Marketing represents a critical component of your sales strategy, but investing those dollars in the wrong media can be a painful missed opportunity. Each marketing channel has its own best practices, and knowing those distinctions is essential to developing the right messaging and generating qualified leads. To avoid missing the mark with your marketing tactics, learn how each one fits in the bigger picture of your strategy. Apply these tips to make sure you are using each tactic for its optimal purpose.

Leveraging TV for branding

Since placing spots in mass media comes with heavy investment, make sure your TV spots are executed for maximum effectiveness. TV campaigns are best suited for building brand awareness and brand essence. Brand awareness spreads knowledge of your name and what you offer. Brand essence spreads ideas about your company’s nature and quality.

When planning for this medium, consider how your company can tell a thoughtful brand story that helps consumers remember your name. Rather than sounding promotional, use scripting and imagery that associates positive things with your brand. Perhaps your company wants to position itself as a leader in healthcare ideas and solutions. Craft your story in such a way that highlights forward-thinking in a complex environment. Maybe you want to position yourself as caring deeply about customer service. Consider developing a script around individuals’ stories that show how your company helped in their circumstances.

Promoting with paid social

What are some of the key products or policies that your company is promoting? Are important dates coming up, such as Open Enrollment Period? Consider spreading the word about these types of events using paid social campaigns. Facebook provides the most robust targeting capabilities of any platform, allowing you to drill into highly granular audiences. By layering in these targeting parameters, paid Facebook ads can place specific messaging right in front of who needs to see it.

By nature of digital media, these types of assets can be easily modified and updated as needed to keep your message fresh and current. With all of your paid social media, make sure to include a clear call-to-action, guiding your target user to the next step in the conversation.

Building a content library

In an age when information is so easily accessible, it’s more important than ever to make sure your information is highly visible in search engine results. Part of increasing your search ranking is publishing content that answers users’ questions. Research the types of keywords that your target audience is searching. Does your current website content address those topics?

Building a content library is integral to driving more traffic to your website and supplying your social publishing with timely, relevant resources. The ideal content library will include various formats of information to educate your leads, including blogs, infographics, white papers, videos, and a social strategy. Use this content to position your company as a leader and expert in your field.

Nurturing leads with email campaigns

Once you have captured a lead through form submission or business reply card, drop that lead into a nurture campaign to immediately begin the conversation. Nurture tracks are great ways to share targeted content and educational resources to help leads navigate the decision-making process. If that lead needs more time to weigh their options, keep the communication channels open by continuing to send relevant, targeted content that drives them back to your website.

Putting together the strategy

As you plan and develop your marketing strategy, consider which communication efforts can be automated. Using automation frees up your team to focus on key sales conversations while still nurturing leads through your sales funnel.

Looking for ways to optimize your sales process? Check out these five ways to increase insurance sales.