Updated on 05/12/2022
Why should online insurance companies invest in online video advertising? To intercept and retain consumers in light of their buying habits in the digital age.
The market for insurance is competitive, and one that is known for creative and memorable ad campaigns from brands like Geico and Progressive. It’s also an industry that is being disrupted by changing technologies and habits—the availability of more and more data, new pricing models, and new, more demanding customer expectations for service—that are driving the need to be ever-more competitive. Online video advertising is one way for companies to differentiate themselves in a competitive and crowded market.
According to research by Oberlo, 92% of Italians watch online videos from any of their devices. This figure is even more interesting if you think that nine out of ten Italians are internet users, and that 88% of Italians make at least one access per day to the network. In addition, users between the ages of 25 and 34 are among the most assiduous followers of video. Growth is steady, driven mainly by mobile.
And the demand for video content is constantly increasing. 54% of consumers want to see more video content from a brand or company they support (Source: Oberlo).
Here are some tips for designing your campaign to think about.
Choose the right stage of the buyer’s journey
The first issue to be addressed is identifying the phase, or phases, of the buyer’s journey in which to position the campaign. Generating new leads, talking with prospects or improving engagement with customers require different communication. And, therefore, specifically structured videos. A few months ago, for example, a large insurance company launched an online video campaign on its social media channels (Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube) to raise awareness on issues of protection, security, and risk management. In this case, the message was meant to be informative and was aimed at the beginning of the buyer’s journey.
If, however, you want to ensure customer retention when the policy is up for renewal, then you’ll want to show how you provide value, how you’re addressing their insurance needs today (and for tomorrow), or offer special discounts to keep them from looking for a new provider.
No scripts necessary
Faced with the challenge of creating a video, online insurance may be concerned by two converging aspects: the script and costs. Where one might assume that a script would require additional expense from say an external creative agency, instead, the canvas is already present. What you already know about customers from the data collected—via customer service, testimonials, social comments, and other feedback—can be fuel for storytelling. Rather than building a generic, scripted video, if you’re tracking customer data and intelligence from Customer Communication Management (CCM) systems, then you already have enough information to tell a compelling and story that is personalized for each customer.
What has always been done, for example with the drafting and sending of transactional documents that confirm the transaction between the parties, now can become an explanatory video aimed at informing and certainly much more appealing than a dry text accompanied by clauses written in the body 8. In fact a search is known that sees a video retains 95% of the message, compared to 10% when a written text is read (source: Wirebuzz).
No extras or directors are needed: the same CCM system that groups and sorts data can predict which video output with avatars bearing the name and surname of customers, creating a custom video
Video advertising within a digital marketing strategy
The online video advertising strategy must take into account the spread of these videos on different social platforms, depending on the needs, but with a warning. Online insurance must take into account the habits of users both in relation to their brand and the trends that manifest themselves on the market.
In the first case, any appreciation of customers to receive informative emails can be confirmed and enriched by a further upgrade with the reception of a video. Adding a video to your email marketing campaign increases the CTR (Click-Through-Rate) by 65% (source: campaignmonitor.com).
In the second, it is good to remember that the loading of the videos also follows the logic of the container that hosts them. You can’t, therefore, post to an empty and un-animated Fan Page for much of the time.
The video must be inserted in a wider digital marketing strategy with timely programming of the outputs – posts, events, stories, tweets etc. – on one or more social media. Similarly, if Instagram has faster growth rates than its older brother and LinkedIn is the third most used social network in Italy, these trends can not be neglected in the planning of a winning video campaign.
The most important advice is to choose the social network that best suits the needs and type of audience.
Measure online video advertising strategy with ROI
To understand how the video campaign is performing there are different parameters of ROI (Return On Investment) to consider. The main ones are brand awareness, churn rate, and purchase influence.
Brand awareness
Brand awareness is the degree of notoriety that your brand can acquire. How your products and services are recognizable and traceable to your company. So the question to ask is: since you started your video advertising campaign, how much has the company’s reputation increased?
You can get this information thanks to Google Analytics and check the increase in traffic on the site, how much this traffic was generated by the video sent via email or posted on a social platform, related searches on Google, from clicks and shares.
Churn rate
The Churn rate, or abandonment rate, is the percentage of customers or subscribers who stop using the services offered by a company for a period of time.
So, on the occasion of policy renewals, check how many customers have been confirmed thanks to your video advertising campaign? In relation to customers who use insurance services, what was the percentage of abandonment compared to the previous year? The Churn rate is a measure of engagement.
Improved engagement
To understand if the strategy of video advertising for insurance is working, there is to consider the metric of “on-site engagement”. We talked a lot about engagement marketing. This allows us to track and measure engagement and then verify how visitors interact with your content. There are two aspects to keep in mind: the bounce rate and the permanence time on the page.
A low bounce rate is not worrisome. It means that visitors do not only stop at the single page but visit multiple parts of the site. Obviously, at the time of evaluation, you have to take into account pages created specifically for a single session, so in this case a high value is completely normal.
While a bounce rate is too high, it can be a signal indicating SEO problems. In this case, it is good to move towards optimization.
The time spent on the page, however, focuses attention on the duration that visitors spend on specific pages and allows you to identify which pages are attracting the most attention, those that “work” better. Knowing this, allows you to optimize the latter to the best, that working on those pages that do not get the desired results.
With Google Analytics it is easy to derive this data.
Purchase influence
Many different factors can influence the results of purchasing decisions. Some of these factors are specific to the buying situation: what exactly are you buying and for what occasion. Other factors are specific to each person: an individual’s background, preferences, personality, motivation, and economic status.
In short, it is always good to set a goal and then see if you have managed to achieve it. How much sales have increased since the campaign launched? If the purpose of the online company was to expand the number of policyholders, did the video advertising strategy manage to achieve it? And if so, in what proportion? The parameter of influence on the purchase is the litmus test that the method really works.