Insurance for marketing and advertising consultants

Professional liability insurance, sometimes called errors and omissions insurance (E&O insurance), is insurance coverage for claims against businesses that provide professional and personal services – for businesses like yours. When is it important to have professional liability insurance? Examples include:

• Inaccurate market research: A market researcher has been contracted to analyze a segment of your client's customer demographics and the data being used is out of date, causing an inaccurate depiction of the demographic. The client may make a claim against the market researcher for negligence regarding the failure to fully deliver the services agreed upon. Professional liability insurance could protect you if such a claim is made.
• Dissatisfied client: A market researcher has been hired to increase sales, but their strategy was not successful and sales actually decreased. The client could make a claim for failure to deliver the services promised. Professional liability insurance may protect against claims of negligence even if a mistake hasn't been made.

Learn more about professional liability insurance.

General liability insurance, sometimes called Commercial General Liability (CGL), could protect your business from another person or business’s claims of bodily injury, associated medical costs, and damage to property. Having this kind of coverage is beneficial in several instances:

• Bodily injury: At a media event being held at a consultant’s office, a journalist had too much to drink and stumbled into a table, knocking it over, breaking several glasses and injuring himself. He brought a claim for his injuries against the consultant. General liability insurance protects media consultants against third-party claims of bodily injury, associated medical costs and property damage.
• Property damage: A market research consultant was giving a presentation at a client’s site. During the presentation, he knocked an expensive projector off the conference table, breaking it. The client made a claim to recover the cost of the projector. General liability insurance protects market research consultants against third-party claims of bodily injury, associated medical costs and property damage.
• Slander: An employee at a marketing consulting firm went to a bar after work. After a few drinks, he began talking loudly about an executive at a client company. The comments were overheard by associates of the executive, so word got back to the executive, who sued the consulting company for slander. General liability insurance protects marketing consultants against third-party claims of defamation and slander, property damage, and associated medical costs.

Learn more about general liability insurance costs for your business.

Business owners policy (BOP) is a combination of general liability and business property insurance. BOP is often used to provide balanced coverage for small businesses who also want to protect their own business equipment. Some examples of what could be covered are below:

• A marketing consultant owns a large database of business contacts which they rent to clients. The consultant’s hard drive fails and some of the data is corrupted. A business owner’s policy could protect the consultant by covering the costs to recover the data.
• A marketing consultant has an office in their home. The office is broken into and several computers are stolen. The consultant’s business owner’s policy could cover the cost to replace the computers.

Learn more about business owners policy.