MARKETING MANAGEMENT FOR LIFE INSURANCE AGENTSPART- 6

(TARGET MARKETING- POSITIONING)

“WHEN AN INDIVIDUAL GROWS BIGGER, HE BECOMES AN ORGANISATION”

Generally we say “Customer is the king”. Why so? Because of the magnificent power he wields. He writes the rules. He decides and others obey. King rules with his mace. Customer rules with his purchasing power.

How to influence this King called the Customer? Through our communication of-course.

Till 91-92, in India, we had the problem of too few, now we are faced with the issue of too many. There is an information explosion out there. A media cloud burst. Suddenly everybody is in reach. Look at the number of brochures we get everyday along with our newspapers. The unsolicited mails in our in box. SMS, MMS and a big range of texts. Televisions have more commercials than the entertainments. In this maze, it is easy to reach the customer, but how to register in the minds of the customer? That is the big question.

As the saying goes, “The proof of the pudding is in eating”. The effect of the communication is the response you get. This is one of the pre-suppositions of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programing). So before designing a communication to the customer, we must decide what is the response that we are expecting out of this communication?

We do not have to copy cat others. One of the mistakes many people in the marketing arena commit is that “Everybody is inserting leaflets in newspapers, let me also do. Everybody is sending mass mails, let me also do that.” It will take you nowhere.

Let us say you are designing a letter of introduction to be mailed to a few hundreds of businessmen whose name and address you secured through a data bank. After reading that letter, what do you expect them to think about you? 1) An expert in insurance solutions? or 2) One-stop shop for all financial products? or 3) a good financial planner? or4) Technically sound.5) Super after sales service? or6) Corporate insurance solutions provider?

It can be any of the above or a few of the above. Once you have decided that, then and only then your letter can be designed to elicit that response. There are tens of others who are also writing letters to the same person. Few others are mailing brochures to him. How is he going to differentiate you from the rest? If they do not see any difference from the rest, they will just ignore the letter.

Positioning:This is one of most important concepts in Marketing management or we can say the most defining activity in managing marketing activities.

Definition of Positioning: The space our product occupies in the minds of our customers, is our “Position”. Products includes services, brand, image etc.

Let me give an example here. A motor cycle manufacturer can offer 4 features in his product. 1) Style, 2) Speed (pick-up), 3) Mileage and 4) Safety aspects (like broad wheels, bright head lights etc.

If he is talking to a set of college students he highlights aspects of Style and Speed in his bike, while he is addressing a 40+ middle income group he will focus more about Mileage aspects and Safety aspects. This is called as positioning.

Once we have segmented the market, we can also selected the target market, now we need to position our product/services/brand/personality . Positioning can be made based on product features, benefits to the clients, price, accessibility, differentiating from the competitors, culture or traditions. We will see more about these characteristics in the coming issues. I am also giving a pictorial indication of Segmenting the market, Target market identification and positioning in that target market. A life insurance agent can for example position himself like shown in this picture. If he decides so, then the market communication strategies to be focussed to produce this result. The customers in that segment should perceive this agent as defined there. Right from Media selection, to copywriting and delivery need to support this feeling.

A LIFE INSURANCE AGENT IS POSITIONING HIMSELF LIKE THIS: