Ask yourself some questions:
Completing an executive summary, a more complex SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats exercise) or compiling competitive intelligence helps you identify your insurance agency’s marketing and public relations objectives and get agreement on them too.
You may need to change your goals later, but this sets checkpoints so you can review your progress throughout the campaign. Here’s a sample marketing campaign goals and objectives statement:
Lisa Nichols' Insurance Agency has a great opportunity to find all-new customers in 2008. It is estimated that there are 10,000 potential, eligible agency customers in our community. The agency anticipates that 1,000 new customers will join the agency by the end of 2008, and that an additional 2,000 customers will be on board by June 2009.
Lisa Nichols' Insurance Agency needs to provide new customer data at checkpoints throughout the promotional campaign to show results. Setting down numbers for your insurance agency may seem intimidating, but it’s the best way to track and report on marketing and advertising results.
Identify the target markets your insurance agency wants to highlight during your promotional and advertising campaign. Now that you’ve set your goals and objectives, think about who you want to target with your marketing campaign. Your primary market consists of customers, prospects, business partners and your agency employees. Your agency’s strategic marketing messages and tactics will change depending upon your audience.
Create marketing benefit statements that summarize how you want to drive customers’ perceptions of your insurance agency:
Once you drill down to your key marketing messages, use them in every aspect of your insurance agency’s advertising and promotional campaign. No matter what services and benefits you highlight, make sure you let customers know about your products, service standards and methods of communication again and again, to drive your strategic marketing messages home.
Once you’ve identified your marketing messages, start creating your plan of attack for each customer group. Your advertising and communications strategies will vary widely based upon your budget and campaign goals, but you’ll probably use some combination of the following: e-mail campaigns, print ads, public relations, collateral materials, newsletters or the Web to market your products and services to insurance agency customers.
Get more tips for your insurance agency's marketing plan including creating customer loyalty strategies, getting free help, creating a PR calendar and tracking marketing campaign results.
Talk back with a writer: email your best ideas for creating a marketing campaign for your insurance agency to Lisa Nichols.