How to Write a Marketing Plan for an Insurance Sales Agent

[Md. Anikuzzaman]

A marketing plan for an insurance agency requires knowing the vision for the agency, available resources (both money and time) and the type of clients being sought. Key plan sections evaluate the current situation, desired markets, messaging, marketing materials and strategies as well as metrics to evaluate results. These basic ingredients are needed to develop a successful plan. You can use lists to brainstorm during the prewriting phase, and polish it up in a more formal manner later for presentation to your team. If the plan is long, summarize highlights of each area into an executive summary.

Evaluate Your Agency
To start developing the marketing plan, take a detailed look at the agency today. Analyze its Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT). The agency may have great products to sell but need to generate fresh leads. Now, review opportunities to enhance the business, such new products or pricing to capitalize on in the future. Lastly, assess the threats against the business. These often come from external sources, such as competitors, clients being laid off or even a natural disaster.

Identify Target Markets and Goals
Next, identify the agency's prospective customers. Are there products or pricing changes that lend themselves to a particular market? After you have determined primary markets, identify ways to reach them, such as networking events, religious organizations, meet-up groups, children's activities or mass marketing. Write into your plan all target segments, data about them and likely places to reach them. Set goals for each market. This can include numbers of calls to make, appointments to set, new clients in each market, retention goals for existing clients or other ways you want to use to track efforts. The overall marketing plan should have measurable goals, such as to increase new sales by 25 percent and renewals by 5 percent.

Develop Messaging
Savvy agents vary their marketing based on the group being approached and its needs. For example, if an agency primarily sells retirement annuities, college savings plans and life insurance, the pitch used for parents of young children would be different than one used with retiring baby boomers. Each insurance company you represent might have required marketing materials and scripts or recommended ones. Also, every state has rules about how certain insurance products are described that limits flexibility.Tread lightly and check what pertains for your products. The key thing is having messaging that describes the agency as well as the messaging about products.

Get Creative
The marketing plan should include a section that outlines the mix of promotional activities and techniques that will address the specific audiences targeted. The plan should also outline how to make use of the Web, e-mail and social media. Include a referral strategy to suggest ways to encourage clients to spread the word for you. It should have networking and community involvement opportunities as well. Regular speaking engagements or publishing articles in local publications can raise an agent's visibility. After the marketing media have been identified, set up a calendar, targets for frequency and metrics to gauge success.

Look at Budget and Results
If this is your first marketing plan, you need to determine what budget you can allocate. You may want to track results by cost per client so you can allocate money in future years based on desired sales. Don't put the plan on autopilot throughout the year. Track the information you set the goals on, such as calls, appointments or retention. Also keep statistics on where new clients came from, data on renewals and other details so that you know which approaches were successful or were not. Make adjustments along the way to make the plan more effective.

Source: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/write-marketing-plan-insurance-sales-agent-70075.html

[Shaha Noor]

Thank you so much. Very Useful.