1. Creating Lead Goals

Leads are the people who you are targeting through your marketing efforts and they are potential customers.

Leads have a specific want, need, or problem and they are looking for a solution.

Your products and/or services could be their answer! Leads opt into your brand in some form or fashion – from engaging with your social media to attending an event you host.

There are two types of leads – marketing qualified leads and sales qualified leads.

A marketing qualified lead might be someone who follows you on social media or downloads an informative resource you offer on your website. By taking that action, they have expressed an interest in your marketing and have “qualified” themselves to receive more of your marketing. You can continue to market to that lead to further engage with them!

A sales qualified lead engages with your higher-level marketing (like filling out a form or requesting information) or takes an extra step on your lower-level marketing (like commenting on a social post or consistently opening and clicking through on your emails). They “qualify” themselves to receive harder-selling marketing because they have expressed a serious interest in what you’re marketing/selling.

You should be targeting your marketing to gain these leads!

What you’ll want to do is establish a goal number of leads that you’d like to attain through your marketing and then adjust your marketing to achieve that goal!

2. Understanding Inbound Marketing

The nature and industry of marketing have evolved over the last ten to twenty years and will continue to do so in our ever-digital world. The way that consumers engage in marketing content and the way marketers can reach them is becoming more challenging as the market becomes more saturated.

Inbound Marketing Methodologies are changing the ways we approached marketing in the past and how we continue to market today! To keep up with the fast-paced digital age, you must ask yourself these two questions:

1. Does my brand/message rise above the noise?AND 

2. Am I continually adapting and improving?

If the answer to either of these questions is no, you need to assess where you (or your company) is compared to others in the digital space and market around you. We all want to set ourselves apart from our competitors, and Inbound Marketing is key.

The types of Inbound Marketing strategies that you can use to reach your target audience include blogging, email, social media, downloadable content offers, digital advertisements, and landing pages.

Of course, you don’t simply want to have a large quantity of these types of content, you, more importantly, want to produce quality content that people want to consume. The content you provide should engage your audience and entice them to keep coming back for more.

3.     Understanding the Buyer’s Journey

The journey of your “buyer” starts as a stranger and moves through a “funnel” (to use the marketing term) until they reach the level of promoters of your brand, which is where you ultimately want a buyer to end up.

The most important step for you to take in order to understand and create a successful buyer’s journey is to determine your target audience. A target audience would be the type of people you want to attract in order to convert them from lead to customer.

Once you determine that, you can start to construct a marketing strategy around that target audience to create a better journey for them. The five stages of the funnel for a buyer are Stranger, Visitor, Lead, Customer, and Promoter.

Evaluating your buyer’s journey allows you to adapt your processes to create the ultimate customer experience. Buyers want to feel like their needs are being heard and that you can provide the means to meet those needs. Your marketing should help make the buying journey more simple. It should guide your target audience through each step of their buying journey, quickly and efficiently.

The main takeaway from The Buyer’s Journey is that Understanding your Audience + Targeting Your Efforts to your Audience = Better (and More) Conversions.

4.     Building a Foundation

In order to move forward, you must have a starting point.

Then you must build a foundation and create a plan. Building a foundation simply means creating a base marketing structure that the rest of your marketing can build on. For instance, a website, social media presence, or online presence that you can use to draw people to with your marketing. This is the foundation for all of your marketing, it’s where you will direct your target audience!

Once you have a strong foundation, you can base all of your marketing efforts around it and will be set up for success.

5.     Setting & Tracking Goals

Setting goals is simply a matter of determining achievable and beneficial outcomes for your marketing. Here’s are some examples of goals you might set:

1. A goal number of social post or emails you want to send each week
2. A set number of leads you would like to gain (as mentioned earlier) each week, month, or quarter
3. How many leads you need to gain a customer and to make your marketing profitable

These are all great goals!

But, these goals mean nothing if you don’t track them. Tracking a goal is simply the process of keeping track of how your marketing helps you achieve those goals.

