Timing is Everything

   When is the best time to ‘ramp up’ your marketing plan? “There are certainly a number of schools of thought regarding the best time to enhance marketing efforts,” says Todd Rockey, Vice President of Strategic Development for Marketing Informatics in Indianapolis. “Do you wait until business is slumping or do you build marketing efforts upon your success while business is great? My experience has proven that the best time to enhance your marketing efforts is when it seems you need it the least. I am a firm believer in building upon the success you are having, by intelligently allocating your resources (money, time, and people) while they are available, and parlaying your business strengths into a bigger and better organization. It's much easier to promote your business and sell your products and services from a position of strength than from a position of declining financials, lost clients, or negative results.”

Planning for Success

   When you find a strategy that’s working and repeatable, by all means add it to your annual planning calendar. Alan Hartman of Legacy Partners in Macon, Georgia has developed an annual strategy that helps him keep specific projects on track. “I focus my direct mail efforts during five key months,” he explains. “I send out flyers on term insurance, annuities and LTC during September, October, November, February and March. January is a tough month right after the holidays, and in the summertime many people are gone. But the promotions from those five months usually generate a reasonable number of prospects to work on throughout the year. You have to spend your money where you get the best results.”

Regular Maintenance

   Experts recommend following a regular schedule – such as at the beginning of every month – to review your marketing plans and make needed adjustments or corrections.

   “Advisors should ‘tune up’ as much as ‘ramp up,’” says Ryan Urban, president of Insure Colorado in Colorado Springs. “I strongly recommend a regular review and re-organization of an advisor's marketing plan to insure that it's still appropriate and up-to-date.  Delete the strategies that are not working, beef up those that are, and create new strategies.  And just as important, be sure you have a specific plan to follow.  Creating a marketing plan is the easy part; follow-through is a different story.  Know exactly who you're going to contact; know exactly how you will handle that contact; know exactly how you will follow up.”

Reevaluating Seminars and Workshops

   Are your workshops still generating strong response, or is it time to rethink your approach? “The seminar results are no longer as fruitful as they once were,” an advisor laments. “I still get about the same number of attendees but the conversion to appointments and the conversion from appointment to sale has declined significantly.”

   “Workshops and seminars are deteriorating, because more advisors doing them and there has been some negative press about ‘free dinners’ and so forth. We’re all combating that image,” say Leonard Martin of Leonard Martin & Associates, Inc. in Warwick, Rhode Island. “I always invite my current clients to attend our seminars and bring their guests. I usually have five or six of my existing customers among 25 to 30 new attendees, and it’s a great way of establishing credibility because my clients can address concerns and speak to the issue of ‘Is he for real?’ from their own experience.”

Seasonal Strategies

  Watch for promotional opportunities throughout the year. “Local communities always have senior-oriented events at regular times during the year, such a senior expos and holiday dances,” says Urban. “Advisors need to stay connected to the senior services community to know exactly when these events are and how they can become as involved as possible. Planning ahead like this helps advisors keep their marketing budgets organized. Also, staying connected within the local senior services community keeps networking efforts alive.”

Replenishing Your Referrals

   Are you actively recruiting ‘centers of influence’ like CPAs, attorneys and bankers that you can team up with to share referrals and combine marketing efforts? Are you maximizing your time and money in your involvement with groups like the chamber of commerce? Do you consistently ask your current customers for referrals? To increase his referrals Leonard Martin recently hosted both a luncheon and dinner for groups of CPAs. Martin gave a talk geared toward tax and retirement issues related to IRAs and 401Ks. The meetings attracted over 50 CPAs, all of whom have the potential to send referrals Martin’s way. 

Reevaluate the Marketing ‘Mix’

   “Marketing strategies are as diverse as the businesses and organizations with whom we partner,” says Rockey. “The variables that enter into the marketing mix strategy are numerous and unique. For instance, we serve many great non-profit organizations that focus their yearly fundraising activities around just a few key events. With limited marketing budgets, it is important that they allocate resources towards those premier events.”

   “On the other side of the equation, we serve businesses that must continually compete compete for market share and for whom name and product recognition must be nearly immediate. Awareness and promotional campaigns serving that community of clients require repeated, consistent branding and messaging. In my more than twenty years of experience developing, implementing, measuring, and managing marketing strategy and efforts for a very wide range of industries and organizations, those who have performed the best were those who planned and executed a precise ongoing marketing strategy and then supplemented those efforts with well-planned and intentional ‘special events.’”

