fish with a torn net? Well that is exactly what most insurance agents and financial service professionals are doing. They work hard to attract the right prospects to them, but too often their marketing is full of holes.

The biggest holes in insurance marketing efforts are in lead generation (getting peoples names and contact information). Is there any question that identifying and attracting a steady stream of qualified prospects is the number one task for growing your insurance sales? You need to know who is interested in your products and services in order to contact them, again and again until they are ready to buy.

Every agent has some sort of lead generation strategy, whether it's just handing out business cards, sending out press releases, writing articles, asking for referrals or putting up a web site. The problem is most of these approaches are used sporadically not systematically, and there aren't any systems in place to capture the prospects contact information.

Interested prospects are missed, or when they contact you, they are pushed away by your marketing materials, web site or phone system. The result is hundreds (and possibly thousands) of potential prospects fall through cracks in your marketing and you aren't profiting from their business. If your lead generation strategy and systems aren't generating 20 or more new qualified leads each week, then your marketing strategy has a big gap in it.

Four common holes in marketing are:

1. The Lack of Compelling Content

Whether it's the title of your sales letter, web site or the title of your article and the first paragraph, your content needs to pull in prospects. Too often marketing materials are written from the sellers' point of view instead of the prospects'. Compelling content captures the prospects' attention by focusing on their problems. Without good marketing copy, prospects won't be moved to become your clients.

- Is your marketing content compelling from prospects' perspective?

- Does it lead with information about the prospects' problems and concerns?

2. Limited Reach

Would you like to contact all the people in your community who need and want your services? Unfortunately, using advertising, direct mail or cold calling to do this is probably cost prohibitive. However, public relations, writing articles and having a web site are some low cost ways of getting peoples attention. The objective, with any of these, is to reach as many people as possible in order to find qualified leads.

Despite the effort put into creating marketing materials, building web sites and writing articles, independent agents rarely get the visibility they want. Articles are only read by a handful of people, and web sites are hard to find.

To leverage the time and money you put into your marketing materials, articles and web sites, you need to do everything you can to help people find them. This sounds obvious, but most insurance agents write an article and just post it on their web site or send it to a few clients. With hundreds of online ezines and offline publications looking for content, you could be putting your article in front of thousands of people instead of just a few.

The same is true of search engine listings. Most agents can't even find their own sites in the search engines. Help the search engines put your web site on the first page or two with your keywords and, you'll increase your exposure and reach hundreds of new prospects each week. This is easier than most agents realize and will extend the reach of your marketing dramatically.

- How many people per week see the marketing copy or articles that are meant to get them to make contact?

- What are you doing to increase this number?

3. Missing Motivators

Grabbing your prospects' attention is the first step in lead generation. You must move them to make contact by visiting your web site or calling your company and adding themselves to your target list. When you write an article or send out a mailing, provide an incentive for prospects to take action. Offer them a free workshop, free newsletter or free report.

- Does your marketing motivate prospects to come to you and give you their contact information?

4. Malfunctioning or Non-Existent Systems

If your marketing is working, prospects will call your office or stop by your web site. You want to make it as easy as possible for prospects to get in touch with you, so you can collect their contact information. Again, this sounds obvious, but how many times have you been frustrated by menu-driven answering systems that didn't list the item you called about? (Or it made you go through too many steps to find it?) Or you visit a web site and you have a question, but there is no name, email address or phone number of a person who could answer your question. And most phone systems and web sites aren't set up to capture visitors' contact information.

- Do you have automated systems that make it easy for prospects to contact you?

- Do you have automated systems that make it easy for prospects to give you their contact information?

Marketing involves generating leads, converting those leads to clients and then reselling those clients. If you're not attracting the number of customers and clients you want, make sure your marketing strategy isn't full of holes.