Starting a marketing agency - serving insurance vendors with Drew Mcghee, IVM Group Founder4/2/2024 Transcript
Alex Rector: All right. I hear something. Drew McGhee: There we go. There we go. Alex Rector: Hey man. Drew McGhee: How is it going? Alex Rector: I’m in. Drew McGhee: Yeah, there it is, Google Zoom. Alex Rector: So today we’re joined with Drew McGhee. He’s the Founder of IVM Group and also experienced business development and just general business professional and marketing professional and a friend of mine that I’ve known for, I think, like amazingly six or so years now, which is incredible. I can’t believe it. Drew McGhee: Six or seven. Six or seven has flown by, flown by. Alex Rector: A lot longer than I thought whenever I look back. So, it makes me feel a little bit old but that’s OK. That’s OK. Drew McGhee: Definitely, definitely. That’s great. That’s great. Alex Rector: So how is it going, Drew? Drew McGhee: Good, good, good. It’s a beautiful day up here in Cleveland, Ohio and the weather is starting to warm up a little bit, so that’s nice. I know you’re down in Texas, so you’re … Alex Rector: I feel good now. [Crosstalk] [0:01:02] Drew McGhee: You’re just looking good. You’re just looking good. No, things are good. Q1 is wrapping up. Q2 is next week. Time is flying by, just trying to finish on a strong note. Alex Rector: It certainly feels like it has been flying by. I can’t imagine with all the things you’ve got going on, what it feels like. But I guess, you know, to get us started here, do you want to talk a little bit about kind of how you got started and where this idea came from? Drew McGhee: Yeah, absolutely So we launched IVM Group, our insurance vendor marketing group two years ago, February 2022, mainly because we have previously had experience. You as well, right? Working in the insurance space and identifying these third-party vendors that are trying to do work in the insurance space, need help with their outbound marketing, tracking their inbound marketing and also helping them manage and/or implement the CRM platform to help them most efficiently track their sales pipelines, leads, conversions, all of the above. Alex Rector: OK. I mean it seems like it’s pretty like – it’s pretty niche. You’re not serving everybody with this, right? You’re going after insurance vendors. What gave you the confidence to like jump in and start something new with like a narrow audience like this? Drew McGhee: Yeah, that’s such a great question. So, we are extremely niche-focused. So, we’re only working with companies targeting insurance carriers, third party administrators or self-insured employers and the dynamic in this niche space of the customer buying process at multiple different levels is very unique. So, us having an understanding of that and then utilizing that understanding to better connect with our partners and also be more efficient and effective, provide better outcomes with our knowledge of the space has been our greatest strength. So it was – going back to the first question, right? Seeing the need within the space, but then having the knowledge of the space and how we can quickly implement our team and make an impact from day one kind of generated that confidence a little bit, but then also working with several companies in the space before we launched IVM really, really helped us get started from day one. Alex Rector: Yeah. I mean it kind of makes sense. I remember back in the day when we worked together. It was an obvious gap that was – I mean there wasn’t love for the CRM and like doing the kind of email marketing and nurturing work. So, if that’s something that was kind of common in the space, I feel you. I think that makes total sense and then obviously your background. You know, investigations, insurance, vendors and you had to all take some connections to start with. Did that like play into it or did you have – were you able to like make some things happen right away when you got it going? Drew McGhee: Yeah. Everybody will say it, like in the space that we operate in is a very relationship-driven space. So being in the space for years prior and building the relationships that I did really played a strong factor and it still continues to this day. Two years into it, the word-of-mouth referrals we get from friends. I consider them friends that I had met in the industry four plus years ago, are incredibly valuable. So absolutely. Being in the space prior to IVM and then really establishing a strong network within the vendor space has been invaluable. Alex Rector: Do you go to like the same shows and try to see the same people like you did back in the day? Drew McGhee: Yeah, absolutely. So, like everybody we’re trying to work with is a vendor in the insurance space, so they’re exhibiting at some of these larger shows. So just last week, we were at PLRB in Boston which is a large property conference, property insurance conference and then went right from Boston to New Orleans for the Loyola DBA Conference, which is more litigation-heavy but still a great audience for us. So yes, still traveling to a lot of the same conferences I did previously which again though, it’s just another added value knowing which conferences will be most valuable for us and then passing that value along to our clients, helping them generate their conference schedule for the following year, while also leveraging our data that we’ve been collecting for them to see which shows have provided the strongest ROI and which shows