A Case Study
Since 1995, Golden Eagle Insurance has been a trusted provider of blanket portfolio protection products for lenders including VSI, Blanket Mortgage, and Blanket Equipment. They offer force-placed insurance products including Hazard, Flood, Collateral Protection, Outsourced Tracking of Insurance, and other loan related products like GAP and Loan Default Coverage for lending institutions. In addition, they have just launched a full suite of Mortgage Settlement Solutions. Golden Eagle Insurance is headquartered in Central Ohio.
Golden Eagle Insurance is a leading provider of collateral protection for lenders including banks, credit unions, and auto lenders in the United States. The CEO knew they needed to change the way they were marketing and implement a new modern strategy that fits the way people make buying decisions today in order to see growth in sales.
In 2017, the company had an outdated website with poor performance and ranking. The company had been using traditional and interruption marketing. Cold calling and outside sales were at the center of their of lead generation efforts. “Our sales strategy focused on face-to-face cross-selling, referrals, and cold calling. We had an inside sales representative calling to set up appointments, gather information on current products in-force and discover the names of key decision makers. With all exerted efforts, we hoped we were reaching the right decision maker at the right time. It was a hit or miss strategy and impossible to scale,” said CEO, Sue Miller. With growth on a budget in mind, the company decided to look for outside help. Since it was not the right time to hire a full-time marketing person they chose Ballyhoo Marketing Advantage to help them create and implement an Inbound Marketing strategy as well as modernize their sales process with Sales Enablement Solutions.
Working side-by-side with Golden Eagle’s top sales staff and CEO, Ballyhoo was able to build a robust strategy around content and monthly campaigns and implemented tools to carry it out, to build qualified reach and leads for GoldenEagle Insurance.
After a brief discovery period with sales, operations, and their current marketing, Ballyhoo Marketing created an inbound marketing and sales enablement strategy.
After selecting HubSpot as the tool that fit their current and long-term needs the best, Ballyhoo Marketing went to work on building a new lead generating website that had a clearer message and a modern design.
Now that they had a shiny new website, Golden Eagle Insurance needed to generate content, which is at the center of their new inbound strategy. Ballyhoo Marketing created the company’s first ever blog which significantly increased traffic, serves as a continuous source of traffic to their site and facilitates conversions regularly. In addition to the blog, Ballyhoo Marketing created ebooks and other marketing collateral that act as a sustainable lead generation magnet.
Sales became more efficient and adapted to the new buyer's landscape. The sales process was updated with new methodologies and tools to match the new marketing strategy. The sales crew now have an arsenal of resources to deploy to move a prospect or lead down the sales funnel. “We removed multiple sources of friction and gave them marketing collateral, tools, and data to qualify and close deals,” said Anne Blaha, Chief Marketing Officer, Ballyhoo Marketing Advantage.
“We saw new leads within the first month of implementing the new strategy,” said Miller. “We now let our content do its work and have a continuous stream of leads. Our sales process has changed to accommodate the surplus of knowledge we’ve obtained about the leads and the signals we get from them. The conversation is now ‘I noticed you downloaded this ebook. How can I help you solve that problem?’ rather than going in cold and blind.”
As the owner/partner of Buckeye Wealth Management, an Independent Registered Investment Advisor, I was able to partner with Anne at Ballyhoo Marketing Advantage to supplement our marketing efforts and help grow our firm. Anne redesigned our website from scratch and turned it into a lead generating engine for our firm. She has also helped us ramp up content marketing and blogging as we continue to build credibility and our social media presence. She has helped us leverage our CRM and other technology vendors as well. Anne is a decisive, creative, and tech-savvy business partner who is a pleasure to work with.
Jeffrey G. Best, CFP® Buckeye Wealth Management
I contracted Anne's help as the CEO for a national agency that provides Specialty Lenders Insurance. As a leader at Golden Eagle Insurance, I was able to partner with Anne at Ballyhoo Marketing to supplement our marketing efforts by turning our website into a lead generating engine, develop and deploy targeted content marketing, build a social media presence and start blogging to build credibility in our industry. She was instrumental in helping us select and deploy software for marketing/sales automation and customer relationship management. Anne is an inspired, honest, and creative business partner. Ballyhoo Marketing Advantage was continually engaged in learning more about our company, our customers, and our sales funnel in an effort to help us grow and transform the company into the digital age.
Sue Miller Golden Eagle Insurance