Top Five Agency Marketing Myths.

• Author: Donahue-Piro, Kelly
• Position: [IN FOCUS]

* All too often we find many misperceptions about marketing an insurance agency. Much more often we hear what doesn't work than what does. The funny thing is in my life we have failed at many marketing campaigns but we don't give up! Sometimes we find that if we make one change, it is the magic touch. For example, for years we have done end-of-year specials and literally had one order after promoting it online, in emails and at speaking engagements.

This year we have had more people call us and ask than ever before. We had a line at a recent insurance conference. You know what the difference was? We have a salesperson who is calling all warm leads and promoting the specials as "Coming Soon." Had I only thought of it sooner! But I didn't give up on the program and I kept making changes until it became profitable.

In insurance marketing we all too often expect an immediate demand. For example, I went to an event and got no one begging me to write their insurance today so I'm going to give up on attending networking events. I have literally done speaking engagements that don't pay off for two to three years, during which we nurtured the prospect, connected with them and shared out value. In insurance we need to let go of the instant ROI expectation.

For the record, insurance agency owners tend to do the same thing with producers. We get one that doesn't work and therefore we don't invest in future producers. News flash! Sales people can come and go. Some will work, some won't. But don't be once bitten and twice shy, because it's the nature of the industry.

For those of you reading, you may be one of the people we just discussed who is trying but not connecting on a new marketing plan. But for some of you, you may take in everything you hear about insurance marketing as if it was fact. Things like email marketing doesn't work or no one reads blogs. That mentality is far more dangerous because you are taking someone else's word for it rather than researching how it is working, what the best practices are and how to apply it in your agency. My recommendation is stick with researching how marketing strategies are working and then deploy them in your business to test and refine.

Over the course of time we have developed these top five agency marketing myths:

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