If ever there were a year to closely follow the trends, this is it. In every cycle, there are key pivot points we can see clearly when looking back. With good metrics and the right lens, the wave is visible before it crests. This year’s insurance marketing trends tell a story of what is to come and where to invest your insurance marketing budget in 2024.
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The Role of Marketing in the Insurance Industry
With insurance-related keywords topping the pay-per-click PPC advertising cost charts at an average of $54.91 per click, the role of marketing in the insurance industry is taking center stage. The terms “marketing” and “advertising” tend to be used interchangeably, but there are key (and pricey) differences. Marketing involves identifying customers’ precise needs and finding ways to meet them where they’re at with a solution. Advertising involves pushing messages out through paid channels. Both tactics can work well as part of a well-rounded promotional strategy.
In a dream world, companies would draw precision-targeted customers through a streamlined and personalized sales process at exactly the right moment. At this point in technological and digital history, that dream is more of a reality than ever before. The current digital landscape, how users interact with it, and a tipping point in the advancement of metrics and data gathering have lined up in a constellation that makes solution marketing more effective than ever.
Top Insurance Marketing Trends in 2024
Current trends reveal that technology and humans are coming together once again. In a unique combination of advancing artificial intelligence (AI) and digital tools, we’re seeing the human element being woven back in, forming the new fabric from which the current landscape will take shape. Both more advanced and back to basics, it’s an exciting time for insurance companies to be creating, building, and growing.
Insurance Purchases Are Starting Online
A whopping 69% of insurance purchases begin online. The fact that buyers are starting with search and online research versus picking up the phone to dial a known brand presents a situation that levels the playing field. Smaller insurers with a targeted strategy and unique offerings are poised to compete with Goliaths. It’s a massive opportunity for insurance companies to position themselves in the right place at exactly the right time.
Digital Ad Spend Is On the Rise
The fact that more than two-thirds of insurance purchases begin online has insurance-related ad spend at record levels. Some insurance industry keywords are ringing in at over $50 per click, topping the charts for the most expensive keyword in Google AdWords.
These numbers include broad-based terms. The more longtail the term, the more targeted the niche, the thinner the herd. The implications are not only lower ad spend but also opportunities to reach customers organically with little to no advertising budget.
Content Marketing Assets Are Driving Traffic
Customers aren’t just looking for “insurance” — they’re looking for insurance that fits their needs and situations. Whether it’s a health insurance company that offers copays for ABA therapy, an auto insurance company that insures a side-hustling delivery driver, or a life insurance company that insures a person in remission, customers are searching for companies that can serve them before requesting a quote.
The top-level pages of your website don’t often cover all the granular details, questions, and situations that customers call in and ask about, but content marketing can. These information-rich content pieces are organic search magnets and work to pre-qualify leads before they call. Each piece in the content library becomes a stop on a map along which different customers journey through the sales process.
Analyzing real-time calls and extracting customer questions provides a rich source of topics. Themes begin to emerge, and each of these topics and questions can become the basis for a library of articles. This content can educate people after they’ve found you and serve as a magnet and conversion opportunity for potential customers searching online for a company that can address their needs.
Conversions Happen on the Phone
Although buyers want to do their research and prequalify companies online, the numbers show that they want to talk to an actual person. Some 62% of insurance buyers said that talking with a rep on the phone was the most influential factor in their decision.
A full 75% of customers who attempted to purchase online had a problem, either technically or in understanding. Insurance is complex and notoriously complicated. Customers want to explain their nuanced situation and have reassurance that the product is in fact a good fit. In an industry where the product is not a physical product but a promise, the human element is essential.
Customer Experience Impacts Purchases and Retention
Phone conversions aren’t just slightly higher but significantly so. Not only do calls produce 10 to 15x more revenue than web leads, but those sales have a 28% higher retention rate. In an industry like insurance where profitability often begins at renewal, bringing in both higher-ticket sales and those that stay on the books is paramount. A customer may be able to buy a quick fix through an internet transaction, but until they feel certain their product is the right fit, there is room for hesitation at purchase and doubt at renewal.
Personalization Drives Revenue
When customers feel confident and understand the value of the product relative to them, they’re more likely to not only buy but also spend more on more comprehensive products and feature-rich add-ons. Forrester reports that 84% of marketers report phone calls having higher conversion rates with larger dollar values compared to other forms of engagement.
Machine Learning and Automation Working With, Not Against, Humans
Having live, trained, and professional customer reps — and enough of them to handle the volume — is expensive. It’s the reason companies turned to digital in the first place and cut call centers down or out. Now the industry is responding to those outcomes and meeting back in the middle.
The numbers driving 2024’s trends show an undeniable theme: Humans are back. But they’re not back alone. AI, machine learning, and automation, combined with specialized live human intelligence, will undoubtedly mark the next monumental shift when we reflect on this time in history. The technology is here, and the time has arrived.
On the sales side, enhanced customer segmentation will deliver the right callers to your conversion specialists at the precise moment when decisions are made. In the past, spoken conversations between customers and agents evaporated into the ether, captured only by cumbersome audio files or agent notes. Current AI technology can capture data through spoken conversations and convert it into digital data that is clean, categorized, and easy to monitor, measure, and track.
On the back end, enhanced data gathering from live human interactions, combined with AI and machine learning technology will lend to more personalized pricing, better conversation analytics, and ultimately more precision underwriting. Better data means more tailored policies, streamlined processes, and a proactive versus reactive risk management approach.