they should be spending money on in the next 12 months. Alex Rector: That’s so important. So many businesses, they just go to the show just because the show, it’s in the industry. They need to have a presence there. Oh, no one is going to remember me if I don’t go to the show. Our competitors are going to get business. We’re not going to get business. But yeah, I mean like tracking and actually doing a reporting on that is super important. Like businesses spend a lot of money on those kinds of things and like it takes time and work to get there and get all your people there and so I mean that’s really important. Go ahead. Drew McGhee: I was just going to say you mentioned when we work together, one of the things that we – mainly you was implementing HubSpot and a CRM to help track a lot of this data and now we fast forward five years. Five years later and a lot of our prospects, a lot of the companies that we’re striving to work with still do not utilize a CRM or any sort of tool to track their data on their sales and marketing side. So, you’re exactly right. They hear RIMS, national rims and they think they have to go to that show just to have a presence and stay top of mind, where in reality, unless you’re trying to do work with risk managers, RIMS is 76 percent risk managers. So, if you’re trying to do work with other segments, your money is best well-spent going to other conferences that are more suited to the audience you’re targeting. I think that data was just valuable. Alex Rector: Yeah, for sure and I mean it’s like just the overall plan of going to a show, right? It’s like not only do you want to track but it’s like you got to know what you’re going to do. What are you going to do onsite? Are you just going to be there scanning badges or like taking cards in a fish bowl or let’s have some – like make sure you’re having conversations, doing something, right? Put some guidance in there. Drew McGhee: Yeah Alex Rector: But I was going to ask you too Drew. I mean like it’s one thing to talk about like you have industry experience. There’s a problem that needs to be solved. So, like you’re kind of fitting in and serving where you need to serve there. But I mean like founding a business, like what were the key things? What came together for you that really just like made it click? Like hey, I’m going to go independent here. I’m starting a business. Did some things like fall into place that had to fall into place for you or like what were those things? Drew McGhee: Yeah. So, working fulltime with an insurance vendor and seeing the impact that some of these processes that I was building out in Salesforce and their other marketing tools and then seeing the value that provided was a little bit of an eye-opener and doing the same way with companies previous to that. But then also having companies approach me that I have known for a long time saying, “Hey, can you help me implement HubSpot? Can you help train my team and using our CRM?” Having that book of business on the side on a 1099 capacity was like this could absolutely be a business. I’m not even prospecting and these companies are looking for guidance by coming to me. So, like what if we launched IVM and we started going and trying to find companies that can use this service or this value we’re providing and launch IVM? So that’s kind of what it was. It was honestly working with companies outside of the company I was working with fulltime and really opening my eyes more to the fact that the need is greater than one can initially see. So that’s really what made us take the leap. Alex Rector: For sure, yeah. That makes sense and like for like building it out, I mean I know you’ve hired some people now. Did you start out with some key people right away or some I guess like third-party helpers? How did you set up your op whenever you first launched? Was it just you at the beginning or like how long did that last? Drew McGhee: Yeah. So, we launched in February and I went to national RIMS, the first conference, two months later. Brand new company. All I have was a stack of like business cards that I had to like hurry up and get printed, right? And so, it was a little bit of a grind at first. Like any startup I imagine would be. But I think one of the most valuable things that happened to us in our first couple of months is hiring Haley Smith who’s our Director of Digital Marketing. She came onboard. She has an incredible knowledge with marketing and had an incredibly successful career up until joining IVM. She was just an incredible addition to the team in month three and that really helped. I think that was the main support for me personally, having her and just someone to bounce ideas off of and utilizing her expertise to take us to that next level was absolutely the – probably the most influential thing we did in the first four or four to six months of launching IVM and then shortly after bringing on Will Grubbs who manages a lot of our CRM development now. But yeah, we’ve done a great job of keeping everything in house. All the three people I just mentioned are in Cleveland. We’re now in a couple of different states but having that foundation and a strong team has been more important than anything. Alex Rector: Yeah, that sounds like – I mean that makes sense. So that would be like the people you would bring on first of all. We glazed over that but we didn’t even talk about like what your main service offerings are. Like what do you guys do for clients and I would love