Most Insurance in Tampa, Florida commits 10% of revenue to customer and prospect marketing—at least five times that of the typical Big “I” Best Practices agency.

According to principal Eric Most, agency investments include everything from celebrity endorsements to coffee mugs. What’s the breakdown?

$15,000: one-time cost for a local developer to rebuild website from scratch

$2,500 per month: Google display ads for certain markets and product lines

$2,000: share of total $150,000 co-sponsored media buy for Tampa Bay Buccaneers radio ads

$1,500: annual cost for print ads with Angie’s List

$500 per month: carrier-sent direct mailer to cross-sell coverages to personal lines clients

$450 per month: huge billboard in a smaller Florida town where the agency markets—50% of which is funded by a carrier partner

$100 per month: email marketing vendor Mailchimp and secure forms—rather than Google forms—for quote requests Miscellaneous giveaways for customer retention, such as coffee mugs

The agency does some marketing in house, recently hiring two professional photographers who are part-time marketing specialists. One focuses on creating high-quality, “captivating” marketing pieces with photos, infographics and testimonials, Most says.

“We are doing more there than we ever have with print,” Most says. “Independent agents need to do a better job of telling stories. Our products should not be sold on price; they should be sold on experience. Stories are what make people buy life and flood insurance—those policies that people don’t have to buy, but should buy.”

The other part-timer works in digital marketing and claims—“a great marriage of two positions,” Most says. That specialist, who uses Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, took a photo of a customer who had a car accident and used the agency’s Twitter hashtag to “tell the story of how the claims experience with our agency was unexpected and pleasant,” Most says.

Ronimarie Acord is an IA contributor.