Insurance is unlike any other consumer product. It’s a product that consumers are NEVER eager to buy! When I think of products that come with significant demand, I think of products like the iPhone, which people will camp out for days to get first dibs. I think of Hermes bags, which people will plunk down tens of thousands of dollars for a bag THEY HAVE NOT SEEN OR TOUCHED YET. I think of the Foo Fighters concert, in which we (not me but a friend) drove 30 minutes to, the day before the concert, to pick up our t-shirt and other merch. Yeah, insurance will never be confused with those products! Because of this, insurance has to be aggressively marketed and sold.
The task of making insurance an interesting purchase is a significant challenge. Since consumers are not eager to buy insurance, they are less likely to have the patience for a rational discussion about its value. This is why aggressive marketing strategies are a necessity in the insurance industry. It is also why most marketing and sales efforts FAIL. Yes, insurance is tough to market and sell, but there is a formula to successful marketing campaigns and in this article, we will discuss what that formula is.
If A Tree Falls In The Woods And No One is There…Did It Make a Sound?
Marketing is: the process of “creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.” In other words, understanding who your customers are, what they need, and how to communicate that to them should be the building block of your marketing strategy.
Communication is the key word. Much of marketing centers around finding the right process and set of communication that ultimately leads to a sale. The approach we take is to NOT explicitly communicate about the insurance product or solution. Let’s be honest, there isn’t much interesting there. We prefer to find a story, analogy, and/or metaphor that can grab someone attention and communicate an idea that we can ultimately link to an insurance solution. An easy way to remember the order of operation when it comes to communicating the value of an insurance solutions is to use the AIDA mental framework.
What is AIDA?
A = attention – in marketing, the first order of business is to get someone’s attention. If a tree fall in the woods and no one is 
around, does it make a sound? The answer is NO! A sound needs a receiver, and if there is no receiver, there is no sound. In marketing, you need to get someone’s attention. If you can’t get someone’s attention, you do not pass go, and you do not collect $200! To communicate anything, you need for someone to be receptive to your message. This becomes doubly challenging in insurance because of what I described is the nature of the demand of the product. Trying to get someone’s attention for an insurance message is a waste of time. Use something else, such as a story, an analogy, or a metaphor, and then link it back. GEICO uses the Gecko, a caveman, and a touch of whimsical humor to get our attention. AFLAC uses a duck (with whimsical humor). Progressive uses Flo (and whimsical humor). Are you catching the trend here?? Ultimately, the most popular brand names focus on humor to get your attention. Humor is NOT the only way to create attention, but with a product like insurance, humor helps…a lot!
In content development, Attention comes in the form of the headline—the headline of your blog article or LinkedIn post. If you follow professional marketers, you will hear them focus heavily on the headline. Why? In this very noisy world, if you don’t grab their attention, you can’t sell your solution. It is perhaps the most critical aspect of marketing.
I = Interest – this is the process of generating interest after getting someone’s attention. If the headline is the most essential part 
of the content, then Interest is the subheadline, the 2nd most crucial thing in marketing. In content creation, this is usually the opening paragraph. You use the headline to grab their attention, and in the first paragraph, KEEP THEIR ATTENTION. Make it interesting (notice how the word interest is the root of the word interesting??) Can you do this by describing your SaaS, Cloud-based solution? I doubt it. For companies like GEICO – they continue the humor. For your product or solution, we recommend again that you focus on something else that is interesting (sports analogies, political analogies, food analogies, and even carnal analogies all have worked) and then link it back to your solution.
D = Desire – this is the process of creating some sort of value proposition to get the customer to the next step in the buying process. For GEICO, its “give us 15% and save 15% on your car insurance”. ATTENTION grabs your prospect, INTEREST keeps them in the conversation, and DESIRE converts that attention into an acknowledgment of value… something they actually would want. This is a big step for an insurance solution.
Finally, there is A = Action – 
this is the call to action. Pick up the phone, give us your email, go to this website, and more. Most marketers and salespeople want to start here. Why waste time getting attention, interest, and desire when you can just ask for the sale up front? If that sounds awful, it’s because it is. For many of our B2B insurtech clients, one of the first things we have to advise them to do is remove the aggressive call-to-action for a demo of their solution. Your homepage should NEVER lead with a call for a demo. This is because you have not earned the demo yet. You have not created enough value to even ask, and for a lot of us consumers, the desperate call to action is a turn-off. Don’t go there.
Summary
For sales and marketing, the AIDA framework is a simple way to increase leads and sales. Grab Attention by creating Interesting content to hold your prospects’ attention. Provide a worthwhile value proposition to create Desire for your solution and then ask the buyer to take the next step with a call-to-Action. AIDA works for any sales and marketing pitch. It works for investor pitch decks. It works when asking for a promotion or sale. It just works!
About Nicholas Lamparelli
Nick Lamparelli is a 20+ year veteran of the insurance wars. He has a unique vantage point on the insurance industry. From selling home & auto insurance, helping companies with commercial insurance, to being an underwriter with an excess & surplus lines wholesaler to catastrophe modeling Nick has wide experience in the industry. Over past 10 years, Nick has been focused on the insurance analytics of natural catastrophes and big data. Nick serves as our Chief Evangelist.
Nick Lamparelli is a 20+ year veteran of the insurance wars. He has a unique vantage point on the insurance industry. From selling home & auto insurance, helping companies with commercial insurance, to being an underwriter with an excess & surplus lines wholesaler to catastrophe modeling Nick has wide experience in the industry. Over past 10 years, Nick has been focused on the insurance analytics of natural catastrophes and big data. Nick serves as our Chief Evangelist.
