Insurance Marketing Strategies and Ideas!

Insurance Marketing Strategies, Your Prospecting Letter System, And Much More!

This insurance marketing strategies article is more like a report because I've loaded it with tons of ideas you can put to use today.

Insurance Marketing Ideas and Tips and How To Step Up Your Insurance Prospecting Marketing Game:

In Million Dollar Prospecting Letters you received a marketing system that can be modeled to help you get more appointments with business owners, or consumers.

The prospecting letter system and insurance marketing ideas work best for marketing to business owners because you can call them after you finish your sequence of mailings (check your states laws in this regard).

I have received a number of critiques for insurance and financial planning letters (I used to offer free critiques of sales letters for purchasing Million Dollar Prospecting Letters or ARMS), and there are a few glaring problems with these letters.

Use the insurance marketing ideas and tips to step up your prospecting and lead generation game...

Here's What To Avoid:

The insurance marketing letters are not targeted. Every letter I critique is geared towards businesses in general. Not a specific niche. You will get better results when you market to niches. For example:

a. Dry Cleaners
b. Carpet Cleaners
c. Italian Restaurant Owners
d. Chiropractors

A General niche would be 'Small Business Owners'. Even Restaurant owners could be considered to be a broad niche, but at least it's more defined than a small business owner. A true niche would be Italian Restaurant owners.

Why Does It Matter?

Because once your prospect sees that you know about his or her industry and what problems they are having, and that you are focused on helping them specifically, your insurance direct mail marketing response rates jump.

What niche to choose? This is easy:

1. Look into your past employment
2. Look at family members occupations
3. Look at your clients and the businesses they are in
4. What is your favorite hobby?

More insurance marketing strategies and ideas:

There are many ways to identify a niche. You probably know more about it than you think. And if you don't? Get a few trade journals and newsletters from the niche, and go to the association websites and study up a bit.

After You Find Your Niche:

Get a list of local businesses in the niche you choose. Refine the list. Then, get your sequence of letters going.

Here is how to use these insurance marketing ideas and tips and step up your game...

In Million Dollar Prospecting Letters I recommend a basic letter format. But now I want you to step it up. The insurance marketing strategy of 'Wowing' your prospect has become a lost art. Here's a few tips and secrets on how to accomplish the 'Wow' factor.

For example, instead of sending the third or fourth letter in an envelope, send it in a Fed Ex Envelope (or the poor man's version could be Priority Mail). Do you think this will get past the gatekeeper?

What if you put in a disposable cell phone to help them make the call to you? Or, how about hand delivering it (a paid courier).

I recently received an email from an agent or planner and he said, 'That's too expensive'! I challenge you...

Look at your appointment ratio and your closing ratio. Is it average, or good? Because all you really need to make a profit is an average appointment ratio and closing ratio. Of course you should strive to improve your ratios because it's money in the bank. Let me explain...

Let's say your commission on one group plan is $4000 for the year. Not including renewals and selling a policy to the business owners, and upselling buy sell agreements or whatever (thousands there alone).

Now, let's say you send 10 letters a week to your niche, and you send a sequence of three letters 10 days apart. The first 2 only cost about .50 give or take, each. The fed ex is $15-$20. The list is $100.

Now, let's also say that you have a small list of 100 businesses total. The total cost would be about $2200, not including a disposable cell phone (try it). Ok, so you are investing a total of $2100 on a list of 100 businesses.

Do you think you could get 5 or ten appointments and sell one business owner on a group plan with these insurance marketing ideas and tips? If you said Yes, then you are in the Green around $1800. Not including upsells and referrals from this business owner.

You could accomplish these results with a number 10 envelope, but I challenge you to step your game up.

Still nervous? Why not do a split test. Send one half the letters, and the other half the fed ex. See which one works best.

I'm A Financial Planner! Not an Insurance Agent!

All of the insurance marketing ideas and tips are for you too. Here is a special marketing page for financial advisors.

If coming up with insurance marketing strategies is difficult for you, you are not alone.

But there are all kinds of insurance marketing ideas that you can implement starting today. Insurance marketing ideas that will get results and put more clients on the books.

Before I get into some insurance marketing strategies and insurance marketing ideas for you to study, here's a little known marketing secret that a smart agent will take to the bank for the rest of his or her career: Study marketing systems and ideas outside of your industry and adapt them into yours.

That's right. If you want a plethora of instant and effective insurance marketing strategies, they are right in front of you. Almost every marketing strategy that a business is using effectively to get customers can be adapted into your industry.

Confession

Many of the ideas I come up with and offer to clients are as a result of this very secret. I have rarely invented my own insurance marketing strategies, or any marketing strategy for that matter. Maybe even the ones I came up with have been used before...

The truth is, any of the marketing strategies you get from outside your industry can be used (often) with even more effectiveness in the financial services industry. They can become powerful insurance marketing strategies. Here's why...

The insurance industry is over-saturated and all the agencies and agents are spying on each other. They want to copy what the "other guy" is doing. This is a formula for disaster because what happens is everyone starts using the same kinds of insurance marketing strategies which dilutes response and confuses the consumer.

