The insurance industry – like many others – is rapidly evolving. It is no different whether you sell auto, business, or home insurance. Thankfully, there is more consumer data available for insurance companies to innovate new products and better ways to serve customers.
The rapid evolution we are seeing in the insurance industry opens exciting prospects for the sector, but it also presents marketing challenges for insurance brokers. The challenge is consumer needs are evolving just as fast as the insurance industry itself. That calls for new ways of attracting prospects and retaining customers.
The regulatory environment has also changed a lot over the years, with new laws that protect consumers against invasive marketing tactics. The challenge of trying to stay on top of all the changes in the insurance industry is one that should concern every insurance broker looking to grow their business in Toronto’s competitive market.
This article identifies three main marketing challenges insurance brokers in Toronto face today. We will also propose a quick digital marketing solution brokers can use to generate leads and roll with all the emerging marketing challenges.
Changing Demographics
Insurance is one of those things that consumers know they need but never actively go out to purchase unless they are forced to. For example, when buying a car or when applying for a mortgage loan. That makes it a hard sell, especially when you are using the same marketing tactics for consumers whose demographics have changed.
Generation Z consumers will, for example, overtake millennials as the most economically active age group in the developed world. But the two generations have different tendencies and expectations, to the extent that insurance agencies cannot successfully target them with the same marketing messages or channels they have always relied on.
Generation Z consumers are more technologically savvy and more conscious of their evolving needs than millennials, which means they present a greater marketing challenge. The global Covid pandemic has also had a big impact on consumer behaviour, including how and where they prefer to work and live. This again has forced the insurance industry into a state of flux.
The overarching effect of the shift in demographics is the increasing dependence on digital media. Whether baby boomer, millennial or Gen Z, consumers will do most of their research and purchases online. This demands a shift in marketing strategy from offline to online channels.
Greater Demand For Personalized Products
Consumers today have more options than they need for almost every need. If you don’t serve their needs to their satisfaction, they will switch to another insurance provider. And it also happens that consumers are more demanding than ever, with an increasing abhorrence for one-size-fits-all solutions. In a way, insurance has effectively been de-commoditized.
To stay relevant in today’s marketing landscape, insurance providers have to innovate with more personalized, flexible insurance options. Selling those policies will also demand addressing consumers as individuals and not as large homogenous groups.
As an insurance broker, you have to show a deeper understanding of the challenges your prospects face so you can target them with relevant content and offers. You will need to aggregate data from multiple sources and draw insights on how to structure your marketing messages in a way that appeals to the needs of increasingly diverse prospects.
The Challenge to Constantly Improve Customer Experience
It is no longer enough to just gain a customer and make a sale. In insurance, the ultimate value in a client shows in how long you are going to retain them. The bigger goal should be to ensure current customers renew every year.
Insurance brokers should, therefore, spend as much or more time serving the needs of current customers in a way that makes them feel heard and appreciated. This produces a customer who is more likely to renew and is more amenable to upselling. In short, it is essential to constantly work on the customer experience.
The best way to improve customer experience is by understanding who your customers are and what their pain points and goals are. That is only the start, though. It is essential to manage your ongoing interactions with policyholders throughout their customer journey.
Yes, great companies do not fixate on attracting new clients and invest a greater effort and resources in retaining old customers. But customers only stay with brands they are happy with. And it takes only one bad experience for some clients to leave you. So it’s critical to cultivate a great experience for customers. Avail yourself more, respond to queries faster, and be generally helpful.
How Insurance Brokers Can Meet The Challenges Of A Dynamic Digital Marketing Landscape
It is not an exaggeration to say that the modern consumer is hard to please. They don’t feel any obligation to stick with a brand, no less brands that don’t prioritize them and effectively respond to their evolving needs.
To survive this challenging marketing landscape, insurance brokers have to rejig their marketing and ditch outbound for inbound tactics. This demands a shift towards channels that consumers prefer. In other words, you must serve customers and find prospects where they prefer to hang out, which for many is online.
Being active on social media helps to tap into conversations people are having about insurance, which informs your decisions on both old and new products. Learning SEO will open a window into the needs and pain points of prospects, including their knowledge gaps. All this is intelligence you can use to craft more targeted content and product offers.
An All-in-one Digital Marketing Solution
We can think of other digital marketing tips for Toronto’s insurance brokers, including email marketing and PPC. But for a tactic that can pay off right now and for which you need minimal investment, where most of the legwork has already been done for you, nothing beats joining an online marketplace like Souqh.
Souqh is a platform where homeowners and homebuyers come to find solutions for specific problems. Souqh gives you a digital storefront and a pre-segmented audience of warm leads that are actively shopping for specific service providers. This makes it a great place for home insurance brokers to find leads.
We are the digital equivalent of a shopping mall where store owners are guaranteed foot traffic almost as soon as they open up shop. With this digital storefront, most of the SEO and promotion are already done for you, unlike building a brand new website that will take time to rank for your target terms.
Souqh has features for electronic document sharing and signing, chat, and data protection features that streamline customer interactions and promote safe commerce. We believe ours is one of the fastest ways of building your digital brand and generating leads online.
Listing on Souqh now means you get in and build authority before others wake up to the opportunity. Explore Souqh’s excellent features and register here.
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