to like talk a little bit more about IVM clients, like what kind of people you’re dealing with. Drew McGhee: Yeah, absolutely. So, I think there’s like two directions we can go there, right? One is like what are we actually doing? What are the services we’re providing? And then the other direction is like specific to this space? Like what are the three pain points that we’re solving for our clients to help them not only generate repeat revenue from their current book of business but also generate new revenue from new customers or new companies? So, if we go back to the first one, what services are we providing? I think the most valuable things that we’re helping our clients with are around helping them either implement or manage their CRM and help on like the sales enablement side, helping their teams save time and help them identify the prospects for our audiences that they want to be focused on before a conference, after a conference, when they’re just trying to generate prospect. Putting the MQLs and qualified leads in front of them so that they’re not having to cold prospect or sift through tens of thousands of leads to see whether time could best well be spent. So, CRM management I think plays a large part in our value but also our outbound marketing campaigns, which have really moved the needle quite a bit for our clients not only from a lead generation standpoint but also converting opportunities and then really converting just through our outbound engagement. In this space we’ve been able to convert leads to customers strictly through our outbound engagements, which I think has been just awesome to witness first hand. So those are the top two but we also help our clients manage their websites, update their copy on their add landing pages, additional pages, for new service offerings they might be launching, managing all their social media, making sure the pulse on their social media profiles stays active, but also giving people who visit their social media a place to go, to learn more, to further them down the sales pipeline, which I think a lot of companies fall short in our space and giving that traffic somewhere to go after they look at your flashy social media post. So, I think in a nutshell, those are probably the main service offerings that we provide to our clients but then we can go into how do we tie those services or a combination thereof to solve the three main channels of revenue that we’re consistently pursuing for our clients. Alex Rector: OK. And whenever you say, whenever you talk like outbound, what are you referring to there? Drew McGhee: Email campaigns, right? So, there’s a couple of different nuances in our space that open the door for some very efficient campaigns that we can run to generate some revenue. As you know, CE, continuing education courses or webinars are a huge lead driver in our space because there’s a need for people who can refer business to attend these CE webinars. So, helping our clients promote, host, create these CE presentations and then get them in front of their customers who may have not referred business to them. They might be churned customers and/or it’s such a – again you need to space where an adjuster will pass along the webinar information to other potential requesters at the TPA they work with. So that has been one but then just getting in front of, staying in front of customers for some of our clients where the competition is very saturated in our space. So how do our clients stay top of mind with their customers? So that has been another really positive and effective outbound engagement that we manage too. Alex Rector: OK. Yeah. I mean like you’re talking to a few different kinds of like profiles for clients, right? So when you say it’s saturated and I agree. At least wherever we used to work, like investigations and like some of that. Definitely some saturation going on. There’s a lot of people, a lot of options and different types of options. Drew McGhee: I agree. Alex Rector: For you, what kind of profile are you typically working with? When you say like an insurance vendor, what vendor types are most interested in doing this kind of work? Drew McGhee: Yeah, absolutely. So, we’ve definitely honed in on like what our ideal client profile looks like and I think our sweet spot is working with like the small to medium-sized businesses in that vendor space and I can explain why. There’s this reoccurring, revolving door that happens in this space where companies are acquiring other companies and those companies are large. They’re 100 million plus in revenue and those companies continuously acquire the smaller companies that provide that same service offering or a different service offering and they have the marketing teams. They have the budget. The one thing though that we consistently see though is that those companies get so big and their service offering tends to diminish or the value of their service offering tends to diminish and that opens the door for smaller regional and/or national vendors to compete for their business. Those smaller or regional or national vendors, they do not have the capacity. They don’t have the means to manage a marketing department or manage any sort of campaigns to get in front of that potential business, whether that be around the conferences like we spoke about or running a webinar so that they can spend an hour with these prospects and explain to them the value propositions that make them a better choice than these national