What works for automobile insurance companies? According to a recent Rocket Fuel study, digital display ads are about nine times more effective than spots on TV.
Oh — and it helps if you have a gecko. When it comes to the current crop of “top of mind” insurers, Geico led the pack.
In a hotly contested marketplace, auto insurers have to work hard to retain customers as well as court new clients.
The Rocket Fuel study indicates that “ten percent of consumers will change providers in the next six months, and companies that spent their advertising dollars on display advertising won top-of-mind brand awareness among consumers.”
Rocket Fuel, a provider of artificial intelligence (AI) advertising solutions for digital marketers, conducted its “Insurance Top-of-Mind Awareness” study with 1,026 consumers who were queried about insurers in the auto, life, and homeowner sectors.
A few takeaways from the study:
1. Top-of-mind awareness is highly correlated with market share for both auto insurance (0.83) and homeowner’s insurance (0.87), and modeling either as a function of ad spend yielded the same feature set.
2. In the auto insurance sector, GEICO (21 percent), State Farm (19 percent) and Allstate (16 percent) lead top-of-mind awareness.
3. Cross-channel ad spend was a key predictor of top-of-mind awareness for auto and life insurance providers, with digital display ad spend being nine times more effective at driving top-of-mind awareness than TV.
4. Nearly half (44 percent) of consumers only look at a single quote before making a purchase.
5. One in 10 consumers are likely to change providers in the next six months, with price being the most likely factor (49 percent) in the decision to change providers, followed by reputation (17 percent).
6. Consumers who begin their insurance research online are likely to also complete it online.
7. Consumers are more likely to sign up for new insurance or request a quote on Thursdays and in the evenings between 6 and 9 p.m. and are most likely to convert within eight hours of exposure to an ad.
“Consumers are bombarded with a deluge of options when it comes to choosing an insurance provider — and this competitive climate shows that top-of-mind awareness is key for insurers to win over the customer,” said Robert Jones, Research Director at Rocket Fuel. “Due to the oversaturation of TV advertising, auto and life insurers can generate better ROI from their marketing programs by shifting budget from TV channels into digital, particularly digital display, which is currently under-utilized by most providers.”
The full report is available here.
