Opportunities ahead

Exciting things are happening in the world of Financial Services Marketing. We joined many top brands at the 2017 LIMRA Distribution Conference for Financial Services last week and discussed some of the most modern trends facing the industry. From the opening reception to James Kerley’s musical number, the yearly event proved to be a welcome experience to anyone wanting to grow their marketing distribution efforts. As an exhibitor and attendee of the conference, we were able to speak first hand with fellow industry leaders about their challenges and concerns for the future while exploring an action plan for success.

Over the course of the three-day conference, we easily found commonalities between tactics marketers use to attain their goals. A common thread to achieve success, and the theme for the week, is enabling sales teams through education and technology.

A band of LIMRA brothers (and sisters)

Addressing today’s distribution reality and the dramatic changes that are taking place in the industry was a challenge in itself. Some of the most influential thought-leaders in the industry had to collaborate with their competitors to band together, organized under the bounds of the LIMRA membership, to tackle the adversities that they mutually face.

Session after session, the cohort of marketers shared new insights into the sales team educational hurdle facing F&I marketers and created a technology-driven plan for the future.

Education is key

Brands big and small are experiencing a significant gap between marketing and local advisors. A genuine test of success is whether the brand can find a homogeneous technology solution that makes it easy for local sales teams to learn about products and get comfortable selling them.

If local sales advisors have no idea how to sell the products, chances are they will not even try to sell them. Brands are now working hard to package product lines in terms that are easy to understand and can be shared with clients using a simplified message from the top corporate marketing level down to local sales calls.

“It’s all about education,” says Carlo Mulvenna, Vice President of Domestic Group Business at Pan-American Life. We agree with Mulvenna. Education of the whole distribution chain is key. With proper education, the advisors will feel more comfortable pitching new products and increasing revenue. At Distribion we help support local agents by providing one simple distributed marketing automation platform that allows users to create, customize, distribute and measure multi-channel marketing campaigns. Harnessing the power of marketing technology through the use of an automation platform helps spread a consistent and uncomplicated message that advisors can understand and then share with their customers.

Make it simple for advisors to sell, and they will sell it!

It is imperative that advisors are trained from message to technology. The time is now for creating and using a solution that distributes the marketing message to enable sales to succeed. Sales teams now have to have both strong management skills and the technological expertise from the corporate marketing manager to the advisor to help deliver products to their customers.

But is your brand marketing positioned with the right technology to succeed?

About the Author

Alex Navarro comes to Distribion with a background in developing and executing national brand awareness campaigns. His passion is creating personalized marketing strategies and watching them come to life. Alex studied advertising and marketing at Pepperdine University and has enjoyed working in the field ever since. He also loves meeting new people – connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter.

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