Pierre Bourdeau—Director P&C Insurance Marketing
Your marketing campaigns can include many tactics—digital, social media, direct mail, billboards, and the list goes on. Each comes with its own effect and result. No matter which you use, it’s important that each tactic directly supports your campaign goal.
To be effective, your campaign and the tactics and messaging within it need to be working towards specific objectives. Your focus may be to increase awareness, improve customer retention, or, most commonly to attract new customers and increase sales. Unfortunately, due to the competitive nature of our business, it can be difficult and expensive to attract net new customers.
What is acquisition marketing?
Acquisition marketing is the process of creating a campaign that targets individuals who are already aware of your brand. By marketing to people who already believe in your value proposition, you can make them prime candidates to becoming a new customer.
To determine where your potential leads may be, use a marketing funnel as a guide. This is made up of three tiers that identify where a consumer may be during their purchasing journey and their associated behaviours. Acquisition campaigns will typically focus on individuals who are at the Consideration or Conversion level of the funnel.
In general, those in the Consideration stage may already plan to contact you when their insurance expires, but they’ll likely need a reminder. The messaging to this group should have a strong and clear call to action such as get a quote or talk to one of our brokers for more information.
People in the Conversion phase have already done their research and decided if they are going to make a purchase or not. Follow up with these leads, perhaps through a phone call or email, offering to discuss their quote, and remind them why choosing your brokerage is the right thing to do.
Setting your strategy
With your campaign objectives set, it’s now time to create a strategy that will get you there. There are some key questions you’ll need to get started:
Approach: Will you create new assets or leverage existing creative? Will you test new concepts or proceed based on existing learnings?
Target: Who are you looking to bring in the door with your campaign? Do you want to focus on customers that are like your existing ones, or explore a new demographic or territory? Could a referral campaign work to find your targeted audience by leveraging your existing customers?
Channels: Where do you want your campaign to appear? Digital channels such as paid display or social media? Mass media such as radio or TV?
Once you’ve articulated the answers to these questions, selecting the tactics that will help you to achieve your targets should be easy.
In our next Marketing Minute, we’ll explore how to determine the specific tactics you can use to meet your objectives budgets and goals.