How MGAs, brokers and insurers can use digital marketing to fuel rapid growth
Modern digital marketing has transformed the way we consume and e-commerce is booming globally, yet the insurance sector is lagging behind in adapting to this new way of doing business – particularly in niche B2B business lines. Early adopters in the UK’s typically mature insurance industry therefore have significant scope for rapid growth.
In our new digital age, people no longer simply just buy a product or service but instead look for flexible experiences and quick online access to the solutions they need. The Insurance Market can tap into these using the five building blocks of digital marketing, and when brokers and MGAs introduce integrated and savvy digital marketing that feeds into their quote and buy platforms, the pay-off can be rapid.
Vitale Digital’s Premium Builder is designed to be just that: a smart solution to digital growth, particularly aimed at ambitious insurance brokers and MGAs who want to drive targeted online traffic to their quote and buy platforms – regardless of how niche the business line, the audience and the target territory.
It’s a cost-effective way to amplify customer acquisition, conversion and engagement, yet many lack the know-how to make it happen or don’t have internal capacity, despite the necessary changes the industry has experienced during the pandemic. It’s an area ripe for exploring – McKinsey & Company has found that best-in-class digital marketing and engagement can unlock 50 to 100 percent uplift in digital-enabled insurance sales through full funnel optimisation.
Depending on the company’s current digital maturity, traditional brokers and MGAs can also generate growth by increasing lead volume and nurturing existing client relationships, while reducing traditional marketing investment by 10 to 15 percent.
The first building block is content, or specifically, personalised content that engages customers at every point in their journey – from awareness and consideration through purchase and onboarding to loyalty. Smart content works hard to spark interest and demonstrate the value in good insurance, while also differentiating the provider from its competitors and making the customer feel proud of their decision to purchase. Paid social and paid search campaigns are an excellent way to target a niche audience, alongside side personalised non-branded email campaigns to influence the sales journey.
Next is analytics and the importance of a properly built digital ecosystem that integrates fully with a client’s transactional Quote and Buy platform. It’ll play a crucial role in helping to understand purchasing behaviour and therefore successfully target further digital marketing efforts. We recommend Google Analytics integrated with HubSpot to provide the end-to-end data picture.
The third building block is technology. To execute large-scale personalised marketing campaigns, the marketing-technology stack (known as “martech”) must be robust and reliable to facilitate every stage of the purchase journey while also being invisible to prospects. But before diving into a martech solution, establish the use case first and then find a martech solution to support it. We work with HubSpot, as do many of our insurance clients. It’s a great system to gain complete visibility of the digital sales journey and has an open API to enable integration with other platforms such as SalesForce and Microsoft Dynamics if needed.
Next is having a well-designed campaign operation to seamlessly and effectively target, track, optimise, prioritise, execute and measure digital marketing campaigns. Professional campaigns assets such as video explainers, Platform walk-throughs and teasers to influence the user to a client’s quote and buy platform are essential.
The last building block needed for sustainable growth is having a trusted digital team to work with. Having an agile and responsive team in place is essential, and it’ll likely be made up of a core team of leaders accountable for measuring team performance against KPIs plus people responsible for the functional end-to-end execution of tests and deployment of campaigns. Often client’s don’t have these teams in-house so look to a specialist agency such as Vitale to provide that digital and insurance expertise.
These building blocks are essential to realise digital growth and once in place the gains from successful digital marketing are there for the taking.
Vitale Digital is the trusted digital partner of ambitious brokers and MGAs. If you are interested in understanding how we partner with our insurance clients with Premium Builder, book a consultation here