Most agencies know they need to improve their marketing, start a digital marketing program, embrace social media marketing, and update their website. All of these are important to the long-term success of an agency. To accomplish this, agency owners must determine how and when to spend valuable budget money. This invariably leads to the question of adding staff, trying to leverage inexperienced internal resources, or outsourcing marketing initiatives to insurance agencies. Let’s review these three options.
Option 1: I will use a recent graduate family friend: It is rare that this option will work for most agencies, and it is one of the most expensive options they can select. The total cost is likely to be well over $50,000 per year, and the recent grad is likely to “don’t know what he doesn’t know.” These inexperienced resources should understand website development, insurance agency e-marketing, social media marketing, and insurance agency search engine optimization. 5 different skill sets are needed for this list, in addition to the general experience required to successfully execute these initiatives. So the agency not only pays the $50K, but also pays for all mistakes on the job, errors in judgment, technical deficiencies, and industry inexperience.
Option 2: I will hire a VP of Marketing: This is probably a better solution than option 1, although it requires even more budget dollars. An experienced VP of Marketing (let’s call this person a $100,000+ resource) will bring knowledge and experience. However, even with this resource, the agency will undoubtedly require specialized skills and tools in the areas of web development, insurance search engine optimization, insurance agency e-marketing, graphic design, and more. A variation on this theme is to hire an experienced marketing manager, perhaps a $75,000 a year resource with some of the experience and skills mentioned above.
Option 3 – I will outsource my marketing to an experienced marketing company: There is a well known paradigm called “Good, Fast, Cheap”. In this paradigm, you are supposed to choose the two criteria you want (good and fast, good and cheap, fast and cheap). But in our new internet based world, it is possible to get all three services and solutions that are good, fast and cost effective. Agencies can select an experienced insurance agency marketing firm and get all of the above services at a lower cost than even Option 1, the inexperienced college grad.
Small to medium-sized agents and brokers may find an outsourcing model the most effective way to achieve their marketing goals. Outsourcing can allow these agencies to accomplish everything from website development to social media marketing to lead generation for insurance agencies, without having to add expensive staff to meet their continued growth needs.