Creative and Effective Advertising

im an insurance broker with a hyper focus on commercial insurance. my target clients are business owners. ive tried flyer inserts in the local papers, building referral networks and putting my ads on communal mailboxes. does anyone have creative suggestion for advertising? i have a budget of $1000 max.

 

Give the money to me.

{Poasted via palm pilot}

 

a I can tell you is if you can tie in the tag line "If this gives you an erection for more than four hours, see your doctor" you will be rich.

 

my license restricts me geographically so yes. reasonable expectation for a roi is within a year because that how long a policy term is.

 

well usually u build your business over time so mostly from referrals as your reputation grows. i want to expedite this process by getting my name out there.

 

I assume you have a website and facebook page? If not, get that. spend the rest on SEO, building yelp. Direct to mail and even targeted emails are kind of a waste IMO unless you really know what you're doing.

the other thing you can do is tell your friends you'll give them $50 cash for each referral you can close. :MARIS61:

 

You can also buy leads. the glengarry leads. but to give them to you would be wasting them.

 

I'd also try to network with CPAs and the people who do the books for business people. Talk to them and set up a referral agreement or something with them. oops, see you already did that.

Then put t-shirts with your company's logo on the homeless. You can have 200 walking billboards with such phrases as:

"I could be breaking into your offices right now"

Deception Insurance (on the back)

 

try to sponsor a community event where you can get billing on the promotions/posters. do it in a community of business owners like NW portland or West Linn or something. (hopefully that's your area).

If you're in a smaller community, prepare professional pitch packets and just hand deliver to businesses.

 

hire "street artists" to "decorate" a community. then partner with the graffiti cleanup commission (bribes) and let the good times roll!

 

ive tried social networking and its kind of worked. chartered accountants ive tried to build a network with the them but no referrals

 

Yeah, the thing is a lot of people don't google "business insurance".

One thing that would work is to hire some unemployed people (or indians but they're harder to deal with) and pay them like $10 an hour (or maybe $10 an article) to write blogs about insurance, business, whatever you want to promote or target...etc. since you're geographically restricted it may not work, but maybe submit some articles to local newspapers and websites in exchange for a link back to your company. You get these on there and stuff keywords into them and try to promote them and link them to your website. That's kind of an older thing to do but it gets your name out there. Trust me, you'll get good responses, like I said a few years ago I put in an ad here for creative writers for $15 an hour to do the same thing and I got 500+ resumes in 2 days on craigslist. Screenwriters, MBAs, all that shit.

You can also buy facebook ads or click ads, but I'm not so big on those personally.

 

Hire greg oden to pitch your company on youtube. You'll still have $600 left over.

 

http://fiverr.com/

KNock yourself out.