Tag Archives: marketing

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Helping Agents Stay Ahead in the Technology Game

As I travel across the country talking to agents, the question I hear most often is, “Can you just give us a couple quick tips on the top things we can do right now to make our agency more profitable and effective?”

The answer is, YES!

As an insurance technology consultant and editor, I’ve been able to discover the cool new tools, websites, gizmos and gadgets that can make your life easier, more productive, and more competitive.

I have created a new, weekly emailed newsletter — Steve Anderson’s Tech Tip — that will highlight one new “thing” that will help an agency increase productivity and effectiveness: Tech Tip is short, to the point, and quick to read.

After working with literally hundreds of agencies of every shape and size, I’ve come up with what I believe are the best agency technology resources available anywhere.

Is there a charge for Tech Tip? The answer is: NO!

This is my way of supporting agents in these trying economic times — not to mention that I really do love finding the latest gizmos and gadgets that can increase productivity — just ask my wife!

All you have to do to sign up is go to www.SteveAnderson.com and complete the simple Tech Tip subscription form on the right sidebar. Once you verify your email address, you will begin receiving the newsletter every Thursday morning. And, of course, I will never give your name out to anyone and you can unsubscribe at any time.

One more thing: As you begin to get my Tech Tip newsletter, always feel free to email me with comments, new ideas or products that have worked for you. I’ll check them out and spread the word!

Question: What technology tools do you use to gain a competitive edge and increase profitability?

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I’m Helping Randy Get His Dream Job

I have played a very small part in an interesting marketing experiment that might be a good lesson for how agencies could leverage some of these new marketing tools.

A little background — I ran into my neighbor and friend, Randy Elrod, and his wife, Chris, at a local Mexican restaurant last week. They asked us (my daughter Stephanie) to join them and during the conversation I found out they were strategizing on how Randy could win a contest to land his dream job.

Murphy-Goode is a family-owned winery located within Sonoma Country’s Alexander Valley. They decided they wanted to leverage Web 2.0 tools to promote their wines to a wider audience. They wanted someone who really knows blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to get the word out about their wines. Randy is that person. He has taught me a lot about using social media.

To find just the right person, Murphy-Goode created a contest. They have asked each applicant to create a 60-second video and upload it to the contest site. They are then asking each applicant to demonstrate their social media influence by having their friends and followers vote for their video. Getting the most votes doesn’t guarantee a job, but it does help get an interview — the next step in the process. They will pick 10 people to interview and from them select the final candidate. The winner will live at the winery (at no cost) for six months and be paid $10,000 per month. The title of the position is: “Murphy-Goode Wine Country Lifestyle Correspondent.”

We talked for a while and brainstormed on what his 60-second video should look like. They invited me to their house the next night to participate in a tasting of all of Murphy-Goode’s wines. Randy wanted to make sure he liked the wines! So we tasted eight bottles ranging from white to red. I was glad I could walk home!

My small part is during the tasting they shot some video for background and I am in the final video he submitted to Murphy-Goode. Well, at least the back of me is in the video.

I want to help Randy, and you can help as well. Why would you do this? Because it is an opportunity for you to experience firsthand how you might be able to use social web tools in your agency.

Here is your part. Please take 70 seconds to complete these four simple steps:

  1. Watch Randy’s very cool video on the Murphy-Goode website.
  2. Enter your email address to vote for Randy.
  3. Wait for the verification email and click on the link inside the message body. Note: Your vote will not count until you do this!
  4. Tweet this post or mention it on your Facebook page, or anywhere else you might have some connections.

That’s it. Pretty neat little experiment, huh? Not only is Murphy-Goode getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in free publicity, they are using the tools they want to develop to find just the right person for the job.

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The New Sales Manager

Recently I had a conversation with Will Richard, an education consultant for The Society of CIC. We were discussing what agents need to do in order to be effective marketers. It seems that many agencies are having a hard time understanding how to best use the Internet as a marketing tool.

During our conversation, Will made a comment that got me thinking. He said that he believes the role of the traditional sales manager is going to change. For most successful agencies, a major success factor is a focus on sales. Some agencies even go so far as to hire a sales manager. In the past, sales managers have been responsible for motivating producers to sell more.

Enter the Internet. People today commonly use it to research and purchase insurance—a fact that will influence the new roles of the sales manager and producer.

“The new sales manager will be an effective Internet marketer and marketing system,” said Will. He went on to explain that the successful agency of the future will not rely simply on motivating producers to meet more people and sell more insurance. Traditional networking techniques that have worked well for many years are giving way to new techniques that don’t require face-to-face interaction.

