Agency Marketing Campaign Tips

This is the last article in the series of articles oninsurance agency marketing and PR planning- fornow. Some of the articles in this series includeInsurance Agency Marketing and PR, InsuranceAgency PR Ideas and Insurance Agents MarketingTips.

Insurance Agency Marketing Campaign Budget

The budget is the most inflexible part of aninsurance agency's marketing campaign. Stay ontop of budgetary concerns with these tips:

Get price estimates before planning a marketing campaign to help ease budgetary concerns later.

Remember to include "people costs," including the time it takes to execute marketing campaigntactics, in an insurance agency's budget planning meetings.

If items get cut, as they often do, have a back-up plan. If you don't have money to do a direct mailmarketing campaign, focus on email, Web and inbound phone marketing.

Marketing Campaign Tips

Establish progress review checkpoints to evaluate an insurance agency's marketing campaign.Before starting a direct mail, electronic marketing or PR campaign, determine how specificcampaign results will be tracked, and how frequently results will be reported.

Use historic activity to help benchmark a direct mail marketing campaign. For example, "In theyears 2004-2006, ABC Insurance Agency's new customers flatlined. In 2nd quarter 2007, wecompleted a direct mail marketing campaign and 200 new customers signed up for insurancepolicies."

Tracking campaign response codes is a clear-cut way to measure the effectiveness of an insuranceagency's direct mail marketing campaign. "300 new customers referenced Access Code 20072Qwhen they joined ABC Insurance Agency in 2nd Quarter 2007. Access Code 20072Q appeared onABC Insurance Agency's 'Nice To Meet You' direct mail postcards sent in March 2007."

Website analytics, customer surveys, unique 800 numbers and unique Web sign-up pages helpmeasure marketing campaign results.

Collect press releases and articles placed in magazines or newspapers, and save all of the clippings.Public relations and image branding efforts can be difficult to measure, but no one can argue withthe written word.

Compare sales objectives after the campaign to pre-campaign results.

Not sure how much agency growth you can attribute to a direct mail marketing campaign? You'renot alone. When surveyed, most marketing executives say they don't know how to measuremarketing ROI. Whatever method is employed to track results, stick with it long enough to showhistorical data- if methodologies are switched too often, no one will ever get on top of marketingcampaign results.

Insurance Agency Competitive Intelligence

Competitive intelligence gives insights into an insurance agency's marketing campaign results:

Test email marketing campaign results once the program is complete to see if there was an increasein awareness. Use focus groups to determine the insurance agency's presence in the community.And a marketing research survey can provide insights into how the agency is perceived.

Determine what worked and what didn't work in the insurance agency's email marketing campaign.And then stick with what works. That doesn't mean continuing to re-use the same marketingmaterials, but if a direct mail marketing campaign netted you the highest return, run another one.

Measuring campaign results is an imperfect (sometimes painful!) process. But providing results froma successful campaign at budgetary planning meetings will likely net a boost in the marketingbudget next year.