AAR Partners has joined forces with Catapult and Winmo to help provide leads for new business opportunities based on the right timing.
But this time, we’ve put science behind the art of prospecting by using data from technologies like Winmo, Pathmatics, and Bombora. This powerful combination helps increase the probability of reaching out at the right time to engage and eventually convert.
This month our research showed a surge of interest around “Creative Agencies” and “Creative Services” within the financial sector and more specifically, insurance groups.
While there are a host of brands/companies looking for creative help, we have isolated three opportunities, for our AAR Agency Growth Program Partners to evaluate, who may be in need of some creative help right now.
1. Selective Insurance Group
Selective Insurance Group, Inc., headquartered in Branchville, NJ, is a holding company for a number of customer-focused property and casualty insurance companies primarily located in the Midwestern and Eastern United States. They ramped up their digital efforts in the months of April, May, and June on Facebook and then completely fell off. When the Facebook effort tanked, they pushed some of that budget into Display ads, which only lasted one month. From our perspective, the creative they did try clearly didn’t produce the return they were looking for and maybe open to a conversation about where and how to better spend their money digitally.
No known agency relationships listed in Winmo.
Key Contact: Ms. Cynthia Heismeyer, VP & Director, Marketing
Email: cynthia.heismeyer@selective.com
Personality Type: Assertive; Direct; Persuasive; Competitive
Cynthia likely feels most comfortable as a leader and is likely to be assertive and to push their teammates towards a successful outcome. Cynthia’s decisiveness and ability to work under pressure are likely to suit them well in stressful situations.
- Setting ambitious goals for others
- Getting angsty if a conversation lasts too long
- Working independently to meet a deadline
- Feeling anxious about someone else making decisions on their behalf
2. Burns & Wilcox
https://www.burnsandwilcox.com/
Burns & Wilcox offers wholesale property/casualty insurance products and brokerage services including underwriting management. The company operates offices throughout the U.S. and is one of the largest independent insurance wholesalers in the country. Recently they have greatly slowed down their media spend across all platforms, but given their total size and current interest rating in Creative services, this could be a great time to get in early and help set the tone for their Covid recovery.
Winmo currently shows an agency relationship currently with ICF Next out of MN, but no current Creative partner.
Bombora showed a surge score of 82 points out of 100.
Key Contact: Mr. Christoper Zoidis, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development & Special Risk Division
Email: cazoidis@burns-wilcox.com
Personality Type: Accurate; Pragmatic; Collected; Skeptical
Chris is most likely skeptical, reserved, and analytical. They tend to be serious and exacting in their work, often seeking to establish procedures that can help others improve, as well. Don’t be surprised if they communicate with excessive detail.
- Making decisions based on logical analysis
- Having a well-organized area
- Providing clear expectations and guidelines
- Inventing something
3. Intact Insurance Company
Intact Financial Corporation, headquartered in Toronto, ON, is the leading provider of property and casualty insurance in Canada. The company markets and distributes its products and services through the following companies: Intact Insurance, belairdirect, and Grey Power. This was another case of trying a quick strategy, this time in Mobile ads for one month that immediately fell off and has not been returned to. They also were active in sports sponsorship with the Toronto Maple Leafs, so they appear open to spending.
Winmo lists Media Experts out of Toronto as their Buying and Planning firm, but lists no Creative partner.
Bombora showed a score of 81 points surging for the key word “Creative Agency.”
Key Contact: Mr. Charles Brindamour, President & CEO
Email: charles.brindamour@intact.net
Personality Type: Accurate; Pragmatic; Collected; Skeptical
Charles is most likely skeptical, reserved, and analytical. They tend to be serious and exacting in their work, often seeking to establish procedures that can help others improve, as well. Don’t be surprised if they communicate with excessive detail.
- Making decisions based on logical analysis
- Having a well-organized area
- Providing clear expectations and guidelines
- Inventing something
AAR Partners – Want more insights on creating successful client-agency relationships? Visit www.aarpartners.com
Winmo – Need a comprehensive, one-stop shop, sales intelligence resource to help targeting marketing, advertising, and media decision makers? Visit www.winmo.com
Catapult – No time to build the pipeline? Catapult is the “agency for agencies” who need an outsourced solution for performance-based prospecting. Visit www.catapultagencygrowth.com
Hello and welcome to AAR Partners’ new biz quick tips shared exclusively with our AAR Partners Agency Growth Program Partners.
The infamous creds deck… for almost two decades I have been watching agencies present their credentials deck to me and then waiting for my reaction to the presentation. Let me start by saying that I have been asking agencies for years to ditch the term creds deck and replace it with capabilities (or capes) deck.
What’s the difference?
