Trying to measure your insurance advertising? Agency Nation has an idea.

While we’re new to the world of insurance advertising, the folks at TrustedChoice.com and the Agency Nation blog are old hands. And in their post, The Least Expensive Way to Improve Agency Sales, author Marty Agather looks at the importance of understanding where your insurance business is coming from, and how your insurance advertising tactics are working.

And one of the easiest ways to find out is to ask.

In a data-rich world, don’t lose sight of that direct approach. Here’s an excerpt of their post.

No less an expert than Peter Drucker says that “What gets measured, gets managed.”

It should be a requirement that every inbound call to your insurance agency is asked how they found you.  And don’t just ask the question to ‘check the box’. Think like a detective and really get the answer.

As you begin to look at the data, you might begin to draw some inferences:

• Customer A is really an advocate and is referring a lot of new prospects your way.
• That postcard mailer on umbrella that you did a month ago is starting to generate some customers.
• Your agency logo on the centerfield fence at the high school is paying off.

What this information tells you is that you should be doing more of this, and less of that. Maybe Bill does better with completely cold opportunities, but Mary is better with a warm referral.

Measure, analyze, and tweak your insurance advertising tactics

If you are a producer in an agency that isn’t doing source-to-sale tracking, do this for yourself. This level of information will improve your sales effectiveness and take you to the next level.

Here are the minimum items you should be tracking in your source-to-sale document:

• Source of business (real source)
  • If “From the Web”, what key word did they use?
  • Did they find your website, or find you on another (YP.com, Manta, TrustedChoice.com)?
  • Which social property did they read (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook)?
• What coverages are they looking for?
• Which agency salesperson worked the account?
• Disposition:
  • Agency/Carrier Rejected
  • Customer Declination Reason
  • Written & Total Premium

As was said many centuries ago in the Quin dynasty, “A powerful memory can’t compare with pale ink”. Using this data, you can move from making decisions based upon gut feel and intuition to reasoned decisions based upon facts and information.