Marketing to the Socially Conscious on the Rise
Consumers are voting with their dollars for companies that align with their values. These considerations don’t just end with consumable goods. How companies treat their employees — and their policies on inclusiveness, social consciousness, and environmental consciousness — all matter to customers.
Consumers are searching for this information and will seek out companies to patronize based on it. They understand the value of their purchasing power and are leveraging it to effect change in the world.
Where to Allocate Insurance Marketing Dollars in 2024
The overarching theme when setting this year’s big-picture marketing goals — the North Star against which to align your strategy — is growth marketing. In your start-of-year planning and throughout the year when faced with decisions, pull back and ask: Does this action contribute to our growth marketing plan?
Cohesive, intentional, long-term plays designed to build your brand reputation, presence, trust, and authority will yield more fruitful results than quick shot grabs at keyword browsers. Today’s digital and search landscape favors the company that knows and nurtures its customers and is committed to serving them versus just making a buck.
Blogs: The #1 Highest Return on Investment for Insurance Companies
Blogs offer some of the highest ROI of any marketing channel for insurance companies. Despite all the trendy new channels, high-quality content published on brand-owned properties reigns supreme.
The fleeting nature of ads and the exorbitant rates for insurance-related keywords are only part of the reason for turning back focus to building brand dominance and trust through content creation. At the core of this trend is that customers are demanding more social proof of personality, accountability, intelligence, integrity, and knowledge from the companies they do business with than an ad grab can provide.
Your customers are searching for specific solutions and answers, and they want to do business with companies that demonstrate that they respect their right to intelligent facts and real answers. High-quality insurance blog posts that provide them with the exact information and answers they are looking for accomplish two critical goals in one step:
- They cut through the clutter of search engine results and appear to your target audience at the exact moment they are seeking answers through long-tail searches.
- They lend credibility to your position as a trusted authority on the topic.
Beyond that, blogs offer ways to answer common questions and pre-handle objections that keep buyers from pulling the trigger.
Creating pillar content clusters around core topics on a custom-built versus templated website makes blog content even more effective for SEO. Each post is another way for a potential buyer to find and engage with your content. It’s the beginning of a mutually beneficial, respectful relationship between you and your customer. They want the decency of effort spent providing them with real answers, and in return, they’ll reward those who win them over with legitimate and earned loyalty.
Intentional Email Marketing Can Generate $36 for Every $1 Spent
Insurance email marketing done right can be one of the most profitable channels for new and repeat business year after year. Done haphazardly, it can be a source of frustration and discouragement.
There really is a specific, time-tested, formulaic approach to email marketing that, when employed, can build your list and turn it into a revenue-churning machine. It’s not an out-of-the-box solution that allows you to push a button and go, but rather a formulaic process that can fit your precise situation.
With consumers in an uproar against the use of third-party cookies, owning your own content assets and marketing channels is becoming even more essential in 2024. Cultivated correctly and nurtured well, your email marketing list can become one of the most valuable and profitable assets your company owns.
Intentionally Designed, End-To-End PPC Marketing
Shooting out promotional ads without a strategy behind them is expensive. Hearing what people need and then creating digital doors for them to voluntarily walk through is where real profitability begins. Knowing what a customer wants, presenting an ad that promises to deliver precisely what they want, and delivering on that promise is the formula for a profit-producing PPC marketing machine that can be turned on instantly without waiting for rankings.
Omnichannel Marketing
It’s human nature to feel more familiar with people, places, ideas, and brands we come into contact with regularly. Good marketing is always about taking cues from human nature and leaning in versus pushing an agenda that defies it and hoping for different results. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, 92% of marketers today are leveraging omnichannel marketing, and when done correctly, the approach can retain more than 89% of customers.
Like any solid marketing strategy, “doing for the sake of doing” isn’t what gets the transcendental results. Peppering every social media channel with remixed content for the sake of having a presence isn’t the answer and can feel like a lot of busy work for a big letdown. Cohesive, action-oriented, omnichannel marketing across various social media platforms can be a wondrous and exciting symphony of experience, engagement, and action. Deliberately choosing the precise social media networks and tailoring a presence for the platform is like planting the right seed in the right soil under the right conditions.
Real and sudden results are available for companies that can cut through the clutter and show up with a response to customers’ needs the way they need to hear them.
Growth marketing strategies such as content marketing, web redesign, social proof, email marketing, and highly targeted, dialed-in omnichannel campaigns that are part of an intentionally designed sales funnel are emerging as key focus areas for insurance marketing budgets in 2024.
The key will be not to “assume” what customers need and create rigid silos around those assumptions but instead to employ ways to hear what buyers are saying, then turn that information into top-level action items. Even fractional needs can be targeted and marketed to in ways that large lassos and buckshot advertising are leaving on the table. The total number of fractional needs is a huge piece of the pie and an opportunity begging to be addressed.
Let’s Brainstorm
Excited by what you’re hearing? Book a meeting with us today. Let’s talk about your customers, your products, your vision, and how all of these come together into beautifully streamlined, agile, end-to-end marketing systems.
About Neilson Marketing Services
Since 1988, Neilson Marketing Services has been implementing innovative marketing solutions and strategies for our clients in all areas of marketing. Contact us today at (866) 816-1849 to put our talent, expertise, and vast resources to work for you. Let’s make things happen, together!
