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"Every few years, you have to reinvent yourself." That philosophy seems to have worked well for Wayne Partee, CIC, CWCA, president/CEO of Covina, California-based Partee Insurance Associates, as he has built his business over the last four decades.
Partee was raised in a family insurance agency. "My first job was sweeping the parking lot at my parents' office in the L.A. suburb of Whittier, California," he recalls. When he graduated from college, he went to work with his older brother, who had already started to buy the family business. "I worked there about a year and then, as I tell people, I got exiled to Covina," Partee adds.
He bought an existing agency there in 1972, forming Partee Insurance Associates, and in 1980 acquired the W.C. Gorman Insurance Agency, which traces its Southern California roots to 1928. In 2006, the agency opened an office in Middleburg, Florida, which serves the northeastern part of the Sunshine State.
The most recent reinvention Partee Insurance Associates has undergone placed it front and center in the digital marketing arena. The agency teamed up with Astonish Results in 2010 to help "refocus our agency for the future and to do things we've never been able to do before," Partee says. Astonish Results is an insurance-focused digital marketing and training company.
Niche success
Among the "never been able to do before" items enabled by the e-marketing initiatives is a focus on specific commercial market segments. "We've never really had a niche market," Partee says. "We have always been generalists. Astonish is allowing us to develop niche marketing in several different areas, using the power of the Internet to identify, contact, solicit and even write businesses-and to do it quickly, easily and cost effectively."
While difficult to call it a sweet spot, given the nature of the segment, an initial niche success at Partee Insurance is septic contractors. "To be part of the septic contractor program, you have to have a pumper," Partee explains. "You have to be able to clean out the tanks and if you have portable toilets, you need a pumper to clean them. The program really lasers down into a true niche. Maybe you could even call it a crevice."
The agency is also using digital marketing...