Need Insurance marketing ideas? I bet you do, considering what used to be a face-to-face industry has moved online, and what worked ten years ago to get you new policyholders won’t work anymore.

Chances are, this isn’t the first article you’ve read on insurance marketing—but I’ve designed it to be the only one you’ll ever need. Too many articles out there will give you a bulleted list of random insurance marketing ideas. Most of these marketing ideas are one-off, and, while they may work to get you one or two new policyholders, they aren’t exactly a strategy or a sustainable way of beating your competitors.

Because that’s what we’re really talking about here—you need to stand out enough in a competitive market so adults will choose your insurance company over the next one. One marketing campaign won’t do it.

The answer isn’t a random collection of ideas; it’s a comprehensive strategy that incorporates them. That’s what this article aims to provide. Below, you’ll find the top strategies and online insurance marketing ideas that the professionals employ to attract new policyholders, differentiate your brand, and retain existing policyholders. Hopefully, you’ll walk away with a deep understanding of today’s policyholder and how to use digital marketing to turn them into lifelong customers.

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Insurance Marketing Ideas to Attract New Policyholders

Your first hurdle in getting lifelong customers is breaking through the online noise and attracting them. But, beware: today’s consumers don’t like being sold to, they want to do their own research, and they naturally view insurance companies with skepticism. Today’s consumer is used to instant, sophisticated, seamless shopping experiences. Purchasing insurance is no different—policyholders expect the same easy process as they’d have when buying new shoes on Amazon. The following strategies and ideas are designed to solve for those caveats.

The Modern Insurance Buyer Is Online

Take a look at the image below:

Each month, consumers in the U.S. perform more than five million searches for auto insurance, life insurance, property insurance, and more. If you want to turn these consumers into new policyholders, use the strategies below.

1. Doctor up your insurance website

The best insurance marketing campaigns start and end with your website. Your website is frequently the first interaction policyholders will have with your company, and about 75% of them will judge your insurance company’s credibility based on how it looks and functions. If they don’t connect with what they see within 10 seconds of landing on a webpage, they’ll move onto another provider.

Three rules of thumb are that your website needs to be fast, it needs to be secure, and it needs to be mobile-friendly.

Did you know that over 50% of searches for insurance happen from mobile devices? That should tell you something about the usability and customer experience potential policyholders expect.

But it isn’t enough to just be mobile-friendly. Your website needs to load in under three seconds—47% of people expect a web page to load in two seconds or less! Considering the average mobile page speed is 15 seconds, you have work to do.

Go here and test your site speed and usability. If it’s red, you’ve got a problem. Here—take a look at how you stack up against a couple of your big-time competitors:

Other ideas to doctor up your website?

• Have contact information front and center – Most people’s eyes will gravitate towards the top right-hand corner.
• Include plenty of calls-to-action – People won’t do things unless you tell them to, so give them some direction.
• Install a chat feature – Nobody, especially now, likes to wait. The idea is that if the top insurance companies can answer questions instantly, yours should be able to as well.
• Speak their language – Millennials and Baby Boomers have different priorities, different outlooks on life, and different expectations. Why, then, are you serving them the same messaging? What connects with a 65-year-old may not do it for a 26-year-old.
• Use colors that convey meaning – I’m not a behavioral psychologist, but it doesn’t take a Ph.D. to know that colors on a website influence people’s emotions. While I’d like to say most people make decisions based on logic, that’s rarely the case. Strike an emotional chord, and you’ve just nudged the door open.
• Have plugins that alter the content based on the user’s location, so they always see localized content.

2. Invest in SEO

To interact with your website, policyholders have to be able to find you. Considering 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine, you need to somehow get yourself to the top of the first search engine results page—most people won’t venture past the first three organic search results.