Gratitude and Good Prospects

   “I hold quarterly client appreciation lunches for my customers and their colleagues,” Martin says. “CSA (The Society of Certified Senior Advisors) helped me put it together, and I assembled a group of professionals focused on helping seniors in the community: an attorney, a reverse mortgage specialist, an accountant, a home health agency, a realtor that specializes in the senior market and a medical equipment expert. We work together and offer presentations on social and health issues in the senior community.”

   Martin’s last luncheon attracted 36 people, and the experts split the catering expenses. Martin presented a half-hour program supplied by CSA entitled “American Crisis in Living” about the challenges posed by Americans’ longer lifespan.  He then introduced the panel and led a question and answer session. After the presentation, a third of the attendees scheduled private consultations. (Also, Martin notes, the attorney on the panel became a client!)

Stay Focused

   “I think that one of the most important areas that marketing managers and strategists need to focus upon is the area of intelligent targeting,” says Rockey. “The return on the investment one makes on analysis of their client base, identifying their best target candidates based upon that analysis, and focusing a message and offer to that group is outstanding. Through intelligent targeting, any organization, from businesses of any size to non-profits to Government agencies and Universities -- can increase the efficiency of their marketing spend and in turn spend less on production and fulfillment costs and still increase qualified lead generation, closed sales, and greater revenue.”

   Martin sums it up succinctly: “You can’t keep throwing money at things that aren’t working,” he says. “Salesmanship and the days of calling fifty people to get five appointments are gone. I’ve seen a lot of changes in 31 years.  The bottom line is, we have to be good marketers. It’s not about products any more, it’s about ideas.”

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[Sidebar]

Jump-Start Your Creativity

Need a couple of fresh ideas to enliven your marketing plan? Read how three savvy marketers created memorable ways to develop interest in their products and services:

Communication Rules

   Alan Hartman recently introduced a program that helps families talk about legacy and inheritance issues. “Allianz Group created a program jointly with Dr. Ken Dychtwald called ‘Living Legacy’ that is devoted to converting the ‘Generation Gap’ into a positive program by eliminating the communication gap between family members,” Hartman says.  “Initially we have meetings with families and charge a fee that may be offset against product commissions.  If they want to use their personal advisors, we simply charge a fee.”

   Hartman encourages his clients to bring their family members in to the meeting to help everyone talk through what are often awkward and delicate issues. “This helps everybody grasp what we are trying to accomplish,” he says, adding, “The increasing number of ‘blended families’ brings new challenges, and it is important for people to work out how those dynamics will affect inheritance issues. More families need to have these conversations, and it’s all about communication; if you don’t communicate now, you end up with major problems later.” 

Sweet Strategy

   Ryan Urban often shares this example of creative, light-handed friendly marketing with agents he’s training:  “When I was Executive Director of a large home health care company, I had my nurses make a "route" of senior-oriented doctors' offices that they could visit to keep our name on their minds. We purchased 150 apothecary (candy) jars and had our company name and logo printed on them.  We then filled each jar with Hershey's Kisses. The total cost was about $500.”

   “The nurses then visited the offices, introduced themselves, and left a jar of candy and a brochure with each office manager. No selling, no pushing. When they left, they'd say, ‘By the way, I'll be back in a month to fill up that jar for you!’ The offices loved it, the nurses went back regularly to fill the jars (and cement their relationships with the office staff), and we received referral after referral. Chocolate rocks!”

Star Power

   Todd Rockey found an unforgettable way to present a new product. “One promotion we had a lot of fun with – that was also instrumental in generating several million dollars worth of sales – was created for a small software development company with a limited marketing budget,” says Rockey. “They were releasing a new version of their very successful software product and needed to not only provide potential new clients with that information, but needed to inform their existing clients of the upcoming release and impending upgrade. We treated the release like the release of a new action movie -- complete with a professionally developed movie trailer profiling all the ‘exciting enhancements,’ VIP and backstage passes to the ‘premiere,’ popcorn and theatre-sized candy. We packaged the promotion in movie reel tins and sent them to those whom we were targeting as new purchasers as well as to key stakeholders within the existing client base. The program was very successful, generating greater than 90% response rate and a 30% close rate. The return on investment for that project was just a little over 5,400% within the first four months.”