For example, if someone in your target audience follows you on Facebook, your social media marketing has generated a marketing qualified lead! You will want to make sure you have a process for marking and noting what you did that achieved that specific lead type that added 1 lead to your goal of 10 over the course of one quarter.

We’ve created a helpful goal tracking spreadsheet that you can use to keep track of your leads from different marketing sources – click here to download.

If you want to dive more in-depth into the process of goal setting and tracking, then check out this comprehensive post: Tracking Leads and Closing Sales.

Giving Context for Setting a Baseline Goals

Data and research show that a year of consistent marketing efforts will yield a 25 percent increase in social media presence and reach. This is a statistic that will help you create an achievable and data-driven goal for your social media marketing.

Another metric to know is that successful businesses see around three percent click-through rates from email conversions to links on your website. This number may seem small, but this kind of engagement and name recognition from your audience is beneficial for you.

As you set a foundation and goals, make sure you understand the industry averages so that the goals you set are attainable and realistic! When setting specific numbers for your goals, you should take into account these percentages and do not feel discouraged by these numbers.

It’s also good to remember that you have to start somewhere to be at an even greater place a year from now. Provide clear messages, target your audience, and present your CTA (call-to-action) in a direct way to see the results you want and reach your unique goals.

Defining a Campaign

The first step to developing a campaign and attracting attention is to understand what a campaign is!

A strategic marketing campaign is a focused and organized series of communication, such as blogs, ads, and social posts, directed to a specific goal. A campaign will provide a plan to execute that will achieve your desired goals. There are various campaigns you can use to accomplish these goals, both large and small!

MAJOR CAMPAIGN:

The goal of a major campaign should line up with your overall business goals. This would be the primary campaign that you’ll use to reach those goals!

A major campaign is designed to achieve large results due to the efforts put into it. A campaign of this nature is a major milestone in your overall marketing efforts because it ultimately drives the progress that can be measured in leads and growth.

For example, if your goal was to promote open enrollment, some of the characteristics of your major campaign might include:

• A month, quarter, or year-long timeline
• Content oriented around OEPs
• Substantial goals – a specific number of new customers/plans to enroll
• Impacts all your mediums of communication in order to streamline your focus to the audience you want to reach regarding open enrollment

MINI CAMPAIGN:

Although different from a major campaign, a mini-campaign still serves a substantial purpose in your marketing plan. Mini campaigns will still share some of the characteristics of larger campaigns – basically fitting within your bigger campaigns and they contribute to your overall goals. But, these usually vary in their capacity and scope. These campaigns will be for a shorter amount of time, such as a week(s)-long time frame versus a whole quarter.

Special offers are often used in mini-campaigns to entice consumers to become interested and respond to you because of a very specific call to action. Most companies would not offer a special discount for three full months, but they may offer it for a short period of time to drive awareness or cause a bump in leads for a certain month – that’s why they’re perfect for mini-campaigns.

WHY THIS MATTERS

You might be asking yourself, why are campaigns important?

The answer is that campaigns create maps that guide your marketing. They use tactical, or systematic, approaches to generate revenue through highly targeted communication steps. Campaigns will outline specific actions (CTA’s) that guide your audience to do exactly what you’d like them to do. The thing that differentiates campaigns from other marketing efforts is that they are not just daily actions, but strategically-planned steps to propel your business towards growth and success.

Planning a Campaign 

Before you plan a campaign, you need to take an inventory of what efforts you currently have going on, such as channels and platforms to get your message out, then make a list of those assets. This will determine what you need to add or take away from in your current strategy.

Your content and messages ALWAYS need to align with your goals and should crafted to attract people going in the same direction you’re headed.

The content and mediums you use, need to be centered around that target audience.

Therefore, determining who your audience is and the mediums they use will allow you to choose the mediums and create the content that fits those exact people. This ultimately drives them to you and to your website.