companies. So that’s like our sweet spot, like helping the regional and national companies compete with these larger companies in their same space. So that at a high level I think would be how we target like our best prospects. Alex Rector: Yeah. I think that makes a lot of sense with size and like how that plays in and where they’re going to need that help to compete. I think that 100 percent makes sense. The people that you’re actually dealing with, with these clients, with these businesses, like who do you usually find yourself talking to? Who reaches out to you guys? Drew McGhee: So usually, I would say about 80 percent it’s the owner of the company who wants to implement some sort of outbound marketing and sales enablement with the CRM and things like that. But also I would say the other 20 percent is like the head of sales or where it’s a one-man team or a smaller sales team that just needs some support. We talked about conferences. Some of these teams we’re working with literally are going to conferences week after week for months straight. So, when you look at like how would that person have the capacity to run any sort of pre-conference outreach to these attendees that are going to the conference, to try to get in front of them, while also following up with the conference they had last week at the same time of attending the conference they’re currently at? It’s tough. So, providing teams with that kind of structure too with our support has been phenomenal to where we’re getting meetings scheduled at conferences for them, to where they’re showing up there on their calendar. They just have to look good and get in front of these prospects or opportunities that we’ve scheduled for them and keeping them on track to get the most out of those conferences rather than just churning and burning, right? Alex Rector: Yeah, for sure. I mean do you guys – like are you going to the conferences with them? Do you send somebody? Drew McGhee: No, no. So we only go to a couple of national conferences but they’re the ones sending their teams to the conferences and it’s interesting seeing the trend though of how many of our clients are exhibiting versus just attending now and I think that’s a pretty strong trend in our space. Alex Rector: Is it up? It’s up, right? Is it down? Drew McGhee: Yes. Since like the break or in-person break around COVID, it was clearly down during that time but since then, it has gone up a little bit but still people are moving away from the booth spend especially if they’re able to run a strong campaign pre-conference and get the same amount of meetings, if not more meetings scheduled without that booth presence. Alex Rector: Yeah. I think a lot of different businesses and they’re wising up for like the events. Drew McGhee: Yeah. Alex Rector: Everything is tracked more now. There’s a lot more businesses that do have CRMs in place and they are tracking like what is actually coming out of events, what the ROI is, whenever they go on and pay for a presence or try to like put a big fancy booth in place somewhere and they really want to get the most out of it. So I think businesses are getting smarter about that and trying not to double down on conferences that aren’t doing anything really for them, that anything they could tell is happening. That’s good. Drew McGhee: Great. Alex Rector: They’re not just going to go now. Drew McGhee: Absolutely. Alex Rector: Obviously we’re seeing a lot more conference activity going on since COVID has cooled off. There’s a whole lot more on-site business happening and then people just traveling more and because I’m working in study abroad now. So, people are definitely wanting to get out of the house now a lot more than they used to. Drew McGhee: I agree, I agree. I think one big transition in our space pre-COVID, a lot of these requesters or potential customers were in the office and they were working side by side. A lot of companies like that was their marketing strategy. Like that is all they did. Like office visits, dropping off donuts, sandwiches and with a stack of business cards. Then COVID, since then, offices have shut down and those adjusters are not back in the office. Those requesters are not back in the office. They’re still working from home and they’re spread out. So it’s not realistic to be able to engage with as many of those adjusters in person as it was previously. So it really has transitioned into more of a digital marketing landscape rather than hey, here’s a box of doughnuts. I can walk out of there with seven referrals. I’m having a great day, right? So we’ve really been able to bridge that gap as well, which it has been awesome. Alex Rector: Oh, man. I bet they’ve got some big projects going on with those insurance vendors to try to bridge that gap right now. Drew McGhee: Everyone is trying. Everyone is trying and it was easier, right? Again when everyone is in the office and you can get a group of them to go to lunch or you can get a group of them and go to a happy hour near their office, to get everybody together. But now you’re trying to get people to leave their homes after a day of work to go meet and potentially drive 40 minutes to get together for that and it’s not as easy as it looks. So how do you stay in touch? Alex Rector: Are the big payers, are they letting people be distributed still? What do you see out there? Drew McGhee: I don’t see a lot of in-person visits happening. You see some regional events that will be thrown from maybe a collection of