2) Simplify Processes and Sale Lead Generation / Programs Into Practical, Linear Ones

Here is what to do when Social Media and Web Marketing are not Netting New Clients/Revenues for Your Financial Advisory/ Insurance Agency

The short answer?

1) Do opposite of what industry peers are.

2) Simplify processes and sale lead generation / programs into practical, linear ones.

3) Modify the inputs necessary to recognize more short-term new business activity / revenue.

1) SOCIAL MEDIA

Want-ads for social media and digital marketers on LinkedIn ™, Career Builder ™ and the popular freelance web sites like Fiverr ™ are more common than any other job within the marketing discipline.

A good number of financial / insurance agencies get a marketing consultant handling their social media posting.

Reality is, as the editor of Target Marketing Magazine and others credible (and with no sales agenda) have pointed out, social media marketing is hardly easy… or cheap.

So here is what one does if / when social media is not producing sales leads / new customers like the marketing authors / SBA workshops / small business leads groups swear by.

1) Find and hire an influential person / organization in the same or related industry to cross-promote.

Simple and practical.

Anyone can do web content marketing and SEO (search engine optimization).

When supply outruns demand, price is driven down.

So, use logic for a moment.

A worker sitting at a laptop cutting and pasting web content on Wordpress™ for 20 dollars is qualified to help promote financial service XYZ on the internet?

Readers will want to avoid saying, “Well, it’s better than nothing.”

That is an awful attitude to have about ways of getting customers / revenues.

2) AUTOMATED E-MAILS / CONTACT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

Part One: Auto-responders and e-mail marketing software make sending lots of news updates / announcements fast and easy.

The wealthier, more established providers such as Constant Contact ™ and GoDaddy™ advertise free intro offers on television.

Deliver the latest product announcements, upcoming events, et cetera via e-mail by using ABC software. Send 1,000,000 e-mails for just $X per-month.

*FYI -- sending the mass e-mail is the easy part.

This is communicating with existing customers / contacts.

Business economics here.

Which is easy and cheap?

Communicating with an existing customer or identifying and bringing in new ones?

So here is what one would do instead of being the 20th financial agency of the week sending auto e-mails to existing clients.

Focus energies on the part internet marketing services cannot package up and sell a subscription for. The rarer thing: identifying and communicating with someone else’s clients.

Part Two: Promotional e-mail marketing is used by financial services firms to get new clients / assets / recruit producers.

Unlike Part One, direct e-mail marketing is having a third-party marketing service create ads, banners, HTML text messages and send them in bulk to perfect strangers.

Responses are statistically minimal.

Ignore response / clicks for a moment, however.

What is worse is this: the marketers that own the e-mail addresses would not be in business very long if their lists and bulk emails were exclusive.

Meaning… financial agency / investment advisor A pays for 50,000 e-mails. Then B calls and orders 50,000 for their announcement. Then C and D follow suit.

Marketers handling this will tend to re-use graphic templates, HTML code, offer formats, et cetera. (They have a finite number of such things and employees physically doing the actual work).

E-mail lists are finite. Meaning, the same 50,000 human beings are receiving e-mails four times that day. (From A, B, C, and D).

Knowing nothing about e-mail advertising, what might one presume the statistical probability of Miss / Mister XYZ on the receiving end of these e-mails is reading the headlines?

So here is what one might do when bulk email promotions to cold lists do not net leads / new business activity:

Test headlines relentlessly for maximum response rates.

Identify someone with a contacts lists. Compensate that person / organization to deliver promotional e-mails legitimately via their social media, e-mails in a CRM (customer relationship management) system, wherever.

*Make certain the working agreement is exclusive to avoid repeating the situation in the above example.

3) PAY-PER-CLICK ADVERTISING ON SEARCH ENGINES

Most consultants and industry magazines will publish reports and research studies as to PPC (pay-per-click) ad clicks.

Assume one-half of one percent clicks to be industry median, give or take. (Or readers can double it to one or two percent if it makes them happy).

What is more practical and straightforward than betting on one in 1,000 internet users to see the ad for ABC’s product in the top of a search engine query and click?

Here is what to one would do instead of metaphorically pier fishing (in a big ocean):

Wait! Not even pier fishing.

Much of financial / insurance SEM (search engine marketing) is like commercial fishing.

The ocean is big. Cyber-space is big. Lines of insurance products – life, disability, high-end P & C for yachts in Miami, for example, are a like big metaphoric ocean.

AIG, Nationwide and MetLife spend huge money to prepare big 100-foot boats with a large crew to go out for a month and drop nets for miles.