This is especially true for small commercial accounts.

Selling vs. marketing
I teach a class called “Advanced Internet Marketing Techniques,” so I’ve spent quite a bit of time researching, learning, and then teaching other agents how the Internet can be an extremely effective marketing tool. The problem is that most agencies are not good marketers. They sell well, but they don’t know how to market.

Marketing is the process of identifying—out of the masses of people—those with whom you can create an interest in your product and service. The new sales manager will be a master at marketing so that prospects will flow into an agency.

The marketing skills you need to be successful aren’t hard to come by if you take the time to learn. As with anything, there are techniques and processes that work well—and others that used to work well but are no longer relevant.

I can count on one hand the number of agencies I feel are effective at marketing. This select group of agencies spends a tremendous amount of time learning, experimenting and testing, implementing—and then modifying and starting all over again.

Creating a stream of new prospects who are interested in your products and services will be a key to surviving and thriving in the current economic situation. Hiring more producers may be an outdated strategy. An additional strategy must be to work at learning how to market—and the Internet must be a key part of your plan.

I see great opportunities for agencies that are willing to embrace this trend, spend time learning about it, and then implement what is learned.

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Easily Send Video Emails

Getting your message through to clients and prospects takes creativity. Anything you can do to make your message stand out in overloaded Outlook inboxes is a good thing. Eyejot is a Web-based service that allows you to quickly and easily send video e-mail (v-mail) to anyone. All you need is a Webcam and an Eyejot account. The best part is that the basic service is free (at least for now).

Once you have a Webcam and an Eyejot account, creating and sending a v-mail is as easy as clicking “record” and speaking to the camera. The actual video is stored on Eyejot servers and an e-mail is sent to the recipient. The recipient clicks on a link in the e-mail to play the video message. The sender is then alerted when his or her video message has been viewed.

Consider using Eyejot in your agency to communicate with clients. If you like it, the PRO Plus version is worth the $100 per year price. With the PRO version, messages can be five minutes in length, you can upload pre-recorded video, you get extended message storage time, the video won’t contain advertising, and you have the ability to attach and send documents. You can also brand several Eyejot notification elements with your agency logo and color scheme.

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One Big Trend for 2009

One of the most important jobs of an agency owner or manager is to look into the future and try to understand the trends that will influence the organization. As I tried to think about the major trends I expect to see over the next year, I realized that there is really only one: changes in how you communicate with your prospects and clients.

There are different labels being applied to these communication changes: Web 2.0, social media, blogs, and wikis, to name a few. The model most agencies currently use is based on a client purchasing relationship. With social media, you no longer just want prospects and clients who purchase products. You want to create long-term friends and fans. This change—from creating clients to creating fans—is hard to appreciate and understand.

But understand you must. This trend will affect every area of your agency’s operations. Here are just a few thoughts on areas that it might change.

Marketing: Marketing becomes less of a sales process and pitch and more of an open dialogue and conversation between you (the agent) and your potential prospect. Friends and fans of the agency will do more “marketing” for the agency among their peers than any marketing program could create.

For example, one agent sells boat insurance in 40 states. He has recently begun participating in a discussion forum for bass fisherman called BassBoat Central. He’s answering other users’ insurance questions, posting interesting information about insurance topics, and is becoming viewed as the boat insurance expert. He does not give a direct pitch to write their insurance. Yet his participation is creating “friends and fans” who will lead to increased business.

Client service: The trend of client self-service is well established and many agencies are already embracing this trend. An agency using social media tools will open up a conversation not just between agency and client but also between clients. An open forum where clients can post messages about how well you provide customer service would be one implementation of this concept. How scary is that!

New employees: Using these tools is second nature to the younger employees you will hire. They come out of college with these skills already in place. Yet, when they are hired by an agency, their access to these tools is blocked. In order to keep these new employees, the agency must undergo a mindset change as well as learn new management skills.

I am personally taking steps to learn and understand how this social media trend affects all of us. My first step is a new website for TAAR. The site has been completely redesigned and in the next few months, I will be introducing additional social networking tools that subscribers can use to easily communicate with me and other subscribers.

I’ve also established a presence for TAAR, as well as a personal presence, on many of the social networking platforms currently available. You can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Flickr, LinkedIn, and my blog. I’m not sure yet which of these will ultimately be the best platform to use. But I am committed to experiment and learn.

A small, but rapidly increasing number of insurance professionals are also experimenting with social media. I think you should be among them. I am committed to helping you by sharing with you what I’m learning as I go through this process. Take a deep breath and dive in.