Can Technology help David beat Goliath in Insurance?

Insurance, like nearly every industry, has its giants. They hold a dominant share of customer spending and at times the smaller broker must despair of their chances against these titans. They can spend more on advertising, more on marketing and reach more potential clients and as their market share rises – they can do this more and more easily.

Today we’d like to focus on whether it’s possible for David to beat Goliath in this battle for business and if so how?

Big doesn’t equal better

The first thing to take note of is that big often doesn’t equate to better. If you look at the technology world you’ll see that Apple is something of a minnow when it comes to market share when compared to Microsoft. That doesn’t stop Apple from dominating certain hardware platforms and it’s Apple that is often considered synonymous with quality rather than Microsoft.

One of the big mistakes that small marketing teams make is looking to go viral. Viral content is considered to be the holy grail of marketing – one piece of advertising that is shared endlessly on the web. Viral content is mainly a matter of luck not judgment. In many cases even if you could get your content to go viral it wouldn’t bring you any more business. Look at the big viral successes of the last few years and they either tend to be funny or musical or both. If you’re selling humor or records this could be a resounding win for a company but if you’re not then it’s unlikely that you will win a huge number of additional customers for your efforts.

Insurance Giant

Focus is the Key

Small insurers looking to get a leg up in the market probably need to forget viral content as a way of winning business. Brokers can be much more effective by concentrating on small sections of the market instead and dominating those sections.

How can technology help with this?

There’s no doubt at all that listening to your customers and potential customers gives you the best data to target your products. This is a virtuous circle because it’s been shown that clients are most likely to buy from businesses that pay attention to their needs and more importantly they are most likely to recommend others to those businesses too.

A few short years ago the only way to do this in a meaningful way was to sample your client interactions and then extrapolate from that data. Today, there’s much more that you can do.

  • CRM SolutionsInsurance specific solutions like SchemeServe enable you to track customer data and then mine that data for specifics. Smart insurers are already trying to record every single client interaction to better understand their customers.
  • Social Media – It’s not just your own social media presence that can be used to obtain data. Following conversations about insurance across a wider platform can bring real insight into what customers are really thinking. Track hashtags on Twitter (or join groups on LinkedIn and Facebook) and keep an eye on what potential clients are saying to your competitors and you’ll soon have actionable data.
  • Mobile Technology – A well-designed and easy to use mobile application that adds value to your customer’s lives is a great way to get your branding permanently in front of prospects. If you can find a way to tailor that app so that it brings you data to improve your products too – you’re in the perfect position to start delivering better results.

This is just a small handful of ideas to get you started. What other forms of technology do you think can be used to help the Davids of the insurance world beat the Goliaths?

Insurance Broker David and Goliath

2 comments

  1. Yes! Yes! Yes! Technology has opened the door for the small guys. Small players tend to be more nimble and faster especially at decision versus the big boys who make decisions often at a snails pace.

    Where I see technology’s power is really with the small agencies. A small mom and pop can be louder than big agencies with their marketing. They can be targeted to who their customer is, own search, and be a community expert, which is really hard for national or large regional brokers.

    Plus there is that fear that large agencies have of ruining their image by playing online.

    Thanks, great article! It will be shared

Leave a Reply