Evaluating Your Plan’s Success, Peter van Aartrijk Jr., CIC

While great marketing communications ideas abound, successful agents consistently execute on those great plans.

But what is success anyway?

Success is the direct descendant of having a goal, or goals. Otherwise, as the old saying goes, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you.” And staying on track with your goal(s) requires regular checkpoints of your marketing communications activity.

But here’s the part that most agency owners overlook: To do the checkpoints, someone actually needs to be in charge! We conducted a survey of 100 independent agents and brokers and found that 90% didn’t have a dedicated marketing person/employee. The corollary to this is that 75% don’t measure the return on the marketing dollar.

Just to be sure we’re on the same page, I’m not talking “marketing” to carriers. This is a marketing communications program to customers and prospects. For example, advertising, public relations, and direct mail are types of marketing communications.

Here are some tips to improve your tracking:

Who’s Responsible?
Assign a staffer to be in charge of tracking progress against the marketing communications plan. This doesn’t have to be an agency principal or one of your prima-donna producers. Heck, it can be Joe in claims or Sally at the front desk. In fact, it’s a good way to integrate other staffers into this fascinating area. But somebody needs to be the point person.

Quick Reading
Okay, now you’ve picked your traffic copy, but what does this person actually do? The first thing I would do is get on Amazon or bn.com and get a copy of the paperback, “The 33 Ruthless Rules of Local Advertising,” by Michael Corbett. If your agency is a Big “I” member, you should join the consumer-marketing brand effort called Trusted Choice and get your copy of “Zoom,” a branding workbook for independent agents and brokers. (I love the former and I wrote the latter, so I’m biased.) Both books offer tons of practical advice for the independent agent or broker.

SWOT
The next step is to completing a SWOT analysis (list of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) of your marketing communications to date. The point person should get input from other staffers. Figure out what needs to be changed going forward. Are you sending at least some mail or making at least some outbound calls to current customers? If you’re not doing that already, don’t bother with strangers!

Initial Meeting
The first step is to communicate with the entire office about your plans. “Remember that even in small firms, employees often are unaware of advertising or direct-mail plans,” says Corbett. “Let everyone know about the plans. Have meetings. Read them your copy. Tell them we’re you’re advertising, when, and for what purpose. Show new employees your Yellow Pages ad and explain it. Share your advertising philosophy. If everyone is excited about your ads, your employees then can excite the prospects who come in.”

Set Benchmarks Now
In order for you to know where you’re going, you need to know where you are today. It’s great to say, “We want to have 2.5 policies per personal lines customer by the end of 2005.” But do you really know where you’re at today? Is it 1.2 or 1.7 policies per customer?

You might set benchmarks for several indicators of success. Some ideas:

• Policies per customer;
• Customer referrals per month;
• Closing ratio on commercial accounts;
• Calls to unique phone numbers you’ve set up to track success;
• Agency mentions in the local newspaper; and
• Growth in BOP policies.

Calendar
Having determined which marketing vehicles are most suitable for reaching your target audience effectively and within budget, create a calendar of marketing activities. Include each and every campaign, from the direct mailing to current homeowners’ customers in January through the sponsorship of the Christmas jubilee in December, and every ad and PR initiative in between. Whether it was to grow by 100 accounts or to get 75% of customers to buy two policies, you need specific, written plans to track your campaign(s), and you should track them monthly, quarterly or yearly.

What Prospects Say
Ask every new prospect (or returning customer), “How did you hear about us (or about this offer)?” In most cases, I think you probably know: a referral. But if you’re introducing, say, life insurance in a traditional p/c agency, those inquiries will stand out—a good situation for those who like to track.

Just for fun, here’s a contrary thought on this: Corbett says he doesn’t even bother asking people, “How did you hear about us?” He says:

• People don’t know what brought them in.
• People don’t know that they don’t know what brought them in.
• People don’t like not knowing what brought them in and they’ll want to be helpful, so they’ll make things up.
• Never change your multiple-media advertising plans based on what people say brought them in.

“The only foolproof way to evaluate advertising effectiveness,” Corbett says, “is by setting measurable growth objectives for your business, and by monitoring the results in the cash register. Period.”

That may be true, but in a service business like insurance, you need to ask anyway to gather some intelligence about your programs.

Tracking Techniques
Use unique phone numbers for different marketing techniques. For example, you could offer to review a customer’s entire insurance coverage package—even of those policies that aren’t with your agency. A direct mail piece could have only a specific CSR’s name and number. Or you could make a special offer only on cable TV. One agent launched a new subsidiary for nonstandard car insurance, with a distinct name and phone number. He bought some billboard ads and printed up matchbook covers and put them in restaurants and bars.

Quarterly Meetings
Lots of agency staffs meet on a weekly or monthly basis to review sales and service issues. Those are important, as nothing happens in the agency until a sale is made! However, you should also set a quarterly marketing communication meeting—this is generally a good time frame to do a quick check of where you’re at. Quarterly meetings mean you’ll always be in around deadlines for things like Yellow Pages ads or postcard mailings. And you’ll always have policy renewals around you for testing campaigns. The person in charge of marketing communications should chair the meeting.

Leverage Your Software
You might utilize a customer-contact database or customer relationship management package to track pre- and post-marketing campaigns. Start by checking what’s already available in your Applied System. One of the beauties of this tracking software—and the management discipline that must accompany it—is that you have specific timelines and follow-through routines that will show you, over a period of time, what’s working and what’s not.

In short, if you come up with a great idea to market to customers and prospects, chances are it’ll be a good idea a year from now. Since it takes time for good ideas to work, stick to your original brand-communication campaign. But the only way to be completely certain is to track your progress.

Comment on this article: peter@Aartrijk.com