Megan is off galivanting and celebrating turkey time so I thought I'd take this chance to share what I've been hearing about insurance and marketing.

I just returned from the very first AM Best Insurance Marketing Summit In addition to the fun of it being held in the tony University Club in NYC, the content was also quite interesting. I listened to how the professionals plan to market to insurance agents. And I thought you might be interested as well.

The speakers were stalwarts of the insurance marketing industry and were more than willing to share their great marketing research.

I loved hearing that the number one way agents get information is from their peers. And that is the information they trust the most. You can call it what you want - word of mouth, viral marketing or WOM - they are just references, plain and simple. That being the case, the best way to market is still to have the best product around. Given the ease of passing along a reference with the click of a mouse, information can and does spread like wild fire.

News? Probably not to you. But expect marketing dollars to shift in that direction. Commercials should become much more entertaining; between Google and YouTube, who knows what to expect. I, for one, am still waiting for my Yellow Ball time. And we are all hopeful it means advertising dollars will move into making product improvements, rather than perfecting a pithy phrase to make a product seem more desirable.

Just in case you're interested, the other ways insurance agents glean information is through:
1) Trade publications
2) Industry conferences
3) Newsletters

....but NOT advertising.

Given the lack of trust people have in some of the larger American corporations today, I guess that is not surprising.