They “kill everything that moves” for a month because a lot of fish will get caught in those nets.

So here is what one would do if she / he lacks the budget / manpower / patience of a MetLife, AIG or whomever:

1) Abandon the PPC ads on search engines. (And just about everywhere).

2) Narrow down the universe of one’s specific buyer of XYZ line of insurance / product type, for example.

3) Contact a publisher / organization (or any party who influences a group) and then run specific ads to specific persons who already have and buy XYZ line(s) of it.

4) ART / WEB DESIGN / CREATIVE BRAINSTORMING

Cascading style sheets, Bootstrap™ software language, Wordpress™ and other web content management systems, colorful mind maps and pie charts have their place.

If spending time on these activities can be proven positively correlated to netting more policy owners looking to switch / new business activity / sales growth, then ignore number four above.

Over 90 percent of the time, those responsible for lead generation -- i.e. promoting insurance products / investment management at medium and big well-known insurance companies and investments firms -- never actually sold the financial products they market. (Or a similar product).[1]

Here is what one would do instead of spending time on art, brand messaging meetings and creative brainstorming sessions:

1) Adopt a Japanese QM (quality management) maneuver instead. More “marketing talk / ideas” are unnecessary. Spare the organization from paying everyone’s salaries for adding to the “ideas pile.”

2) Evaluate markets / client profiles and back into how to offer them what they want / wish they had / are without presently.

3) Eliminate “creative presentation” because of status quo. If that were working so great, insurance / RIAs / managing directors would not be reading this far along.

4) If undecided / disagreements arise as to what product / combination of products customers want to own / wish they had, asking them is viable. This costs little. Mainly time and soliciting outside “helpers.” The author was a consumer behavior researcher for the Nielsen Publishing Company for over four years.

North American consumers (helpers) will generally lend their opinions via survey. Standardize here.

The Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) method adopted from QM engineering here.

Control the questions and answer options so everyone hears the same questions the same way and chooses from the same handful of simple answers.

WHAT NEXT?

Entertain this - given readers likely manage / own / operate a registered investment advisory, insurance agency or investment counseling organization:

1) Once Joe Kernan is sitting around with the others on Squawk Box after market close talking about hot stock picks, that stock already made its run.

This is fundamental economics.

2) Lots of financial services agencies and Broker / Dealers sell every line of insurance / mutual fund / U.S. Treasury bonds.

(Not saying it is responsible or right. Just saying it occurs).

Some even have brokerage units where they will write business via outside firms for reduced compensation if need be.

3) Shoot the market straight; because many in insurance / risk / financial services do not.

Even though it goes against what a lot of sales trainers encourage, someone savvy in insurance / risk / investments knows not all products are equal or interchangeable.

Clients are not doing the favor by sitting in an appointment.

A would-be client clicking an ad, offer, or sitting in an appointment is supposed to have something to gain better than what they have presently.

If not, is there a point is trying to sell them on switching policies / investments / rolling over their qualified plan?

Marketers and journalists say otherwise.

That the world is in a new “digital age” and social media on the internet is end all, be all.

Readers know they are wrong.

Just like readers knew they were banks were wrong with huge media campaigns encouraging consumers to buy their dream houses with no-interest adjustable-rate home loans from Countrywide and Washington Mutual a decade ago.

Try and think of cheap, easy internet marketing as sort of like that.

For example, “A zillion web users clicking their little mice. Somebody has to want to switch insurance policies, mutual funds or would love to know special risk underwriting exists for a given situation.”

Then consider this: “I don’t throw darts at a board, kid. I bet on sure things.” – Gordon Gekko. “Wall Street.” Directed by Oliver Stone, 1987.

So, when social media and internet marketing are not netting new customers / revenues for an investments / insurance agency, simplifying the sales lead generation programming is the simpler, low-tech maneuver a QM (quality manager) would put to work.

This is playing at a different level than simply enlisting more marketing minds, social media, internet, and creativity.

ABOUT

A Life Health Pro article named Atlantic Insurance among five insurance marketing organizations / BGAs with a game-changing unique value proposition for financial advisors.

Atlantic's 24-hour concierge service for advisor platform delivers essentials to the nuts-and-bolts logistics of underwriting and placing life insurance transactions.

The platform was implemented in 2004 to decrease the cycle time required to design and underwrite insurance transactions faster than industry averages.

For more information, please contact:

Corey Weiner, Economist (Applied Business)

Atlantic Insurance Brokerage

(877) 561 - 2422

join.atlanticinsurancebrokerage.com

linkedin.com/in/weinercorey

[1] Weiner, Corey. job title / company search. 2015.