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Once upon a time, not terribly long ago, marketing companies had to be legitimate to survive. They had to have designers, illustrators, copywriters, artists, and media placement experts on staff, in an office, pulling together to pitch and close clients. This meant that they incurred overhead and payroll so… they had to be good. The barriers to entry in the marketing and communications industry were huge—cutthroat competition, large up-front investment, office space, etc. Not a place for the timid or untalented.
Needless to say, things have changed. Now, any enterprising young lass or lad with a laptop and a reasonable command of website design software can profess to be a “marketeer”. No training, no “cost of doing business”, no credentials—just a good story and someone to buy it.
A couple of them get together and… you have a firm. Make them a trio and you have “the three marketeers”—sorry, couldn’t resist. Buyer beware, they’re everywhere. And, by and large, they suck… great sums of money out of optimistic clients trying to create and sustain a differentiated position in the market place.
One of their favorite targets is you, the insurance agency. They know enough about our industry to know that you have to fight everyday to get your clients and work even harder to keep them. They know how difficult it is for you to differentiate and they love to help you try. They usually don’t ask you to make a “big decision”; most often they approach you with a $3,000 template mailer, a $5,000 template brochure, and/or a $10,000 template website. These packages are designed especially for you and 1,000 others just like you—plug in your logo and off you go! The promise is always the same—big results. Unfortunately, the results are always the same—little or none.
They are like marketing piranhas—individually they are annoying nibblers at our industry, collectively they can really take some chunks out of our operating capital. Frankly, we have had enough and we hope that you have as well. To put it mildly, we dislike these people. They have an attitude that says “I’m entitled to start at the top, no working my way up or learning curve for me”. The obvious problem? They know too little to be truly effective because they missed out on the wisdom that experience brings.
So, it is time to take them to school. Here are the seven lessons that you can teach them and the ones that they definitely need to learn before you ever turnover another marketing dollar.
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