Advertise with small-space ads 

 If you have a modest budget for local newspaper advertising, use small-space ads and place them with high frequency---like every week or every other week if the newspaper is a weekly. It’s a more effective strategy than a spotty schedule of large-space ads. Tip: Boost readership by featuring your photo or a producer’s photo in these ads!

There is a widely-accepted view about building new business: You bring ‘em in with price and you hold them with service.  If this is true, how come survey after survey indicates that less than 10% of agents conduct annual reviews for their personal lines customers?

In a recent edition of The Standard, New England’s premiere publication for the insurance industry, we read this in an editorial entitled Fear Factor.

Knight-Dik is over 90 years old.  But principal Ross Dik is putting a lot of new age marketing ideas into action at his Worcester (MA) insurance agency. His No Surprises customer service features a business process he calls PLUMP.

PLUMP stands for Personal Lines Ultimate Marketing Program.  Dik has organized his marketing tools into three charts that his CSRs and producers use as a reference to organize direct mail, telephone, and personal contacts with their clients. The agency has identified its customers in four segments: A, B, C and Y.

Our marketing partner Frank J. Herberg, CPCU, AAM says agents often start to mount a new sales campaign without a prospect list in hand.  How come?  A quality prospect list is the most important element of a direct mail campaign.

“I used to be amazed to discover that agents had no prospect list when we sat down to talk about implementing a direct marketing program,” Frank says. “I no longer am.”