Well, credentials are what you’ve accomplished and capabilities are your competencies, potential, proficiencies. In other words, credentials are the results of your capabilities. When meeting with a prospective client for the first time you certainly want to show your accomplishments but not before you highlight the qualifications you and only you can offer that are needed to help solve their brand challenges.
Let’s start with the fact that a capabilities deck is to inform, educate and maybe even entertain a bit. And like any good story, there must be s storyline that threads everything together in a brief 8-10 pages (or shorter, if possible).
So what do you include in these pages? Certainly not everything and the kitchen sink. I have sat through 20-30 pages of a “creds” deck and it is looooonnnggg. Like any good presentation – engage with a story.
- Why you? What’s your story? Your USP? Start with the why and make sure that why threads through every one of the following pages.
- Reason to Believe – support your why and get them to trust you. What is the reason for them to believe that your agency is the agency that only offers what you’re offering and why should they care!
- What’s your agency “formula” or “secret sauce” or philosophy behind your strategic and creative thinking? What is your process to help solve business (not just brand) challenges and again, this should tie back to your USP.
- Bring it to life – now here is the creds part – highlight three mini case studies to help exemplify your capabilities; Showcase your thinking; resources; talents; results and here is the extra credit – make it relevant to their brand needs!
- Highlight your core team and why they are a culturally compatible team internally and externally
- Why are you interested in the prospect’s brand and challenges? Rational reasons are terrific but emotional reasons are richer.
- Offer some top line thinking about the category; consumer or overarching challenges to highlight those credentials as a result of your capabilities
- What’s next – don’t end with thank you! Assertively and tactfully talk about best next steps to help their brand. Just the way you would recommend a direction in a final pitch, you should recommend the best next steps.
- Don’t make it difficult for them to contact you – share all ways to Sunday on how the prospect can contact you and make it easy for them to reach you.
Bottom line? Be brief. Be informative. Be gone.
Most of all make every word count. We often find ourselves detailing year founded; number of offices; disciplines; client roster; key executives. Not that all the logistics aren’t important. But clients are more interested in knowing: Relevant thinking that resonates; short cases that show business solutions; data translated into usable insights; predictive modeling and analytics; talent behind the team and what you’re bringing to the table… all within 8-10 slides.
There you have it. That’s my counsel on this topic and I hope it helps. Look out for more of my new biz quick tips shared exclusively with AAR Agency Growth Program Partners…
This tip is focused on case studies for RFIs and in what format should you present them.
I’m sure you’ve heard by now that humans have about an 8-second attention span which is shorter than goldfish! The information age has changed the general attention span and the collective global attention span is narrowing due to the amount of information that is presented to the public. About 14 months ago, a study in the scientific journal, Nature Communications, showed people have more things to focus on – but often focus on things for shorter periods of time.
So how does this relate to what format you should use to present your case studies in RFIs?
Well, the average RFI is at least 50 pages and there are typically no less than 10 RFIs in the mix. I’m sure you can do the math and figure out the clients have to read through 500 pages, at minimum, in order to narrow the field. I’m sure you’ll agree…that’s a lot of reading to do.
Couple these 500 pages with short attention spans, constant interruptions, more screens to focus on, more to focus on in general and… unless they’re printing out reams of paper, these RFIs are being read on screen. After reading RFIs for almost two decades, I personally can tell you that your eyes start to burn after the first one. In fact, I recently had a client ask me what the best way would be to go about reading all the RFIs since the search team was overwhelmed with the amount of reading!
So what can you do to help the red eye and short attention spans when it comes to writing RFIs?
Help the client to visually read the case studies. Yes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Do not give them heavy text paragraphs of 12 point type running from the left margin to the right margin.
Instead think, “out of home” when writing a case study. Use big bold headlines to get across key points and bullet out the details in a digestible format. Use graphics to your advantage and call out vital points so if the reader doesn’t read everything, they still take away what’s pertinent. BUT be sure the written overview is just that – a quick overview highlighting key points that support a video case study.
Let me state that again – start turning your multi-pages of written case studies into 2-3 minute video case studies. Highlight the challenge, research, insights, solution, and results. You can even include a client testimonial if it works. But make your case study a quick video story. It’s much easier to watch a 2-3 minute case study video than to read through pages of text… And use video supers to underscore vital information being spoken. Instead, the written case study should briefly support the video case study highlighting key points and tying the experience to the prospective client’s overarching marketing challenges. Bridge the gap between your experience and their core issues.
There are many tips to written better case studies and you may want to check back to some previous videos that touch upon tips for writing better RFIs but the point here is to start using video cases in an effort to help reduce screen fatigue and keep that shortened attention span engaged with a brief video versus pages and pages of heavy text.
There you have it. That’s my counsel on this topic and I hope it helps. Look out for more of my new biz quick tips shared exclusively with AAR Agency Growth Program Partners.
Agency and marketer executives don’t always see eye to eye, but many do agree they’re not fond of procurement.