Traditional ways of doing marketing are rapidly declining.
More than 70% of agents report that they no longer invest in TV, radio, yellow page advertisements or paper newsletters.
Meanwhile, digital marketing is growing among all agencies. More than half of all agents are prioritizing digital marketing.
While marketing plans differ between high and low digital adopters, both want to invest more in digital marketing – 81% of high adopters and 48% of low adopters plan to dramatically or somewhat increase their digital marketing efforts. A quarter of low adopters say they don’t do any digital marketing and do not plan to, compared with only 2% of high adopters.
Agencies that plan to increase their digital marketing efforts
The days of taking a “spray and pray” approach to marketing are long gone.
Focused digital marketing is the new norm, and customers have come to expect marketing content that is customized to their needs and interests. Digital tools have made it easier to reach the people you want to reach with relevant messages at the right time.
Click here to read Dshanya’s tips for reaching your ideal customers online.
COVID-19 accelerated the shift to digital marketing
As COVID-19 made traditional networking and face-to-face interactions more difficult throughout 2020, agencies leaned on digital to generate leads and keep in touch with clients.
Asked how digital marketing impacted their agency in the past year, many survey respondents said their agency received more business from digital marketing efforts than any year prior.
“We continue to see an increase in sales from our digital marketing,” one wrote, “The majority of our sales in 2020 have come from social media and digital marketing.”
“[Digital marketing tools] have kept us in front of our community and clients,” wrote another. “Our business has grown very much in 2020 and we feel it’s because of our Facebook presence.”
Agencies that already had a strong digital marketing presence in place felt it gave them an advantage.
“It was important to have [the tools] set up before, so we could use them efficiently during the lockdown,” an agent wrote. “This gave us a leg up on other agencies in the area and it showed our clients that we were still there to help them.”
Agents and brokers plan to continue investing more in digital marketing after the pandemic. Of those who said they plan to increase their digital marketing efforts, both high and low digital adopters plan to focus on email marketing and Facebook. But, again, as the capabilities get more complex and time-intensive, the gap grows between high and low adopters.
Marketing tactics high vs. low adopters plan to use more in the next year
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