The insurance marketing strategies that agents are copying have morphed into horrible, image oriented advertising that does wonders for the ego of the agent or planner, but nothing for generating leads and clients.

I cover all this in more in my marketing course so lets move on to a few insurance marketing strategies. These strategies were taken from outside the industry and applied to the insurance and financial planning industry...

Highly Recommended Online Insurance Marketing Article
(read these after you finish this article):

Insurance Internet Marketing

Marketing Strategy 1. Reinvent your service: Maybe the most powerful marketing strategy, so important in marketing.

Take for example a creative carpet cleaner came up with a "FREE Carpet Audit" (which they took from another successful business and applied it to their industry ;-)

The audit was basically a free analysis of your carpet. The result was a comprehensive report on your carpet, what is wrong with it, and how it can be fixed using various carpet treatments. This audit instantly took the struggling carpet cleaner out of the pricing game and into the VALUE game.

The result was a higher perceived value of his services, and received more qualified leads and referrals (a lot more).

If you want insurance marketing strategies that will make you the expert in your industry and get more qualified leads, this is it.

You already have a fact finder. Use that. Rename it. Expand on it. And there is your "Audit".

Strategy 2. KNBR Radio. One of my favorite late afternoon radio programs is called "The Rat and Mr. T". The Rat is a well known local radio personality, and Mr. T is Tom Tolbert, a retired NBA player (played for the Warriors, my favorite team, and now he's a media personality). There are many great insurance marketing strategies (or lessons) you can learn from this program. Here are two important ones...

How does the title of that radio program sound? Not very professional right? I know, it's a sports channel. But it doesn't matter! All kinds of millionaires and even billionaires listen to the program. They even call in and participate. Why? Because people want to be entertained. So the first lesson is this...

Put an end to professional boring correspondence. Nobody reads it, and it makes you look stuffy and boring.

End this by starting with the most underrated insurance marketing strategies in the insurance industry...A newsletter. An interesting newsletter that people want to read. Include pictures of clients and success stories, contests, etc. The idea is to be creative and get people involved. A fun to read newsletter is one of the most effective insurance marketing strategies available to you.

Lesson 2: The Rat and Mr. T are supposed to talk about sports. And they do, but they also go off on endless tangents and discuss other topics that have nothing to do with sports. They do this because they found that their audience responded better to it and they got more listeners. It keeps people interested because it gets old if they are always talking about sports. Plus, showing a little bit of your personality gets people to feel like they know you better.

What Does This Have To Do With Marketing Insurance?

Your newsletter doesn't always have to be about wealth accumulation and planning. For example, you can write an informative newsletter on wealth accumulation one month (and of course you are going to do that in a fun way...maybe tell a story). And in next months newsletter you can have a snippet on wealth accumulation (it's not important this month), but make the main focus about about one of your clients who, for example, did an endurance race and few bits about that. Maybe you can refer them to a unique store that has interesting gifts and gadgets.

In addition to the newsletter you could send various clients a bit of info, an article, even a book on a new subject they recently became interested in.

I am just thinking of this off the top of my head, but breaking up the monotony is important to the success of your insurance marketing strategies.

Strategy 3. Write with your client in mind, as if you were writing to a friend. But don't talk about yourself! Remember those letters that come once a year from friends or family and they describe in excruciating detail everything about themselves and how great their family is? You know, the letters that are written in a tiny font and they go on and on about themselves? Can't stand those letters, right? People don't want to know how great you are. They want to know that you are thinking of them, that you care, and that you want to help them. Your writing and correspondence (and your advertising) should emulate the same feelings.

SIDE BAR: I know what you are thinking about these insurance marketing strategies. You are wondering where the "meat" is. Where the actual,"How do you get a client to come in the door tomorrow?" is , right? Well, these really are insurance marketing strategies. They are strategies that will set the tone and launch your lead generation efforts to all new levels. Sure, these insurance marketing strategies will take a little bit of time, but patience is the key here.

You reap what you sow!

For example, once you start your newsletter and send it to clients every month, what are you doing? You are building more rapport with them, right?

So after you've sent out your fun and interesting newsletter a few times and have contacted them for different reasons (birthday, just to see how they are doing, etc.), the next time you send out a newsletter with a referral sheet (hint hint), you'll get more referrals (especially when you ask for referrals to the newsletter...another hint/tip).

And when you ask for referrals in person you'll get a better response too!

Insurance Marketing Strategy 4. Generate Leads and Referrals daily. Make a goal and put it in writing that you are going to get at least 10 qualified referrals every week and generate at least 20 qualified leads. Yes, go write it down now.

OK, did you write it down? Great. You'll be surprised at how well your subconscious will work to achieve this. Now make a conscious effort to ask all your clients politely if they know anyone else interested your services. Secondly, after the second or third or fourth newsletter (the fun one we just talked about), put in a referral sheet. Third, create a lead generation system that is systematized...

Be sure it goes to a targeted list of prospects every month. Test different lead generation strategies...postcards, sales letters, and even unique packaging.

Insurance Marketing Strategy #5: Online Marketing. There is an enormous opportunity to generate leads using social media, pay per click, mobile phone marketing, and even smart phone applications. Read these articles for more information: