Insur­ance is a huge­ly com­pet­i­tive mar­ket in the US. With cus­tomers look­ing to seek out the best deal and poten­tial­ly switch providers, it’s imper­a­tive that insur­ance brands main­tain top of mind aware­ness to build loy­al­ty and per­form well. How can brands com­plete and main­tain a pres­ence at the top?

Pro­gram­mat­ic media-buy­ing plat­form Rock­et Fuel has released a detailed new study into brand aware­ness for U.S. insur­ers. Insur­ance has always been one of the most fierce­ly con­test­ed online ver­ti­cals, and the study pro­vides cut­ting-edge insights on con­sumer behav­ior, mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy and bud­gets, and data-dri­ven con­ver­sion rate opti­miza­tions – in many cas­es, these can apply to many oth­er mar­kets and ver­ti­cals.

One of the most reveal­ing insights of the study was in con­firm­ing just how valu­able cross-chan­nel ad spend­ing is to insur­ance providers, with dis­play ad spend being nine times more effec­tive at dri­ving top-of-mind aware­ness than TV.

Here’s a run­down of the top take­aways.

Top Takeaways for Building Top-of-Mind Awareness

1. Increase Cross-Channel Advertising Efforts

Increas­ing cross-chan­nel ad spend­ing to dri­ve top-of-mind aware­ness is par­tic­u­lar­ly cru­cial for insur­ance brands, with 1 in 10 of all sur­veyed respon­dents say­ing they would ‘def­i­nite­ly’ or ‘prob­a­bly’ switch auto-insur­er with­in the next six months. Par­tic­u­lar­ly in auto-insur­ance where tra­di­tion­al brands — like State Farm and All­state — have an advan­tage with their estab­lished cus­tomer base amongst old­er adults, who in turn rec­om­mend their insur­ers to their chil­dren, win­ning top-of-mind aware­ness is an inte­gral part of insur­er pur­chase fun­nels.

As the graph above illus­trates, direct insur­ers like Geico and Pro­gres­sive have adver­tised heav­i­ly to break this cycle. Com­bined with the self-direct pref­er­ences of younger con­sumers, hav­ing a strong cross-chan­nel pres­ence can enable direct insur­ers to cap­ture more mar­ket share over time.

2. Increase Digital Spend, Particularly Display

For every $1 mil­lion an auto-insur­ance provider spends in dig­i­tal or dis­play adver­tis­ing, that brand is like­ly to see a lift in top-of-mind aware­ness of 0.18 per­cent, the study revealed. Com­par­a­tive­ly, the same spend in TV yields a lift in top-of-mind aware­ness of 0.02 per­cent, due to like­ly over-sat­u­ra­tion of the chan­nel.

Auto and life insur­ers can gen­er­ate addi­tion­al effi­cien­cy from their mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives by shift­ing bud­get from over­crowd­ed TV chan­nels into dig­i­tal, par­tic­u­lar­ly dig­i­tal dis­play.

3. Add A Human Face To Display Advertising To Maximize Conversions

A gem of insight revealed by the report is that dis­play ads fea­tur­ing peo­ple (and human faces) result­ed in aver­age con­ver­sion rates 177 per­cent high­er than those that did not. Ani­mat­ed ads and ads with blue or red back­grounds have high­er click-through rates, but images of peo­ple had the most ben­e­fi­cial affect on con­ver­sion rates.

4. Implement Closed Loop Measurement For Marketing Initiatives

The report also high­lights the impor­tance of closed loop mea­sure­ment. Accord­ing to Rock­et­fu­el “auto insur­ance adver­tis­ers should also con­sid­er closed-loop mea­sure­ment and opti­miza­tion solu­tions for their mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives to obtain a com­plete view of the impact of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing spend on appli­ca­tion rates for insur­ance poli­cies.”

You can down­load the full report from Rock­et­fu­el.

This arti­cle first appeared on the Linkdex blog.

Do you imple­ment sim­i­lar tech­niques in your mar­ket­ing?