HOW TO PLAN YOUR MARKETING USING A ONE-PAGE PLANNING TOOL

Rather than rushing to create marketing content, it’s far more effective to look first at ‘who, why, where and what’. Paul Watkins explains his ‘W4 One-Page Marketing Planning Tool’

What about billboards, do they work? Do I do more social media? LinkedIn?

I’ve heard TikTok is the big one now.

I saw a competitor advertise on the back of a bus, does that make the phone ring? Does the local free newspaper still have any impact?

Maybe I team up with a real estate agent or financial planner to get more referrals. I have a Facebook page, do I also need a website?

As existing clients are more valuable than new ones, should I offer more services, such as insurance or KiwiSaver?

These are all questions that I get asked and are all fair thoughts on how to get more clients.

The W4 one-page planning tool

The answer to these questions –effectively, how to grow - is to go right back to basics.

Go through a logical growthplanning process, which I call the “W4 One-Page Marketing Planning Tool”.

I developed it some time ago and it never fails, regardless of the industry or growth-challenges faced.

Here is how it works. The four W’s in order, represent WHO, WHY, WHERE and WHAT.

W1 = WHO

The first element of the W4 One Page Marketing Planning Tool is WHO. If you try to sell to everyone, you sell to nobody.

I often see such lines as, “Mortgage broker: whether you’re looking for your first home, to move up, buy an investment property, or refix an existing loan, we do it all!” Translation: we are not experts in any of these. Who do you want more of? Look closely at your best 20 or so clients. Who are they? Into what age group do they fall?

Among other factors, what is the range of professions, family size, stage of life, income level? Where they are likely to live and what are their aspirations in the property market?

It’s the standard ‘bell curve’, with highly profitable and easy-to-dealwith block of clients in the centre, and various odd and sods towards the tails ends.

If you target the waste-of-time tailenders, then you will sadly get more of them!

Think of it this way: if you could get 50 new clients, describe the ones you really want. What would they look like?

For example, you may want more first-time buyers, or you may want more of the ones who struggled to get loans from the traditional sources.

In either case, draw me a picture. Describe them in detail.

This way, your promotional activity can be directed at the most desirable clients. If it’s more than one group you want more of, then run specific campaigns aimed at each one.

If you get this part right, the rest of the plan is relatively easy.

The second element of the W4 OnePage Marketing Planning Tool is WHY.

This refers to defining your ‘value proposition’, which is what value you can add in addressing the prospect’s pain-point.

Your value proposition should be based on your knowledge of the specific group you are targeting.

By defining a clear and compelling value proposition, specific to your chosen target group, you can differentiate yourself from your competitors, establish credibility and trust with your customers, and create a strong brand identity.

To do this, put yourself in the shoes of the desired client.

What are their concerns? Why would they go to you as a broker, rather than direct to the lending bank?

How can you save them time, worry, effort, or make the process easier for them?

Think of the last 20 clients you had of the type you want. Why did they call you? If you are not sure, phone them and ask.

It can take time to work this part out, but it’s time well invested.

W3 = WHERE

WHERE do you find these people who you want more of?

Obviously, ‘where’ can mean geographically, but more important is knowing which channels you can reach them through.

Which media do your desired target group most watch, listen to or see?

There are various channels such as social media, email marketing, content marketing, search-engine optimisation and the various traditional media of radio, press and others.

To select the right channels, you need to consider your target audience's preferences, behaviour, and mediaconsumption habits.

How do you find that out? Ask them! It won’t be one; it will cover multiple media.

For example, if you are targeting 35-55-year-old couples, Facebook and YouTube are the dominant forces in that demographic, while for first-home buyers, say 25-35, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube reign. Find out.

W4 = WHAT

If you are not communicating what’s of value to them, versus what’s valuable to you, you are irrelevant in their world.

The fourth and final element of the W4 One-Page Marketing Planning Tool is WHAT.

This refers to creating compelling content which resonates with your target audience and promotes your value proposition.

Your content should be informative, engaging, and relevant to your audience's interests and needs.

Creating compelling content is much easier now that you understand your target audience's pain-points, challenges, and aspirations.

For example, if your target is 35-55 couples seeking to upsize their house, then the message right now could possibly be around how you can help them structure their loans to have realistic repayments in the face of rising interest rates.

That’s highly likely to be their painpoint. But this could well change over time.

And by the way, social media is still growing and dominating the media space - and the best content is video by a significant margin. When you get to this point of the W4 plan, keep this in mind.

Don’t go straight to WHAT

In conclusion, the W4 OnePage Marketing Planning Tool is a framework which can help formulate a marketing-activity plan in a logical sequence.

It’s easy to go straight to the WHAT and not go through the necessary steps.

With new compliance rules, particularly in the advice space, maybe it’s time to rethink how you grow your client base and offer the required levels of client service to a clearly defined market.

Become an acknowledged expert to that group and your competitors will have less impact.