After you assess your messaging/content, your mediums, and target audience, you are ready to begin a campaign- here’s how:

Determine what  content – emails, social media posts, ads, downloads, blogs, etc., that you need to achieve your goal by taking into account the deeper features of your target audience.This means, you want to consider their pain points, their goals, their lifestyle, etc.! What motivates them?

You must also decipher how, when, and where you will deliver the content and through what mediums. It’s important to note that your content choice matters! When writing, sharing, and creating content, you need to focus on relevant industry/cultural values that your audience cares about. Although trends come and go, there is an appropriate time to use them because give your content the “buzz” it needs.

 Two tips we discussed in one of our webinars speak directly to this:

1. Make sure to effectively place CTA’s on all of your material with the best design and wording possible. This ensures your audience sees your content!

2. Use highly searched keywords to make it easy for your website and content to be found on Google. Once you’ve planned your content, mediums (or channels), and checked up on the latest trends, tips, and best practices, you’re ready to begin!

3. Start Implementing the Campaigns Steps. The next step in the campaign creation process is to schedule the content using a calendar and tools.

This is the easy part.

Here’s a few schedule tools we like:

The Importance of Social Media for Your & Your Marketing

Studies and statistics prove that social media matters in the world of business and the insurance game is no different.

Not only does it drive traffic to your site, increase your brand awareness, and allow you to specifically speak to and interact with your target market, but if used effectively, it can also increase your leads and sales!

Here are some of the ways your social media plays a large role in your insurance marketing strategy:

• You have an immediate and constant audience- people are ALWAYS online.
• Its influential, contagious, and compelling.
• It connects people, products, places- aka our world.
• People look to it for news, information, reviews, sources, etc. – therefore making it beneficial for business.
• Many businesses now use it for customer service chats too.

What Platforms You Should Use

Now that you understand the importance of social media, it’s critical to choose the right platforms (or channels) for you!

You can do this by comparing the strengths and weaknesses of each and considering how they will help you achieve your goals.

Establishing Your Social Media Presence

This goes back to creating a campaign – a major campaign – and sticking to it.

 This includes determining what channels are right for you and why. You want to base this on who your target audience is and what channels they engage with.

As a good rule of thumb, we recommend setting up at least 3 of the 4 social channels we discussed above to cover your bases and gain traffic online.

Here are some helpful steps to follow as you set up your accounts:

• Use an email address you check regularly.
• Upload clear company logos/photos.
• Provide as much personal info as appropriate, but make sure potential clients/customers have a way to contact you.
• Connect/follow people, join networking groups (LI & FB), profile optimization
• Establish your voice and brand and start building/posting content.
• Use hashtags on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to be found in searches.

Basic Steps for Growing Your Social Presence

Aside from the previous information we have shared above, we’ve put together a list of some basic tips you can follow to improve your social media presence and enhance your channels’ growth:

• Be consistent and strategic in your posts.
• Be patient– it takes time to grow great channels.
• Take time daily/weekly to engage with your channels and audience.
• Spend time building your pages, profiles, networks, followers, content, etc.
• Observe the optimal posting times/methods for each channel.
• Automate where necessary but stay active online.
• Be adventurous. Mixing up your content is fun and keeps them engaged!

Concerning Digital Advertisements…

The first digital display ad was released in 1994, and the use of them has grown exponentially since.

Digital advertisements can be used for a variety of targeting to get your brand noticed and found through searches such as:

Practical Goal Setting for Building Your Business

When thinking about where you want to grow and flourish, setting sales goals is the first step. That said, be careful. It’s far too easy to set sales goals that are too small or unclear. These types of goals will not help you grow and flourish, but merely add to the original problem!

What you need to do is to choose sales goals that keep you consistently motivated and accomplishing those goals. 

The BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, and Timetable) formula is a great tool for gauging the goals you’re thinking about before you set them! This is also a good yard stick for knowing if you’re going after the right prospects to offer your services.