eMarketing Strategies for Insurance Companies – Understanding the landscape!

Traditional Marketing Methods don’t work as effectively anymore. Here’s why

1. Buyers have changed. Their buying behavior has changed. Product Complexity and choice has also increased greatly and customers are no longer reliant on what a sales rep tells them. Hence Insurance companies need to meet buyers needs by providing them with enough product information & expertise for them to do their due diligence. The Sales Reps or Agents are pushed back in the Sales Cycle and Marketing needs to play a more significant role in providing this information. Marketers that do not provide this information are out of the game and Buyers will go elsewhere.
2. The state of the economy has a huge impact on their buying decisions. The insecurity that the state of the economy has created in the last 18 months has resulted in buyers taking more time and caution in their buying decisions. They conduct more research on every purchase then they used to. This lengthens the selling cycle.
3. Things are changing quickly. New products are being launched more frequently than ever before. With the increasing competition Insurance companies are barely able to keep up with product innovation and differentiation and are left with hardly any time to market their products right . Technology has a large role to play in this as well.

Today Technology and the Web have a significant role to play in the buying process. The Web has made it easier not only for companies to launch new products, put out content and information a lot quicker but also for buyers to gain access to this information and valuable insight. This has a large impact on their Buying Process.

While a website is extremely important it is just a start. Here are some e-Marketing Strategies that Insurance Companies must adopt to ensure that they can market effectively to potential customers

1. Invest in Marketing Automation Software – Here are some of the benefits
   • Tracking Visitor Behavior on the website and learning about what they are interested in
   • This provides insight into how they interact with content on the website and provides visibility at a more granular level
   • Integrating the marketing automation software with a CRM software provides Sales people with lead scoring so they know which are the ones that need to focus on immediately or have the highest potential vs others.
   • This enables them to have more informed and meaningful conversations with prospects as they now have intelligence behind their behavior. Customers expect Sales People to know what they want.
2. Providing Content in various formats - Today customers are used to viewing content in various formats – whether it is linkedin, twitter, facebook, blogs etc, Marketers need to ensure that they have content pushed out on all of these networks.
3. Social Media – whether Marketers use Social Media or not to promote their products it is very important to track what people are saying about your products and Brand. The kind of feedback you can get is invaluable and must not be ignored.

To summarize Marketing Teams need to understand that their role has changed and they need to use Content & Technology (essentially the web) effectively to ensure lead prospecting and support the sales cycle.

by Subir Singh (subir.singh@edynamic.net)