There’s a lot of competition in the insurance industry. It’s a challenge to reach your clients and hold their attention. So how can you set your company apart from the competition? Content marketing is one solution that’s easy to get started with and see quick results.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is creating and distributing content that provides a high value to its customers. It’s creating content that helps answer questions, gives information, and otherwise educates its intended audience.
Content marketing always begins with the creation of content. This content can utilize any media type, but written articles and videos are two of the most popular formats. Once created, this content is disseminated widely to an audience using any channels available. Companies can use email blasts, social media posts, and even traditional marketing channels to reach the right people looking to learn about specific topics.
Content marketing is different from traditional marketing. It’s creating content people want and need to consume compared to the information they’re being forced to consume through marketing broadcasts, such as ads. It encourages people to seek information from a company because they know they’ll get accurate and valuable information, even if they aren’t making a purchase right away. This quickly builds up the know-like-trust factor that is so important when it comes time to make a sale or close the deal.
How can an Insurance Company use Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a powerful educational tool that can help customers understand how to get the most out of a product or service they use, such as their insurance. An easy way to start using content marketing is to identify a few common questions or issues insurance customers have.
Let’s walk through an example.
Your team keeps receiving the same email: “I don’t understand my insurance.” Although it’s frustrating to repeatedly get the same question, this is an opportunity to provide fantastic customer service through education. The customers who send these emails might be saying that they don’t understand their insurance, but the underlying message is that they want to understand their insurance.
You can use content marketing techniques to educate these confused customers, thus providing outstanding customer service in the process. First, think of some broad categories of information that people need to understand in order to make full use of your insurance product, and try phrasing them as a question.
- This might include things like:
- How does insurance work (in general)?
- How much insurance do I need?
- How do I know what level of insurance I have?
- When can I use my insurance?
- What do different terms in my insurance paperwork mean?
Each one of these questions is an opportunity for educational content marketing. Break each question down into a few more minor questions that can be quickly answered within a single article or video. You can start with one or two pieces of content for each question and then add additional content over time.
Eventually, you’ll organize your new content under “pillar pages,” which bring together all of the content on a single theme in one place. Each piece of content will still have its own page, and it’s easy to add additional pieces of content as they are developed.
Pillar pages make it easy for your customers to find information in one place, eliminating additional calls for customer service. It’s also a great way to help customers find answers to questions they didn’t even know they had.
This means that “What do different terms in my insurance paperwork mean?” (pillar page topic) can become:
- What does deductible mean?
- What is escrow?
- What does a binder mean?
- What is guaranteed insurability?
- What is an insurance rider?
- What’s the difference between an agent and a broker?
Each of these bullet points can become its own article or video that fully answers the question. All of the content marketing pieces within a specific topic are tied together through that pillar content page and include internal links. Internal links are especially valuable with content marketing because they show you fully understand the customer’s thought process and already have additional information to help them understand new concepts. There’s no end to the process, as your content production team can always add new topics to a pillar content page and create new pillar content pages themselves.
Once a pillar content page and its subsequent articles are created, they’re ready to be sent out into the world using any other type of marketing channel or technique. The social media team can create posts that use a snippet or highlight of the article, redirecting the reader back to the website to read the full article. Links to content can be included in email blasts or any other place where information is distributed.
Who Will Benefit From Content Marketing?
First off, your customers will benefit as they become better versed and more educated in your insurance product. They’ll have a better understanding of the product and view your company as a reliable and trusted source of information.
Second, your customer service agents will benefit. The pillar content and its articles can be used to answer common questions, redirecting the client to the appropriate content page. They can also use these same articles to build a robust FAQ page that will improve deflection, leaving your agents free to help clients with complex issues.
Finally, the company as a whole will benefit. Content marketing will help make your current customers happy. They’ll learn more about the insurance industry as a whole and specifically about how your company can meet their insurance needs. They’ll see your company as a valued partner interested in serving them instead of just a for-profit business. Content marketing will also help draw in new clients eager to work with an insurance agency that prioritizes education, not just selling.
Content marketing helps people gain high-value information that has actual meaning in their lives, which is different from hard-selling traditional marketing. It meets customers where they are and brings them into your company’s fold through education. Hosting your content on your website is another way to get people to visit the site more frequently, thus increasing the chances of purchasing or adding new insurance opportunities to their personal portfolios.