You can’t be all things to all people, so don’t try.

I take my clients through a halfday whiteboarding of this process, and without exception it refocuses promotional activity and makes making marketing decisions so much easier. ✚

P a r t n e r s L i f e g e ts b e h i n d a d v i s e r s w h e n t h e y n ee d i t m o s t

Life insurance advisers spend their days helping clients put the right protection in place for when it’s needed most, including economic downturns. But who will advisers rely on when the going gets tough?

Now is the time to be talking about this. In January, the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) business confidence survey revealed that 75% of respondents believed the economy would worsen significantly over the course of this year

Life insurance is all about planning for the unforeseen. Partners Life places huge importance on always providing the right services, products and support for both advisers and clients.

As we saw during the pandemic, that includes making sure adviser businesses have all they need to support clients and to realise opportunities in challenging economic times.

With this is mind, let’s take a look at how Partners Life is positioned to support advisers and clients, through what will continue to be an economically turbulent year

5 Star rating

To provide strong support, it helps to have solid foundations.

At the end of last year, and for the 12th year in a row, Partners Life led the way as the only risk insurer awarded a five-star rating in the annual Lewers Life Insurance Benchmark Study

In addition, it was the only insurer to have scored five stars since the study began in 2010 The results place Partners Life in the top spot for adviser satisfaction, with strong loyalty and patronage from adviser businesses who select the firm as their main provider of choice.

Deeper knowledge

Gaining access to the right information at the right time is essential for success.

To help adviser businesses prepare for emerging issues, the Partners Life Masterclass series helps advisers plan their responses to those issues. The newest class in the series focuses on helping advisers prepare for a possible economic downturn later in 2023. Led by Partners Life managing director Naomi Ballantyne and her team of experts, it brings together decades of experience to provide advisers with insights, analysis and informed opinion. They meticulously explore consumers’ attitudes when financial times are tough, and how advisers can prepare themselves to maximise the opportunities and minimise the negative impacts for themselves and their clients.

Products built for these times

Partners Life is highly regarded for its top-rated health and life insurance product range. In the last few years, these versatile and popular products have been joined by a range of affordability solutions. Some of these were made available to clients over the past few years and certainly proved their value during the pandemic lockdowns. For clients who do become financially constrained due to the economy, Partners Life offers an expanded adviser toolbox of options for just this circumstance. As an example, clients may be able to retain the same amount of cover and adjust the comprehensiveness of their cover by utilising the new range of affordability solutions. This helps advisers retain the integrity of the advice they originally provided their client.

For new clients, affordability solutions can be mixed and matched with more comprehensive covers to deliver the best overall mix of coverage for price, enabling the most fulsome solution to be implemented irrespective of price constraints.

Meeting regulatory requirements

As advisers’ focus on their clients, they also face the major challenge of meeting regulatory requirements. In 2019, Partners Life launched an ‘Adviser Support Programme’ which provided comprehensive tools, templates, instructions and guidance to help advisers comply with the new licensing requirements. Over the years since the programme was launched, 238 advisers have completed the programme - while a further 505 are currently enrolled. The programme is confidential to the user, and free to adviser businesses who work with Partners Life.

Adviser feedback has been universally positive about the programme, citing a significant impact on business health and viability. In addition, the Partners Life Academy provides advisers with a range of training programmes to help them meet their competence requirements under Code Standard 9 of the Code of Professional Conduct for Financial Advice Services.

State-of-the-art technology

These days, the life insurance industry places great emphasis on technical innovation and personalisation.

Partners Life advisers are benefiting from the firm’s unstinting commitment to developing technologies which put control in the hands of the people whose work Partners Life really appreciates: the advisers themselves. Over the years, Partners Life has created a range of innovative digital solutions to help ensure advisers have the best possible products, support and service to protect clients, achieve success and reach their own business goals.

When advisers are busy supporting clients’ needs in an economic downturn, fast, accurate and reliable technology can be a big timesaver. One of the most talked-about advances is ‘Evince’. This powerful, visual, interactive digital tool can be used in front of clients to help them understand both their need for life insurance and the value of the adviser’s professional advice. Evince was a genuine game-changer. And since its launch, Partners Life has developed and introduced other innovative tools, including ‘My Underwriting Manager (MUM)’, ‘Auto Issue’ and ‘Medical Claims Digital Lodgement’. Further developments will create even greater ease and efficiencies for advisers and clients in the future.

Claim time

Of course, what really counts for both advisers and their clients is a life insurance provider’s ability to deliver when it comes to claim time. Partners Life’s claim team won the Highly Commended Award in the Team of the Year category at the Financial Services Council Awards 2022 - a fitting recognition for the outstanding work they do, looking after clients when they need it most. As New Zealand moves further into this challenging year, Partners Life is well prepared: ready, willing and able to not only support advisers, but to help them thrive.

However the remainder of the year unfolds, Partners Life is working hard to help ensure advisers and their clients will have what they need. A