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A good marketing strategy consists of multiple steps and events, each building on the last and leading to the next. To create a budget and an implementation schedule requires the marketing partner to establish priorities, establish firm funding requirements up front, create performance benchmarks, and stagger the roll-out so that results can be measured and monitored. Even the very best marketing partners are basing much of the strategy on information gathered during the initial assessment. Things change as we know and, inevitably, some things will work and some results will prove disappointing. This is to be expected and is normally considered and acknowledged as a part of the program. Marketing partners understand that it is not any one marketing event or step in the program that makes the overall program work; it is an amalgamation of all events working together in an integrated program, steadily and overtime. Consistently we discover that when things go wrong, marketeers like to cast blame outward—usually at you or your staff or “those clients” that just don’t get it. Conversely, marketing partners study disappointments, learn from them along with you, and move ahead with a revised strategy.
It is critically important for you to realize that by measuring and monitoring results against established performance objectives, by segmenting your grand strategy into small, manageable steps, your chances of managing the program to the desired outcomes and “overall objectives” increase dramatically. Not only are you able to conduct an accurate cost/benefit analysis each step of the way but, as conditions change, you and your marketing partner will be positioned to make the required adjustments. Marketeers talk only of the “grand scheme” and the “awesome potential” Push them for details and accountabilities and they start to mumble or fluff their egos.
So, go ahead and push.
It’s your agency and your money and you, of course, are free to spend as you wish. You know that you need an updated website, a brand, a differentiated theme, and a noticeable value-proposition. You know that you need to be equally visible and viable and, most importantly, you know how good you are and how good you can be—for the right client. We will tell you that your future clients, the ones you haven’t met yet, have a right to work with you and to be provided with enough information to make an educated decision about where and how to build their insurance program.
So, in our mind, poor marketing and communications providers that do not affect this result are, in a word, negligent. Now you know what we know. Take your time with these investment decisions, interview many, take them to school and see who among them makes the grade.
Scott M. Primiano is the President of Polestar Performance Programs Inc. (www.goPolestar.com), a nationally recognized consulting and sales management company for the insurance industry.
Steve Jaffe is the President of Banner Direct, LLC. (www.banner-direct.com), the leading design/marketing firm for insurance companies and agencies.
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