Know-How Exchange : Research/Metrics

The problem with this approach is that there is no "universal truth." For one customer brand #1 may be more meaningful, and for another customer brand #2 may be more meaningful. So even if you learned that one option is preferred by 55% of respondents, you'd still have to deal with the other 45%. And, unfortunately, your success (or failure) is in the hands of the agents. (As independent agents, they can decide which brand is likely to be most meaningful to their customers.)

I have consulted on branding issues with insurance companies in the U.S. and Canada who deal through independent agents, and we've always concluded that the best thing insurers can do is make their own brand as strong as it can be. After that, it's up to the agents. In the case of really strong insurance brands, it's obvious to smart agents that they should support the insurance brand and promote it. For not-so-strong insurance brands maybe the agency brand is actually better for everyone.

If you would find it helpful to discuss this in more detail, contact me via the email address in my profile. No charge for exploratory discussion. I can also recommend a market research professional who has experience with insurance branding.

Michael makes great points. You'll do well to contact him, to work with him, and to let him help you. He's both a solid bloke and one of the best minds in the business.

As for me, I caution against following conventional wisdom, and for being far more specific in your questions; the road of conventional wisdom is littered with the dried out carcasses of brands that did nothing to set themselves apart. When big brands all follow conventional wisdom their marketing all winds up looking and sounding the same.

One has only to spend a few hours watching TV commercials or reading the newspaper to see spot after spot and page after page of ads for car companies, insurance brands, discount furniture stores, and so on and in every niche,

If you were to omit any logo or tag line that identified any specific company you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between one car ad and another, or between one insurance ad and another. Why? Because the people producing and signing off on this crap are all riding the conventional wisdom bus.

Client-side, these people are not CMOs, they're spineless sheep who are all terrified of making a decision that will make their brand stand out. Agency-side, these people are not cutting edge creatives with the client's best interests at heart, they're clueless hacks and back-stabbing thieves who would, to a man, see their grandmother burned at the stake if it would increase their commissions.

Toads, all of them.

Know this: good companies become GREAT companies by giving conventional wisdom—and the people who sign off on it and peddle it—the finger.

Asking clients "How likely are you to recommend us to family and friends?" is fine, IF you want a generic, non committal set of answers along the lines of:

Highly likely,
Very likely,
Likely.
Not likely,
Not at all likely,
Would not refer

Think long and hard about how you'll use these kinds of answers to fuel any kind of long range strategy.
These kinds of answers are a bit like the weather. It's a nice day, it's a very nice day, it's a really nice day. And so on.

"Nice" lacks definition in the same way that "Likely" lacks specificity. Marketing data that lack specificity are as much use as a chocolate screwdriver.

If from these answers you learn that 55 percent of people are sorta-kinda-probably-gonna refer your services, all you have is a rat's nest nice—but useless—information.

The issue with these kinds of questions and answers is that they offer nothing of long-term, tangible, real time, deadline-driven strategic planning value.

Think about this.

Just how soon is "likely"? As a packet of time, it's woolly. You don't want woolly, you want a date and time for a sit down appointment.

To make the best use of your information you need to know WHEN clients WILL refer, not if—which is what the word "likely" speaks of.

Next, you need to know to WHOM your clients will refer your company, where they are, what solutions these people need and how soon they need them.

Then, you need a way of collecting this information. After that, you need a way of following up on this information, and you need as much information as possible about the help the prospects in question need from your or from the brands you offer. You need to know which brand of insurance they currently use, how long they've used them and why they use them. You need to know what is it about the brands you offer than can out-perform the brand the prospect currently uses or favors. Once you know this, you're in a better position to offer the products and services from your portfolio that beat the pants off the brand the prospect is currently using. You then revisit the prospect and offer them a comparison that's customized to their precise needs.

Yes, this will all take work. But look at it this way: if the conventional wisdom approach brings you a 0.25 to 0.50 percent return, and the focused route brings you a 5 percent return—onto which you then have a platform to offer other investment and financial vehicles because you've led with value and because you've created a relationship, might the return be worth the investment?

Finally, you led your question by telling us "We sell insurance".

You need to stop thinking like this.

You're not selling anything, you're offering investment vehicles that protect and—more importantly—that will be there to help your clients in the tragic event of a loss, or that will be there to help them in retirement when they need additional income as protection against rising prices and an uncertain economic future.

If you want to build a healthy, successful, well-respected brand for your agency that your clients are loyal to, AND that they'll be willing stewards and advocates of, you need to stop selling RIGHT NOW. Instead, you need to reframe EVERYTHING about your marketing and your agent-led presentations and interactions so that it's focused 100 percent on helping clients. You need to build imagined futures for your clients in which they're seeing themselves as being OK because your brand helped them be OK.