If you want to get your company on the first page of Google or other search engines, you need to invest in search engine optimization (SEO). There are more than 200 actual ranking factors, but in general:

• Your pages need optimized title tags and meta descriptions
• Your website needs to be secured (HTTPS vs. HTTP)
• Your website needs to be mobile-friendly
• You need to add schema markup
• Your webpages need to have quality content
• Your webpage content length needs to be on par with your competitors
• Your website needs to be fast
• You need plenty of social signals
• You need plenty of quality backlinks
• You need optimized images

3. Create a blog

You need a blog. Blogs not only help generate traffic to your website, but they also prove your authority on topics, build trust, and transform you from an insurance company into a universal insurance resource. Blog posts also play a critical role for consumers researching products and services—the average person consumes 11.4 pieces of content before making a purchasing decision, according to Forrester. Take a look at how much traffic our blog drives to our website:

That’s more than half a million new people we reached in the past 12 months.

Here, I’ll get you started with a few insurance blog topic ideas:

• Do I Need [Life/Liability/Property/Etc.] Insurance?
• 5 Insurance Policies Everyone Should Have
• The Ins and Outs of [Life/Auto/Liability/Etc.] Insurance
• The Millennial’s Guide to [Renter’s/Life] Insurance
• Biggest Misconceptions About [Life/Auto/Liability/Etc.] Insurance
• Factors You Didn’t Know Affect Your [Life/Auto/Liability/Etc.] Insurance Coverage
• If You’re In These Professions, You Need Liability Insurance
• Different Types of Insurance
• How to Find the Best Auto Insurance
• How Much [Health/Auto/Liability/Etc.] Insurance Do You Need?
• Your Insurance Cheat Sheet
• We’re De-Jargoning the Insurance Industry
• 10 Tips for Keeping Insurance Rates Low
• Where to Buy Alien Abduction Insurance

4. Invest in “deer-in-headlights” resources

Ah, the age-old “deer-in-headlights” response to overwhelming things. And, boy—insurance is overwhelming at first. It’s understandable—most minors are on their parent’s insurance well into their college years, and after that commonly comes the “I’m-20-something-and-invincible” phase. In TransUnion’s 2017 Healthcare Millennial Report, 57% of millennial consumers identified as having “no understanding” or a “limited understanding” of their insurance benefits, while 50% of Generation X and 42% of Baby Boomers said the same.

Cue the deer in headlights response.

So, make it simple:

• Don’t give them too many choices on your website’s main pages. Insurance is already overwhelming, and having too many options can tip website visitors over the edge. Figure out what the most important things people need from you and focus on those. Here, I’ll show you what I mean with this excellent design example from Liberty Mutual:

• Create a big, fat, “Insurance 101” resource or an interactive guide on your website
• Put a quote comparison tool on your website’s homepage, then promote the crap out of it with pay per click and social media ads
• Create short (read: under two minutes) videos that explain different types of insurance coverage and post them on your YouTube page (oh, yea—you need a YouTube page)
• Create an online quiz to help potential policyholders figure out exactly what it is they’re looking for

5. Utilize pay per click advertising

We established that you need SEO because you need to be at the top of the search results. However, not all search queries are created equal—some queries indicate low commercial intent, and some indicate high commercial intent. For most high-commercial-intent searches, you’ll see the entire top half of the search results page is taken up by ads. Take a look at the difference in the search results when I search for “do I need renters insurance” vs. “buy renters insurance”:

When you look at it on mobile, the entire screen is taken up by ads, and since mobile web traffic has been outpacing desktop traffic, more and more people are clicking on paid ads. If you choose to use pay per click ads, make sure you sign up with a Google Premier Partner (like us). The insurance industry has the highest average cost per click, so if you don’t team up with someone who REALLY knows what they’re doing, you will most likely waste money.

What should you advertise? Start with your competitive rates. About 70% of consumers say they look for the best deal when renewing an auto policy, and getting the best deal on any type of insurance is of paramount importance to today’s money-savvy policyholders.

