5 Steps to Plan and Execute a Direct Marketing Campaign
There are many different ways to market your service, which include all forms of advertising, direct mail, telemarketing, referral programs, sponsorships, and logo/image development. Regardless of the methodology, repetition and persistence will always be key factors.
While great commercials and print ads can be effective in the short term, to ensure long-term success, you need to be in front of your potential customers as much as is affordable. The following is a simple plan for setting a revenue goal, creating and implementing a plan to reach the goal, and a post analysis to critically analyze the results to look for areas of improvement and decide which parts work and which need to be fixed.
The setting: You have set a new business premium goal and, due to carrier requirements, agency revenue requirements, or personal standards you have created for yourself, you must farm a plan to either meet or exceed that goal. The good news is that you’ve completed the first stage—now you need to plan and implement.
Step 1: Make sure that the premium exists in the marketplace. Is it a realistic goal? A few calls to some list vendors based on your target criteria will quickly tell you that. Determine the total number of businesses that meet your criteria, estimate the average premium per account and voila! You now know how many new sales you’ll need to meet the goal.
The traditional way to get new commercial clients usually requires face-to-face appointments with decision makers (optimally at renewal time). It’s not enough to hope that a few well-placed ads or referrals will guarantee you enough business to meet your goal. To get these face-to-face appointments, you need to determine the businesses’ renewal dates. One of the fastest and most effective ways to determine your target prospects’ renewal dates is to make cold calls.
Step 2: Decide who makes the calls. Whether or not you do it yourself, hire someone, or employ the services of an outside firm, these calls are the next step. Get your name in front of the prospects and ask if and when they will be quoting their insurance. Some will share this information and some will not. The ones that will share the information are now in your pipeline for future appointment contact, and that contact is much more effective if you’ve employed various techniques to keep your name in front of the prospects.
These techniques and technologies include but are not limited to: direct mail, e-mail, faxing, website forums and newsletters. It’s critical to keep your name in front of these prospects because your best hope is to become #2 in their mind (their incumbent agent will no doubt be #1). Your goal is to become their first option when they feel the need to examine their options.
Step 3: Utilize your lead pipeline and get appointments. You’ve already calculated how many cold calls it takes to secure the x-date for a business, now you must determine how many x-dates you need to contact to set an appointment. You should already know how many appointments it takes to make a sale. If you go through these numbers ahead of time, you will know whether or not your plan is realistic long before you spend valuable time and money.
Step 4: If the numbers make sense, start now and do not let up. Taking advantage of available technology is the best way to do this. Establish a strong Internet presence, allocate resources in your agency to handle inbound inquiries, and make sure that the prospects have multiple methods for getting in touch with you. When they make the decision to contact you via phone, fax, e-mail or web, be sure that you are ready to react. Keep track of your information in a good contact management system and make sure that you can run reports to get necessary information at all times; i.e., number of suspects, leads, appointments, proposals, sales, etc.
Step 5: Analyze the program over a 12- to 18-month time frame. Check your figures. Did you meet or exceed your goal? If so, congratulations! If you fell short, determine where the program failed. It will be easy to determine since there are very few items to analyze.
If you closed the target number of sales but failed to generate enough revenue, then you need to target larger accounts. If you failed to generate enough leads to provide enough appointments, then you need to target more suspects. If you set enough appointments but failed to generate enough sales, you need to make sure your markets are competitive and reevaluate your closing ratios.
Understanding past successes (or failures) is vital to your overall marketing strategy. Accurate post-analysis using relevant, quantifiable information pays big dividends.
Darren N. Clevenger is the CEO of DCM Inc., a leading commercial lines prospecting company. He can be reached by e-mail at dclevenger@dcmpower.com.