Why marketing campaigns don't work and what to do about it

What response rate are you getting from your financial services / life insurance mail out campaigns?

Be it letters, perhaps flyers, brochures, snazzy postcards with eye catching imagery - what is the success rate you get from either your existing client base or from leads from your centre of influence or even better your centre of influences client base that you are strategically attempting to tap into?

30% success?!!! 20%!? Not less than 15%? Less than 10? Don't tell me less than 5?

In PCEs experience businesses who use generic marketing material, perhaps sourced of he shelf from their product providers, experience a response rate of less than 5%. And this response rate is only the response of calls into the business or requests for more information. The actual real response rate and that is the conversion amounts to less than 2.5% of the original marketing sample.

At this response rate is it little wonder that most small business and even large financial planning firm baulk at the offer from product providers to run a marketing campaign. And the BDM with little else in their kit bag finds it difficult to continue the conversation.

What's wrong here is the misalignment of the marketing material and the client base. The generic messages in the content do not match the need of the prospects.

The analysis of the client base has just simply not been done.

The problem with this equation is the lack of knowledge about what to do about it.

The key is in the message and whether the message is framed to connect with the prospect in a certain way. Advocates of 4 drive theory understand that the curiosity of human beings is heightened enough to cause investigation of a new concept when the gap between the current understanding of an issue and the new information is of a medium variance.

That causes the prospect to drive towards finding more.

In other words we are talking about upwards of 30% response rates.

But most marketing material utilised either does one of two things : one : it does not identify the gap to be large enough and consequently there is no impetus for change OR two: the statement of the issue to be considered is so different to the prospects current situation or made to be so complex that it causes a fear reaction or a complete rejection on either theses grounds or on complexity.

What then is the answer?

It's all about:

- better data mining of the client bases
- smaller subsets
- tailored messages
- better information about the clients that enable the messages to be shaped accordingly
- more creativity with then message
- ultimately closing the gap between the clients current situation and the proposed solution to a point where it is large enough to drive curiosity and small enough for it to appear achievable

For now, think about the messages and material you send to your clients and prospects in your marketing campaigns.

Is it generic of the shelf material that you have sent to a broad set of clients and prospects?

If so .......don't expect a return on your postage spend.

If you want great results....contact PCE.