An eBook on how social media marketing has the potential to earn insurance companies billions of dollars in untapped business.

1. YMARKETING
Social Media Marketing
Best Insurance Policy For Insurance Companies
January 2011
How social media marketing has the potential to earn insurance
companies billions of dollars in untapped business.

2. Social Media Marketing
Best Insurance Policy for Insurance Companies
Insurance covers emotional events. You buy term
insurance in case you die suddenly. You buy
health insurance to help pay for your recovery.
Auto insurance covers the value of your car and
more in the event of a crash. Heck, there’s even
pet insurance for your cat. Protecting your loved
ones and prized possessions – it doesn’t get
much more emotional than this.
Yet insurance companies are not known for their ability to interact emotionally with
customers. And that has cost them billions of dollars.
The key word here is “interact.” The big insurance companies give us emotionally laden
TV ads. But that’s branding, not interaction.
In the report Reborn identity: Bringing emotion to insurance the author Oliver Wyman
states that the “resulting lack of emotional engagement and growth in
franchise value has cost European insurers over 100 billion Euros in value.”
(Equivalent to 133.49 billion US dollars)
He goes on to offer objectives that can help insurers better engage their customers:
 Satisfy customer needs as customers see them.
 Offer tangible benefits, not ethereal concepts.
 Interact emotionally at all customer touch points.
 Build a culture of customer-focused innovation.
ymarketing • 3050 Pullman Street, Costa Mesa, CA 92626 • 1.877.736.4321

3. How can insurance companies interact emotionally?
Step 1 - Create an integrated marketing, sales and customer service plan that
addresses the above objectives.
Step 2 - Make sure you include a social media marketing strategy into your marketing
mix.
Why Social Media?
Social media is where you connect and interact with your customers in real time. It’s
here where you can:
 Learn what your customers needs are, as they see them.
 Interact immediately with them, addressing their emotional concerns.
 Build a community with your customers and prospects that:
o Involves them
o Rewards feedback
o Pro-actively addresses service issues
o Solves problems individually and collectively
In fact, if insurance companies embrace social marketing, they will build an insurance
policy for their longevity. Here’s why.
Building Trust. Insurance companies fundamentally ask their clients to trust them.
Put your money into my insurance and when the need arises, we will back you. With
social media, each time you interact honestly with your customers and prospects, you
create a level of trust.
When the insurance company responds to an individual’s concern, everyone who is
connected to the insurance company’s social network has access to it – both in real time
and as an archive. When a blog post resonates with the needs of customers, it remains
on the Internet for those who find it through the search engines. It’s trust that’s built
to last and it belongs to the insurance company.
ymarketing • 3050 Pullman Street, Costa Mesa, CA 92626 • 1.877.736.4321

4. Humanizing Insurance. One of the objectives is to interact emotionally at all of the
touch points. Insurance companies have known for years that face-to-face encounters
are the most effective when selling policies or explaining claim benefits. But with less
face-to-face encounters and more people turning to the web for interaction, social media
has become the front lines for customer/company interaction.
Furthermore, with social media marketing you don’t have to wait for the complaints.
You can manage the conversation by showing your human side. For example, during the
most recent snow storm Allstate Insurance talked about snow fall and snowmobiles on
several of its Facebook posts. It’s not all about selling – it’s about talking to your
customers about what’s of interest to them at the moment, which lies at the heart of
intelligent and emotional marketing.
At the end of Reborn identity: Bringing emotion to insurance Wyman talks about
building a culture of customer-focused innovation. The aim for innovation is “to
improve the customer experience and, by doing so companies, will
improve their own economics.”
He then goes on to offer the three key innovation imperatives – Focus on the
i) Customer experience
ii) A structured process
iii) Robust measurement.
By integrating a comprehensive social media marketing program into their marketing,
insurance companies can accomplish all three – and as a result improve their own
economics.
That’s a good insurance policy for long term growth.
ymarketing • 3050 Pullman Street, Costa Mesa, CA 92626 • 1.877.736.4321

5. About ymarketing
We are a digital search marketing agency headquartered in Orange County California with resources in
Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago and Orlando.
Founded in 2002, ymarketing implements integrated online marketing programs including affiliate,
display, email, natural search, paid search, blog and social media by utilizing best-of-breed analytical
applications - We call all of this Online Marketing Optimization
ymarketing is HubSpot Certified Partner & Partner of The Year 2010, Google AdWords Certified Partner
and Company, Microsoft adExcellence Company, Member of the SEO Consultants Directory, SEMPO,
Search Industry Peer Review, and a Yahoo! Search Marketing Ambassador.
Specialties
Lead generation, customer acquisition, search engine optimization, search engine marketing (PPC),
online marketing optimization, social media.
Contact Information
3050 Pullman Street
Costa Mesa,
California 92626
info@ymarketing.com
1.866.736.4321
www.ymarketing.com
ymarketing • 3050 Pullman Street, Costa Mesa, CA 92626 • 1.877.736.4321