Insurance Marketing Ideas to Differentiate You from Your Competitors

Once you’ve gotten their attention, you need to differentiate yourself from your competitors. The next step policyholders make after discovering possible insurance providers is the age-old comparison. The 2018 JD Power study shows that brand reputation is the factor most likely to drive customer consideration of an insurer. It contributes 29%, on average, of what influences an insurance shopper to research an insurer’s offerings. This may explain why the top 10 insurers, in terms of total market share, now write 72% of all business in the country, up from 64% in 2000.

So, how are you stacking up against your competitors? If they have a better online presence than you, you’re already behind—pick up the slack with these ideas to help you differentiate your company and convert new policyholders.

6. Communicate your brand through video marketing

Video marketing is THE thing. Consumers in the U.S. now watch up to six hours of digital video per day. It’s not just for B2C, either—73% of B2B marketing professionals say that video has positively impacted marketing results. Below are a few video marketing ideas to get you started.

• Create how-to or informative videos – 86% of YouTube viewers say they often use YouTube to learn new things—so give them what they want. Teach them how to take care of their jewelry correctly. Teach them how to find the best insurance rates. Teach them how to inspect their home’s foundation for cracks. The options are endless.
• Feature policyholder testimonials – The number one mistake most insurance companies make is being self-centered. Stop making videos about yourself. Nobody cares why you think you’re great—they care why your policyholders think you’re great. Communicate that with spotlight videos featuring policyholders you’ve helped. Communicate your brand values by showing them, not talking about them.
• Show your commitment to society – Social responsibility is expected from insurance companies, and your company is no exception.

7. Generate raving reviews

Review generation is a great insurance marketing strategy. Approximately 85% of internet users value online reviews as much as recommendations from friends, and 95% of consumers read them. If you don’t have a strategy to generate new reviews consistently, you need to create one—now.

Here are a few ideas to get quick reviews:

• Ask for them—email your policyholders and simply ask them to leave a review
• Make it part of an ongoing process to check in on new policyholders
• Install a review-generation software

8. Highlight your differences in your content

Have you won awards? Show them on your front page. Do you have a staggering amount of rave reviews? Showcase them. Is your team the most caring team in the metro area? Post videos that prove it. Figure out what your target market’s pain points are, and actively head them off.

Insurance Marketing Ideas to Retain Existing Policyholders

Your job isn’t over after they sign the dotted line. Personally, I shop for insurance about every two years to see if I can get a better rate. I’m not unique. Especially now, with how easy getting a quote has become, you really need to be actively convincing policyholders to stay with you, even if your rate is higher.

9. Create and use email marketing newsletters

If you’re not communicating with your policyholders regularly, someone is taking your place. Email marketing is a great way to stay top-of-mind, enforce your brand, and inform policyholders of new and important updates. Today’s consumers are research-obsessed, so providing them with the information they crave is a guaranteed way to keep their attention.

Here are a few email marketing ideas for you:

• Create timely seasonal guides
• Run a referral contest
• Use email to set up annual renewals
• Send automatic follow-ups after a claim
• Monthly tips
• Warn consumers about trends that affect them
• Send educational tips and reminders

10. Be active on social media

A whopping 93% of insurance agencies report they have some sort of social marketing effort in place, but as many as 64% of them don’t measure the return on the investment (ROI) they’re receiving.

Big mistake. You can’t just randomly post on Facebook and expect your company to grow. You need to track everything, keep testing, tweak your campaigns, and repeat the process. 

Yes, social media is beneficial for your company. No, it’s not going to land you tons of leads. That’s why I included it under “retaining existing policyholders.”  By maintaining an active presence (and utilizing paid ads), you can stay top of mind and send subtle reminders about all the benefits you offer.

Need ideas? Here you go:

• Write tips on keeping insurance costs low
• Post infographics of the process
• Post 30-second how-to videos related to your industry (how to change a tire, how to get jewelry appraised, how to choose life insurance)
• Share customer stories
• Post about events 
• Create a web series