How to be interesting in an industry where no one likes your product

Using social listening platform Brandwatch Analytics, we were able to explore and define public discussions around car insurance online. The car insurance report: LOLs, triple whammy and being very angry, helps us understand exactly ‘why’ people are angry or amused. This is particularly poignant right now. As marketers wrestle the need for consent on personal data, creating engaging and inspiring content is essential if we are going to keep our audiences connected to our brands. The mantra ‘relevant content’ is on everyone’s lips as we move to accommodate a post GDPR way of working.

Want relevant content for your brand? Work hard at the data

Harnessing social relevancy is not about simply grabbing the first big spike in conversation that you see. The car insurance conversation is angry. So what? Dig deeper and you can uncover the ‘why’: the triggers, the motivations. And beyond that the pain points or issues that brands can address. Get to know your social audience and your marketing will get a whole lot better.

For instance, anger for some audience segments is driven by issues most insurance suppliers cannot affect. Most people really feel the pinch when their insurance is due. Not just because of perceived price hikes, but because renewals often coincide with MOT and road tax payments too. These insights can inform a benefit to be offered or opportunities to empathise.

Anger can be driven by boredom too. 61% are cross about how monotonous renewals are and 59% are hacked-off at filling in quote forms. People are fed-up with the life admin of it all. Social media, however, could offer a way to make this more bearable. To inject a little of the humour and wit that the audience seems to enjoy.

Another segment is annoyed about the complexity of insurance policies. Cries for help turn to frustration as they plough through the small print to see how they can change their occupation details or understand their insurance validity when driving abroad.

Throughout the report you’ll find interesting angles, topics and behaviours that underpin a creative opportunity to be relevant with content; it appears that car insurance is anything but dull.

There is more to be had than just looking at the triggers for all this emotion. Social data also reveals where social plays its part in the customer purchase journey. Unlike other markets, car insurance is discussed most at initial consideration and active evaluation phases of the journey. Conversations around purchase are very low (unlike ‘holiday’ conversation which go ballistic on social in the purchase phase).

This adds another layer to planning for relevancy. It means that social plays a part early in the buying cycle. It tells us that the relevant content will need to continue beyond social to complete the sale. And it makes clear that when tackling the various segment issues, we need to be focused on awareness to drive sales through.

The key point about all the data shows that achieving relevance at scale with your content meaning marketers need to drill into the detail. We need to invest time, skills and effort into defining segments based on pain points, triggers and motivations. Only then will we deliver the content that garners enough attention to make GDPR irrelevant to our marketing processes.

Download the free report here

Katy Howell is chief executive at Immediate Future