« Insurance Inbound Marketing: Abundant Online Opportunities »

For insurance marketers, half the battle in creating a successful online marketing strategy is in properly identifying where the conversation about your industry is happening. This means knowing how and where people are talking about the insurance industry, be it on Twitter, Facebook, blogs or other of the multitude of online communication channels available today. This is not always an easy concept to grasp -- especially when online marketing is new to you (as it is for many of the insurance company marketing professionals with whom I work).

I recently downloaded a free ebook from HubSpot.com, a top inbound marketing company, that I think helps show through example how the “conversation identification” process works. The 50-page ebook is titled Online Marketing Opportunity Report: Social Media, Blog and Search Engine Activity by Industry. The purpose of the document is to show a snapshot of where online activity is occurring for keywords representing 33 industries. “Insurance” was one of the keywords analyzed for the ebook.

Opportunity Analysis for the Keyword Insurance

HubSpot used a proprietary algorithm to analyze keywords representing 33 industries, the goal being to show relative online activity (not absolute numbers) for each industry. Since I work with a lot of insurance marketing professionals, I am using "insurance" as the example for this blog post:

The pie chart on the left shows overall online activity for “insurance.” Results break down approximately as follows: 70% on search engines; 20% on blogs; and 10% on social media (i.e., Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.). It can be inferred from these numbers that – at this point in time – people are more inclined to do a search of “insurance” than to blog about it. For insurance marketers it means that you can benefit greatly from content marketing (i.e., writing an “insurance” blog) that utilizes thoughtful search engine optimization practices to help ensure yours is the content being found in these searches. 

The pie chart on the right shows relative online activity across four popular social media sites. It’s important to note that only 10% of the conversation on “insurance” currently takes place within social media. With that in mind, social media analysis for “insurance” breaks down approximately as follows: 40% on Twitter; 30% on LinkedIn; 15% on Facebook; and 15% on YouTube.

Insurance Marketing Online Opportunities: Two Key Points

1. The “conversation” (most likely made up of a rich community of insurance buyers, insurance agents/brokers, journalists, etc.) is already taking place online. This community is actively looking online for content pertaining to insurance. Now it’s time for insurance company marketers to provide the quality content this community is looking for.

2. Blogs and social media both remain relatively untapped online channels for extending the “insurance” conversation. This means blogs and social media also create huge opportunities. For insurance company marketers ready to make the commitment to deliver quality, relevant content on a regular basis, you have an already thriving “insurance” community that's hungry for content. 

What Do You Think About Insurance Marketing Online?

Please share your thoughts in the comment section. And, as always, thanks for reading.

IF YOU LIKED THIS POST, YOU MAY ALSO ENJOY:

Insurance Inbound Marketing: CMOs Need To Earn CEO Trust

Insurance Social Media Marketing: Simple Template for Success

Insurance Inbound Marketing: Insurance Company White Papers

Insurance Inbound Marketing: Getting Social with Agents/Brokers

Insurance Inbound Marketing: Know Where the Conversations Are

Content Marketing: Powerful Tool for Insurance Companies

Inbound Marketing: Why Social Media for Insurers Will Get Easier