Why Companies Need to Get the Basics Right Before Launching New Marketing Initiatives

Written By Ted Grigg

While discussing the impact of social media, online marketing and corporate blogs with a group of marketing executives, I made this passing comment.

"I think insurance companies need to get the basics right before experimenting with time intensive activities like social marketing."

One of the marketers in the group happened to work for a large insurance carrier and took offense at my comment that the industry was not doing the basics right.

The insurance marketer's retort included a long list of marketing initiatives demonstrating the use of the latest marketing techniques. But the response included no information about quantified effectiveness, sales tracking or solid results. This same marketer also wanted to know what I meant by "doing the basics right."

You might be interested in my response.

Dear marketer,

You asked a fair question for expansion of my comment about "doing the basics first."

You are certainly correct in blaming compliance and other issues as major challenges for marketers in the insurance industry. It's a battle to expand offers and create innovative programs with legal constraints.

That's why some insurance companies do not allow the legal silo to control all marketing decisions.

Marketing executives within some of these companies can challenge legal decisions by asking the legal group for an analysis of the risk involved in not following their interpretion of given state regulations. Then the marketing executive has a lot of power in participating in the decision to countermand excessively defensive legal decisions.

As For Not Doing The Basics, Insurance Companies Often Do Not Have Relational Databases That Tie Leads To Actual Policy Sales. So Insurance Companies Cannot Evaluate Their Programs On A Cost Per Sale Or Cost Per Customer Basis.

In some insurance companies, database marketing, file segmentation and basic results analysis resemble 1950 marketing programs.

Without strong databases, insurance companies cannot attribute sales by channel, test messages, or even test new products with any degree of reliability.

The worst part about the absence of a robust relational database is that entire marketing programs are subject to deep cuts or even elimination. Management has no accountable results from marketing in the absence of the tracking you get from a relational database.

I could continue, but I think you see my point.

Ted Grigg

Ted Grigg is a direct response strategist who helps growth-focused companies reduce risk by identifying weak assumptions before they become costly mistakes.

Over the course of his career, Ted has evaluated several hundred million dollars in direct response testing across direct mail, digital, print, television, telephone, and other channels. His work combines direct response strategy, acquisition economics, customer analysis, creative evaluation, offer development, and disciplined testing.

Ted has worked on both the client and agency sides of the business. That experience gives him a practical understanding of the pressures facing executives, marketing teams, agencies, and service providers—and of the problems that arise when activity, media volume, or creative preference replaces a clear economic objective.

His consulting work helps organizations examine such questions as:

  • Are acquisition goals economically realistic?

  • Is the allowable Cost Per Sale supported by customer value?

  • Are targeting, offers, creative, media, and response paths working together?

  • Are tests structured to produce reliable business decisions?

  • Are unproven assumptions being treated as facts?

  • Is the organization measuring sales outcomes rather than convenient proxies?

Ted’s experience includes the development of direct mail and multichannel acquisition programs for insurance, healthcare, financial services, technology, nonprofit, manufacturing, retail, transportation, communications, government, and business-to-business organizations.

For a national direct-to-consumer insurance company, he developed a direct mail format that defeated established controls and helped expand the productive use of compiled prospect lists from less than 10 percent to more than 30 percent of total direct mail circulation within one year. He also planned Medicare lead-generation programs for more than 60 regional and national HMO and PPO organizations, with some programs exceeding sales projections by as much as 60 percent.

Ted founded Wyse Direct, a direct marketing division of Wyse Advertising in Cleveland, where he developed acquisition programs and helped launch a new technology product for Seiko Instruments by generating a predictable flow of qualified sales leads for its national sales organization. As vice president of new business development for the Grizzard Agency, he helped broaden the agency’s strategic capabilities and pursue new commercial and fundraising opportunities.

He is the author of The HMO/PPO Marketing Plan—A Step-by-Step Guide, published by Executive Enterprises, and has written numerous articles and conducted webinars on direct response strategy, testing, creative development, and marketing economics.

Ted earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Abilene Christian University and completed two years of graduate study at Texas Tech University. He is the founder of DMCG, LLC.

http://www.dmcgresults.com
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