Insurance industry needs to harness societal ‘renaissance’ to succeed in marketing

The insurance industry has been taking its old marketing techniques and just dumping it into a new channel the Internet and the approach will not work, Mitch Joel, president of Twist Image, told delegates at the Insurance Brokers Association of Ontario’s 88th annual convention.
“Each month in Canada, there are 5.2 million searches on Google for ‘insurance,’ and you’re not there,” he told brokers at the conference. “So, how do you evolve?”
Taking marketing to the next level is not necessarily what a business puts into it, but it’s what the community of consumers does with it, he said.
“It doesn’t evolve because I’ve added a flashy interface,” Joel said. “It evolves because I have enabled the power of the consumer to connect with one another through the comments that people leave and the pieces of information that they share and pass along.”
It’s a common misconception that the consumer is now in control, Joel told the crowd. But companies still control their products i.e. the packaging, service and distribution of the products, etc.
“But one thing has changed,” he said. “Before, when a consumer would talk or complain, it went into a file folder somewhere. Now when they talk about your brand, everybody can hear them. They have this Marshall stack amplifier called the Internet.”
In order to harness this evolution Joel suggested six points:
1) Think in terms of tribes, not demographics. People are part of a community that includes their work, their families, their cars, etc. Learn to target the tribes.
2) Everything is “with” and not “instead of.” Brokers need to be doing traditional and new forms of marketing effectively.
3) Don’t be fleeting. Every time you connect with a consumer, it’s an opportunity to build a relationship with them.
4) Earn the trust of the consumer to get them out of ‘lurker’ mode (someone who is on your site, but not buying).
5) It’s attitudinal, not generational. The shifts needed have nothing to do with age, but everything to do with one’s attitude.
6) Do something. By using tools like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or blogs you will fundamentally understand why people are using them.