vendors or maybe one vendor. But it certainly does not happen as much as it used to. Alex Rector: OK. So like a lot of them have kind of gotten used to the remote distributed. Drew McGhee: Yeah. Alex Rector: Everybody is kind of all over the place and calling in on Zoom like we’re doing right now. Drew McGhee: One hundred percent and previously adjusters had to – in some states, adjusters had to be located in that state to handle claims in that state and since COVID, like some states have done away with that to where now, adjusters are working remote in other states. So staying top of mind is super important. So how do you stay top of mind? You can’t just go to the office and see them and that’s why our knowledge of that dynamic and knowing how to target those potential requesters have been so effective and again valuable. We’re able to generate new revenue strictly through our outbound email campaigns. Alex Rector: And are you guys using the same tools to get to new clients for IVM Group or like what has worked for you guys for like your marketing? Drew McGhee: Yeah, no. So it has been kind of surreal. A lot of our newer clients have come through word of mouth and again in a relationship-driven space that’s so important. Yeah, it really has been awesome. But we do attend a handful of conferences and that has been our biggest lead driver. All these companies are in the hall. They’re at the table. So I’m literally walking up and down the aisles to meet new people, meet new companies that could potentially use us. It has been incredibly effective while also being able to see all of our current clients in some of these events. So, it’s kind of twofold on the client retention and business development standpoint. But outside of that … Alex Rector: I mean you’re the guy to send to the events. You guys don’t know Drew but Drew is like stellar when it comes to like making it happen on site for events and things like that. Drew McGhee: Yeah. You made me blush but I love them. It’s exciting. Alex Rector: I remember people just walk up to Drew. They just see him. There he is. Drew is really tall. You can’t tell on Zoom but people, they just see him and they go to him. Drew McGhee: Yeah, that helps. The height does really help. I tell people all the time I don’t know how good I would be in sales short but it definitely helps. No, it’s good. The events have been awesome for us. They really have been and just this year, as we got into this year, we decided to almost triple the number of events we’re going to this year just because it has been the best way of meeting people. Alex Rector: Yeah, that’s fantastic. I mean if it works, it works, and if you guys are getting business that way, you know. Do you find that that’s like really cost-effective for you? What do you think? Drew McGhee: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. There hasn’t been a conference we’ve went to that hasn’t produced an incredible high ROI. Alex Rector: Wow, that’s amazing. Drew McGhee: Yeah, everyone and that’s why it was like a no-brainer the beginning of this year. If the conferences are doing it for us, then let’s go to more. So that’s kind of another train of thought which … Alex Rector: I love that. I don’t hear that that often. So that’s amazing that you guys are making it happen on the conferences like that. It’s so cool. Drew McGhee: Yeah. Alex Rector: All right. So, I mean for you guys, like when it comes to your clients, you said you got a great retention rate. I mean what kind of things are they saying about you guys? What do you do best? Why are you getting that word of mouth? Drew McGhee: Yeah. One and I think most importantly for any business, we’re providing a return. We’re able to show in black and white the revenue we’re generating versus our cost and so that’s going to help regardless of our relationship. But second, I think our relationships with our clients mean the world to us and some I truly see it as friends at this point. There are clients that have been with us for over two and a half years. Literally there’s not a meeting they have where we’re not invited or they want our input because we truly are part of their team and so our relationships, I think have been great and on top of us being able to provide a positive impact on their business and then really just meeting our clients where they need to be. So I think a lot of agencies out there have an interesting scope with how they approach their clients whereas we really strive to do whatever we need to do to get our client where they want to be, where they need to be, to compete. So, if there is messaging on their website that we feel if it’s updated will help drive more conversions through that website after they’re already initially driven there through our email campaigns, that’s only going to help us become more effective and more successful and help drive that relationship with that client further. But I think those three things have really helped us generate the retention that we’ve had and also I think word-of-mouth referrals that we’ve experienced is a great representation of that. So that’s what I would attribute that to. Alex Rector: That’s great. Yeah, I mean if people are talking good about you, you’re getting good ROI, I mean that’s what people want. They want to see that business. They want to see that black and white and if you’re doing that, then you’re going to get calls. I mean hopefully you’re going to get calls. I mean unless no one is talking about