What role does marketing – and digital marketing – play in the business strategies of organizations, especially in the human-centric insurance industry?
People live increasingly digital lives. Reaching them with communication and products within their digitally enabled environments is what marketing does.
Hence, marketing exploits digital as a medium of media amplification, a channel of sale, or both.
This is true for Income Insurance too. MartechAsia finds out more about digital marketing in a Q&A with Dhiren Amin, Chief Customer Officer, Income Insurance:
How does Income Insurance use digital marketing strategies to enhance visibility and understanding of insurance products?
Dhiren Amin (DA): Organisations don’t have digital marketing strategies. Organisations have business strategies within which marketing plays a role in driving its long- and short-term revenue growth, using product, promotion, and communication tools at their disposal.
At Income, for categories where sales are primarily done through agents and not digital, such as life, health and motor insurance, digital plays three roles:
- Mode of driving media amplification: Using digital media that most appeals to our relevant customer segments to convey our product preference-driving messages to them.
- Mode of education: Digital destinations such as the company’s website and app serve as destinations where customers are encouraged to explore and learn more about our unique products and services.
- Mode of frictionless servicing: Apps, claim portals and 1-on-1 communication tools aimed at providing customers with a seamless experience in managing their policies, from onboarding to claims to grievances handling.
On the other hand, for categories where digital and social channels are the dominant sales channels, such as travel insurance, in which Income Insurance is one of the market leaders, digital platforms constitute an all-encompassing ecosystem for driving awareness, converting sales on the app/site, and managing policies, including payments and renewals.
Hence, the role of digital marketing varies and differs across different categories, even within the company.
An example in action is the approach to Star Secure Pro, a whole-life protection product that provides mental illness cover:
- We embarked on a campaign promoting the message that “It’s ok to get help”, which includes a 90-second film featuring a man who is grieving the loss of his son and demonstrating symptoms of major depressive disorder. This campaign was extended with the call-to-action of “get the support you need with Star Secure Pro”, using digital banners, search, electronic direct mailers and Facebook posts.
- Income Insurance also created a platform to share knowledge: collating government and private helplines, and a panel of trusted medical professionals, on our Star Secure Pro product webpage. We then targeted the people who may need help directly by buying more than 100 search words that are early symptoms of mental conditions — for example, anxiety, hallucination, sleep disturbance, and depressed mood.
- Last but not least, we also used local KOLs, working with local celebrities such as Sharon Au to share real stories of grief and mental struggles, popularising the message with her large audience base and prompting further conversations and stories to be shared.
What role does data analytics play in shaping marketing campaigns for such products?
