If Traditional Marketing Doesnt Work, Try The Six Ps
By Timothy K. Traynor
Is there a simple but effective tool to help insurance marketers approach their mission? And does the very nature of insurance products demand a different approach to marketing?
Some answers follow. If you implement them, they should help you improve the focus and effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
Ask a group of marketing people for a quick explanation of how product marketing works. They will often respond by invoking the well-known "Five Ps of Marketing"–Product, Price, Place, Packaging and Promotion (see sidebar).
Marketers of every type of product and service have used the Five Ps as a reliable mnemonic outline for years.
When considering insurance products, however, the traditional thinking falls apart.
The insurance product is an intangible. If clients do need it, they might not know it–or want it.
The price of insurance is highly visible, but it can be a misleading value indicator.
The place where insurance is sold today can be anywhere and everywhere, from bank counters to TV and radio ads.
The packaging, at least in traditional terms, seems irrelevant.
And the promotion is often ignored because, as the veterans in the business like to say, "insurance is sold and not bought."
In short, when it comes to marketing, intangibles like insurance are clearly a far cry from consumer packaged goods and automobiles.
If the traditional Five Ps dont lend themselves well to insurance marketing, what guideposts can the insurance marketer use? My suggestion is to rebuild the framework into what I call the "Six Ps of Insurance Marketing." Here they are:
1. Plan and purpose are where it starts.
The marketer perceives that the consumer has a need and then thinks about how an insurance solution can address that need. Those thoughts coalesce into a plan and a purpose. The elements of that plan and purpose will become the major features of the product that is developed and marketed.
