What's everyone doing?! Let's bounce ideas off of each other!!

[Jessica Durphy]

In the P&C world, things are ALWAYS CHANGING!! Postcards, newspaper, monthly coupon and community magazines in the past have worked incredibly for me! Word of mouth and social media...of course, still work like a charm! HOWEVER... I'm trying to think of NEW ways of marketing. Is there anything NEW that's working for you guys in your Independent agencies?

And... Are you finding that marketing on the back of Covid to be successful?!

Would love to know your thoughts!!! What are YOU doing that's unique?!

 

[Markthebroker]

I do 0 marketing. It's all networking and a very structured, careful, deliberate and calculated way of asking for referrals. Whenever I walk away from a sales appointment with less than 3 or 4 referrals, I go back to the office and try to figure out what I did wrong and how to improve.

In every instance my cost per lead is lower than any marketing anyone can do. My close rate is higher than most (arguably all) types of marketing, and in most or all of the cases my retention is higher.

Lower cost, higher close rate and higher retention.

But hey, if you want to ignore proven concepts and spend time and energy to find the "new" and "unique" thing, go for it. I'm leveraging concepts that have worked for centuries, for one of the oldest industries in the world, so this definitely isn't new or unique. I keep a general habit of doing things that have worked for a long time, and it has served me very, very well.

The downside, however, is that you need training, implementation, time and practice, whereas postcards or coupons you more or less just need to throw money at.

 

[marindependent]

@Jessica Durphy - thanks for starting the chain.

I too do not do much (although more than @Markthebroker) marketing. The few marketing dollars I do spend are spent between busy transaction periods.

When I used to market more, I was more of a guerrilla marketer myself.

If I wanted to spend money on marketing now that I am fairly busy I would use limited google adword dollars leading to a custom built landing page built for an noncompetitive set of keywords. I would refine it by zip code down to exactly who you want. You will have to waste some money though - to learn. Ad agencies can do all of this for you - or you can do most of it yourself.

I personally would not spend one dollar mailing stuff out to prospects, unless its fairly unconventional.

Best of Luck to you.

 

[Markthebroker]

She put 9 exclamation marks in her post, and mentioned that she has marketing experience that has worked extremely well for her. Instead on expanding on things she has found successful, she is looking to restart the process and waste marketing dollars in the process of exploring.

Everything about this says she isn't interested in getting results, this is about her playing around with marketing for fun.

 

[Jessica Durphy]

She put 9 exclamation marks in her post, and mentioned that she has marketing experience that has worked extremely well for her. Instead on expanding on things she has found successful, she is looking to restart the process and waste marketing dollars in the process of exploring.

Everything about this says she isn't interested in getting results, this is about her playing around with marketing for fun.

Why are you so quick to blast me?

I've been in this industry for 14, almost 15 years. Starting out as a telemarketer for an insurance agent, setting appointments. Got my license to write Life and Health, went on to get my P&C. I did extremely well in PA making commissions only, until an offer to move to KY to begin an agency was laid at my feet. Moving to KY was a huge blessing to my 3 kids and me. As a single mom, owning a business, starting over in a new state without knowing a soul, I can truly say that I'm blessed and we aren't hurting for anything.

Not that I have to explain anything to you, but I assure you, my goal is to grow this agency. Postcards aren't working anymore. Monthly coupon fliers aren't working like they used to. Billboards (in my opinion) have never worked.

My question was simple, what's NEW and what's working with you guys?? Once you've tried all the original forms of marketing, What do you do different that sets you apart?

 

[Markthebroker]

In your initial post, you talked about how well all your marketing has done, but you wanted to try new things. That made no logical sense.

Now you are saying that your marketing has stopped working and need to try new things. Now, that makes sense. Your first post didn't.

 

[Jessica Durphy]

In your initial post, you talked about how well all your marketing has done, but you wanted to try new things. That made no logical sense.

Now you are saying that your marketing has stopped working and need to try new things. Now, that makes sense. Your first post didn't.

OHHHHH, I see that now! Right~ it's stopped working. I worked it till people were tired of getting my postcards. and I worked it till people didn't want to see my ads in the money saver coupon any longer. The ROI wasn't worth it any longer.

I see where my mistake was in the initial post, I didn't elaborate. my apologies

 

[Markthebroker]

I was in advertising for about 10 years, and I sold my ad agency to help finance my venture into insurance.

When I was first starting out, I found out that we had a market that was very competitive on apartment buildings. I quickly found that people that owned apartment buildings usually owned more than one, plus houses, nice cars, sometimes life insurance too. It often ended up being a nice account. So, I went over to the nearby title company of someone I met at a mixer. I bought the whole office pizza. While the office was enjoying pizza, I asked how the pizza was, and politely asked if they could run me a list of all the residential building owners in the surrounding counties, between 3 and 30 units. This was a valuable list that would have cost considerably more through a lead company. Then, I took this list, decided who and where based on zip code and building size, I wanted to target. Then I mailed out large postcards. The postcards were expensive, and the response rate was low, but my close rate was high and sales often turned out to be high, especially after the 2nd and third apartment building, houses, cars, etc. etc. back when I used to sell personal insurance. Even though I only made one or two sales per campaign, it more than paid for itself on the first year commission. Plus, too, the retention rate was pretty high too. Oddly enough, the blurrier and crappier the photo was on the postcards I ran, the more responses I got.

Something to think about. But now I do 0 marketing. All referrals.

 

[EugeneM]

Targeted cold calls all day long to industries that are booming. Avoiding industries struggling or cant write. Writing tons of healthcare wow... frikin fire! If you got markets for home healthcare companies pick up the phone. Their rates skyrocketed easiest sale of my life. Even if you have steady referrals your missing out if your not marketing heavy right now period.