Better Results with Community Marketing

ICYMI -La Vida Felicidad Family Fun Festival. How to use community marketing at family oriented events.

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the 3^rd annual Family Fun Festival in Los Lunas, New Mexico. More than 600 people showed up for fun and information supporting a great nonprofit, La Vida Felicidad. La Vida supports Life quality for children and families, adults, and seniors, through advocacy and individualized services in collaboration with community partnerships. Most of their relationships are with those that support individuals with developmental disabilities.

Meet More People and Find More Clients with Community Marketing.

Agents are always asking how to get in front of more potential clients. This Family Festival was a perfect example of how to do that. Get out of your booth and explore the event to see who else is there. True, it was not our usual target market yet we still found relationships to nurture and develop ongoing business.  Don’t just sit on your butt waiting for people to come to you, get out there and mix it up! All of these relationships (even with other vendors) are just waiting for you. We haven’t even talked about the grandparents that stopped by our booth who were attending the Festival with their grand-kids.

While this wasn’t our normal sales event, the Family Festival was a great place to make community contacts. There were booths for dental and vision services for low income families. All of the major Medicaid providers were there as well. We forged some great relationships (and got their cell numbers) with those individuals that can actually help our clients with their Medicaid issues when they arise.

Native American parents of children with developmental disabilities asked us to speak to their service coordinators next month too. Additional community and tribal resources were also available to assist those families in need. We spoke to everyone we thought we might be able to use as a contact sometime in the future.

Confusion is Common and Your Knowledge is Power.

Most seniors I spoke to agreed that Medicare is quite confusing to someone turning 65 and don’t know where to turn for answers. I had great conversations with a couple of participants that were/are turning 65 soon. I told them to call Social Security and apply for Medicare as soon as they get home. These beneficiaries were just waiting for their Medicare cards to appear. All of their friends told them the cards come in the mail 3 months before you turn 65. It turns out they didn’t know that they had to apply for Medicare because they were not receiving Social Security benefits yet.

They were lucky that one had a birthday in June and the other in July and both are still in their initial enrollment period. Several others stopping by our booth filled out a “Permission to Contact” (PTC) card allowing us to give them a call for this year’s AEP.

Be on the lookout for events being held in your community. Using community marketing, you never know where your next client or contact may come from.

Remember that Sales events must generally be posted with most carriers with a 10 day or 2-week notice. You can hand out business cards and other sales literature and collect PTC cards.  You may discuss plan specific benefits and collect enrollment applications. Educational events do not require any  carrier registration but you can only talk with potential members about Medicare in general terms. You are not allowed to “hand out” business cards but you can make them available on your table and encourage participants to “Take a card”. Any materials must be general in nature. Collecting personal information or PTC of any kind is not allowed.

Contact us for all of your questions regarding how to register a sales event with the carrier. If you have questions about what is or isn’t allowed at marketing events, check out the guide to what a Secret Shopper will be looking for here.  RBI and Medicare Compare really do make it happen for you!