you, you’re probably not – I mean you won’t get calls if no one is talking about you. But if you’re doing good for them, they’re probably going to have something to say. The thing is it’s like – I saw the other day, it’s like a – a happy customer will tell two people about their good experience but an angry customer will tell like 50 people or something like that. Drew McGhee: Yeah, for sure. Alex Rector: Not that it matters. Drew McGhee: I believe it. I believe it, right? I mean you look at reviews, right? People usually write reviews that they had a bad experience. So, yeah, and it’s such a small space, right? It’s a very small relationship niche space. So, us striving to always deliver a positive experience for our clients is huge. It’s huge because it is a very relationship-driven space and we’re talking about the national companies that buy – you know, mergers and acquisitions, buying the smaller vendors. Well, a lot of those companies lose people and then they start new companies providing the same service and their friends and co-marketing with the vendors we’re working with. So that revolving door is almost a positive. Alex Rector: I see. I mean that’s really interesting and I would love to dig more on that but I think we’re going to get close on time here. So, I was thinking if you got anything. I mean like are you guys hiring? Anything you want to put out there. Drew McGhee: Yeah. Alex Rector: And then like what’s the next for IVM Group? Drew McGhee: Oh, that’s a great question, great question. So, we’re not currently hiring. We just filled a position for our CRM developer, our second CRM developer on the team now. We also just brought on another content writer who has just been absolutely awesome to have as a part of the team. We’re not really forecasted to hire for another maybe month or two. But we will be at RIMS, national RIMS. It’s like the Super Bowl of conferences for the risk management space. So we’re there at the beginning of May. But what’s next, you know, just continuing to grow, continuing to deliver the same service that we’ve been delivering for the first two years. It has only been two years. So, while our name recognition has increased quite a bit in the first 12 months and 18 months, I think we are still coming to the scene and people are really starting to identify us and know what we do without me having to cold call them and introduce myself. So that has been great but I think what’s next, we’ve made a pretty large impact in the worker’s comp space when you’re looking at insurance and we are striving to now have more of a presence on the property and auto side of things, hence the PLRB attendance last week and that has been going really well. So, I think that’s some of our biggest goals for this year on top of everything else. Alex Rector: Do you guys have any like promotions or campaigns going on right now you want to share about? Drew McGhee: Promotions or campaigns, we’ve started really leveraging persona data for a lot of our clients with the specific personas in this space. So, we’ve had a lot of outreach based off of the data we’re able to track with those personas. Not only specific messaging to an adjuster versus a risk manager or claims manager or director of claims. All that messaging should be different when people are marketing to those different personas. So leveraging that to increase engagement but also utilizing that data for things such as like conferences, right? And who is at this conference? Not from a high level but what personas are attending each of these conferences. So, what should I be going back to that conference as it has provided a ton of impact, especially with sales teams, right? Being able to go in there, go into your CRM and pull a list of all the risk managers. Where that risk manager stands in your outreach or in that sales process is incredibly valuable. The time that saves is huge. So that’s one thing we’ve all recently been promoting as well as our outsource BDR. We’ve identified within the sales funnel. Our marketing campaigns are getting leads to qualify and then we’re getting qualified leads but with some of the sales teams we’re working with, they just don’t have the capacity to be following up with these leads who have converted. So, we’ve recently started providing an outsourced BDR that is reaching out to these M2Ls, reaching out to some of these people that are raising their hands, to move them further down that sales funnel and get them in front of some of these sales teams to help generate some additional opportunities. Alex Rector: All right. Well, you know, thanks so much for your time Drew today. Always a pleasure talking to you and we got to do this again sometime. Drew McGhee: I agree, I agree. Alex Rector: Yeah. Everyone go out, LinkedIn, connect with Drew, if you’re interested. IVM Group, check out their website and yeah, thanks so much Drew. Drew McGhee: Yeah. I appreciate it Alex. I think it’s absolutely incredible that we’ve been able to remain close after being in Texas together. Like you said, it has been seven years but it has been awesome. Thank you for the opportunity. It has been great getting on here with you. Thanks for the time. Alex Rector: All right. Take it easy, Drew. We will chat again. Drew McGhee: You too, Alex. Later. [End of transcript]
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Wicked PitchAlex is the founder of Wicked Pitch, a career marketer, and podcast host based in Fort Worth, Texas. ArchivesCategories |