Reeling in Sales with Automated Marketing

One of my most favorite pastimes is trolling for big game fish off the coast of North Carolina. Whether we are targeting mahi-mahi, yellowfin tuna, wahoo, or the prized blue marlin, the challenge of landing a trophy requires special equipment, teamwork, and most importantly, preparation.

Much like in our marketing, we rig baits to entice our targets, present them with an offer they can’t refuse and close the sale by reeling them in.

Often times, I fish with just one or two other fisherman on the boat. Since we are limited in numbers, when we have multiple fish hooked up at one time, we find that the entire crew is busy reeling in fish leaving no one to drive the boat. When this occurs we depend on a tool that provides an additional person on the boat. It’s known as an ‘autopilot’. An autopilot system on a boat does what you tell it and it doesn’t talk back. All you have to do is turn it on, set your course and you’re free to focus on what’s most important.

Without this tool, a limited crew would scramble around trying to make everything happen when chaos hits. The boat would wander aimlessly with no one at the helm. Now that we have an autopilot system, we turn it on, set the course and focus on attracting and catching fish.

In my insurance agency, I have a similar tool to help me and my staff focus on reeling in sales. I’ve set the direction for our agency and all of our marketing is automated with multiple campaigns running simultaneously to various niches, cross selling to current clients and nurturing with birthday and holiday wishes. Of course I monitor everything from my “helm” to make sure all of my campaigns are producing. If one campaign is not producing, it’s pulled out of the water just like an unattractive bait. I’ll replace it with another with just a few keystrokes.

Before we automated our marketing, our agency had inconsistent months of new production. We would launch campaigns after weeks of development and then find ourselves so busy with producing the new business we would place our marketing on hold. Over a year’s time, a graph of our production report looked like a mountain range with peaks and valleys.

Today, it’s much more consistent and predictable. I can also control the flow when times get too crazy or when we are short staffed. I simply reduce the number of prospects in a particular campaign or pause some campaigns altogether. When a lull in production occurs, I turn them back on or resort to my tackle box full of other campaigns ready to deploy.

Conditions dictate the type of baits we use while fishing. Cloudy days require brighter colored lures to stand out. Darker colors produce better on sunny days. Conditions also effect what species is biting and different species require different bait.  Being prepared with various strategies to deploy as the conditions dictate can make the most out of the day fishing. The same rules apply to our marketing. As our targets react to our marketing whether good or bad, we must be able to adjust quickly by changing headlines, offers, and calls to action. We need to be able to easily increase the exposure of a campaign that is producing or pull it if it’s not.

The greatest benefit of automated marketing is it gives the ability to plan and prepare for growth. It takes “hoping you’ll grow” out of your future. You know you will grow and by how much. You’ll have much more control because you’re in command of your marketing direction.

My agency is now moving into a larger office space due to our expected growth. We are upgrading our technology with new workstations and VOIP telephones to handle the growth more efficiently. Making an investment like this would have been risky in the past and could have proven to be costly. Today, I have no doubt that it will pay off.