Making the most of marketing

When it comes to marketing, the old truism is that 50% of your marketing spend works but you never know which 50% it is. Despite this, there is no doubt that getting the marketing strategy right is now crucial to brokers' future.

Marketing budgets are always squeezed, and brokers need to ensure that every penny is well spent. It is also crucial to ensure that staff in other areas of the brokerage that marketing impacts - particularly sales - buy into what marketing is trying to achieve. Thousands of pounds can be spent on great brochures, advertising campaigns or websites but if your salespeople are not using them they are useless.

For smaller brokerages your marketing activity should be focused, local and direct. There is little point in hiring a slick city-based advertising agency, when most of your leads probably come from your surrounding area.

You might consider a lead generation agency, through which you can bid for hot leads under a certain set of parameters, for example, type of cover or locale, or a direct mail campaign with an eye-catching 'call to action', such as a limited time discount, for example.

Hiring a public relations firm to raise your profile in the press may be beyond the budget, although many owner managers or senior directors build relationships with the press themselves. Also, the business or personal finance pages of local newspapers are often happy to take contributed material from local firms, and a quick call to the business editor with some 'top ten insurance tips' might be appealing to a busy journalist with a quarter page to fill and a looming deadline.

Larger brokers have a budget for bigger and slicker campaigns but these are not necessarily more effective. Conferences events, sponsorship, public relations, consumer advertising - all of these can form part of an effective marketing mix. The key to any and all of this activity is to measure, measure, measure, and, when using external suppliers, measure once more to ensure you are getting value for money. Even if you hired the most expensive PR or advertising agency if you do not set them targets, how will you know if you have got value for money?

A good supplier will work with your marketing team to set realistic, achievable goals which will still stretch both internal and external resources to ensure value for money.