Friday, February 15, 2019

Digital Trends Lead Insurance Marketing Change

Digital marketing dominates professional advice for insurance marketers this year, from e-mail to social media to online search. However, whether insurance marketing via digital or traditional channels such as direct mail, there are some general trends affecting success in 2019, per the American Agents Alliance. First comes the continued value of cultivating brand advocates with testimonials, referrals and word of mouth. Quoting Forbes magazine, "the top four most-trusted sources of advertising are people you know, branded sites, editorial sites, and reviews." A myopic focus on impersonal advertising will miss these important lead drivers. The personal touch needs to extend into offering targeted, personalized digital and print content that is useful and engaging, as well as client interaction that is real and humanized, not generic and automated. Insurance agency/broker marketing agencies like EaseCentral and OutboundEngine offer some advice on where to focus digital marketing energies more specifically in 2019. Start by revisiting e-mail strategy. With an average $32 return per $1 spent in 2018, e-mail remains an attractive direct marketing option especially because it also offers opportunities for the forwarding, social sharing, and referral business in line with the general trends noted above. Another tried-and-true digital driver, paid and organic search engine ranking, still matters, but search strategy needs an important tweak this year to cater to growth of voice searches. EaseCentral points out that ComScore forecasts close to 50% of all searches will be made through voice search by 2020. Plus, due to the increasing use of voice searches, Google and other search engines are beginning to factor it into their algorithms. Mobile optimization will play a big role in effective leveraging of voice search since these searches occur mainly on mobile devices. Social platforms offer some unique advantages for insurance marketers looking for a way to humanize and personalize, say with personalized customer service via Facebook and LinkedIn. Opportunities for direct marketing with promoted posts and social ads can use social media platforms' increasing ability to target zip codes, professions and other demographics to hone response. Finally, video is now a proven response driver in digital marketing for almost all industries, with online video projected to account for 80% of all web traffic in 2019 per Cisco research. For more detail, see our website blog post at https://www.acculistusa.com/digital-options-lead-2019-insurance-marketing-trends/

No comments:

Post a Comment