Any good plan starts with research. As the old saying goes: fail to prepare, prepare to fail. Before you start planning any content or campaigns, you need to first gain an in-depth understanding of the insurance industry by conducting market research. Typically, this will involve an analysis of four key areas: company, audience, competitors and market.
To kick things off, you need to perform an analysis of your business. It may sound bizarre, but many insurance companies operate without a clear purpose and this can be really detrimental to the success of any business. To be truly successful, you need to be addressing the following questions:
Next, you can move on to researching your audience, however, you need to go beyond simply defining who they are. You need to know their likes and dislikes, understand their needs and what is important to them, get to know their preferred channels and the days and times they are most active on them. Ultimately, your goal is to understand your customer like they are your best friend because, at the end of the day, that is the level of knowledge you need to build meaningful relationships that enable your business to flourish and grow.
Competitor analysis is another important area you need to research as it will not only allow you to take inspiration from those who are doing well, but will also give you an opportunity to learn from the mistakes of others. This will not only help you to save time and money, but will keep your reputation intact, too.
Lastly, you will need to research the insurance industry as a whole. You need to have an awareness of the broader market factors that could present opportunities or threats to your business in the future.
The PESTLE framework is commonly used to identify political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental factors that could have an impact on your insurance company.
Content is king; it always has been and it always will be. You may well have a technically flawless website that uses all the latest technology, but if your content isn’t up to standard, your visitors will soon leave. Ultimately, your content is how you communicate value to your audience; you need to ensure that you are offering them solutions to their problems, addressing their queries and providing them with useful information – if you don’t, there are plenty of your competitors that will. When it comes to your content, you need to be thinking big. The insurance market is so crowded that a simple blog just won’t cut it anymore.
Go above and beyond expectations. Yes, write a blog, but ensure all of your content is relevant to your target audience and offers value to them. Think about publishing an eBook or an ultimate guide, create insightful infographics to share on your social accounts, publish explainer videos to help your audience get to grips with heavy subjects or maybe even start a podcast. The list is endless. The key is to keep it relevant, make it valuable and think big.
You may be creating quality content that is perfect for your target audience, but if they are not seeing it, what’s the point? There are several channels you should consider when devising your marketing strategy, which you prioritise will be dependent on your target audience. However, some of the key channels typically used by insurance companies include:
Although often overlooked as a channel, your website is arguably the most important. It’s the first port of call for your customers and first impressions really count. You need to ensure your site is easy to navigate, visually appealing and most importantly, full of valuable content that addresses your audiences’ needs.
Your website is flawless and your content is outstanding - but is anyone seeing it? It’s important to develop an effective SEO strategy to ensure your insurance company is presented as a solution when your target customers turn to Google for answers. With 49% of marketers saying organic search has the best ROI of any marketing channel, it really is worth the investment.
A great channel for building and maintaining relationships, email marketing is a powerful (and cost-effective) way to drive traffic to your website, increase leads and improve your sales. There's a range of content ideas you can use for this channel, including regular newsletters, promotion of new content, company updates and a round-up of the latest news from the insurance industry.
The modern-day consumer loves social media. It’s a chance for you to humanise your insurance firm and build more meaningful relationships with your audience. From increasing brand awareness to driving traffic to your website, social media can offer a range of benefits to help put your insurance company on the path to success.
You now have the perfect marketing strategy…or so you think. To truly gauge the success of your marketing, you need to understand the data that goes with it. It’s fundamental to analyse the performance of your marketing efforts so you can understand what is working well and what needs to be developed moving forward.
To avoid getting caught up by vanity metrics and ensure you are tracking the results that are relevant to your insurance firm, you should devise key metrics for each of your long and short-term goals. For each metric, you should devise targets to benchmark your performance and ensure you keep on track.
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