Native Advertising Strategies for Insurance in India

The insurance industry continues to grow at an accelerated rate! In 2019, the life insurance market in India was already the 10th biggest in the world. Meanwhile, its non-life counterpart stood at 15th. With over 1.4 billion people in India, there are still so many growth opportunities when it comes to the insurance sector. Your job now is to identify these markets and present ads that will resonate with your audience. Our advice? Don’t just stick to the traditional online and offline modes of advertising. Native ads have a lot of potential in the insurance sector, and with the right strategies, you can vastly improve your KPIs.

Introduction to Native Advertising in the Insurance Sector

Native advertising has become a crucial tool for advertisers who want to capture their target audience in the insurance sector. Traditional native ads are still around; however, modern solutions go far beyond this. Today, you can expand your approach and potentially achieve even better outcomes based on your established KPIs.

What Are Native Ads?

Native ads refer to advertisements that camouflage into their environment. For example, if the platform hosts a lot of written content, then the native ads will come in forms that blend seamlessly into the browsing experience. If you explore our case studies page, you’ll see how, when done right, native ads can be effective regardless of what you’re selling. However, for the Indian insurance industry, they’re a necessity. In this market, educating the audience is paramount. Hard selling won’t work in this case because there’s no immediate gratification when people purchase insurance.

The Importance of Native Ads in the Indian Insurance Market

Advertisers in this industry have a unique job. While audience education is a huge part of advertising, doing just that isn’t enough.

• Shift mindsets: You need to ensure your readers understand that, despite receiving no tangible product or service right away, purchasing insurance is worth it.
• Engage younger audiences: These are internet users who grew up dodging ads, so traditional ways of connecting to this particular demographic won’t work.
• Implement more cost-effective marketing: Accomplishing the unique task of re-education can take a while, so having cheaper ways to reach the audience is essential.

With native ads, even smaller players in the industry have a fair chance of making a dent in the market. You can reach more niche markets that may have been ignored by bigger firms!

Current Trends in Indian Insurance Advertising

Even today, traditional TV and radio ads still have a lot of swing. However, their influence is slowly dwindling because most Indians now have access to the internet and, by extension, digital advertising. Although, even online display ads are going out of fashion for both insurance advertisers and audiences in India. Thanks to banner blindness, a lot of users won’t even notice such advertisements, which means a lot of budget wastage. That’s why so many advertisers are reallocating more of their budget to native advertising. Since education is at the core of the long-term strategy, having an ad that seamlessly blends into the content is useful.

What Are the Benefits of Native Ads for Insurance?

Having a native advertising strategy to reach an Indian insurance target market means reaping the following benefits.

• Increased trust and credibility: Since you’re demonstrating expertise as part of the campaign, they’re more likely to trust you.
• Higher lead generation and policy conversions: With a deeper level of trust, you can easily convert them into leads and then into clients.
• Seamless integration into consumer content consumption: People do a lot of research when buying financial products, and you can seamlessly introduce your native ad and get their attention and interest.

The great thing about native ads is that they come in many formats. So, you can always find something suitable for your audience and the platform on which you want your ads to appear.

How to Implement Native Ads for Insurance Success: Guidelines to Follow

Crafting effective native ads to help sell insurance products requires the same foundational elements that you need in any market: comprehensive audience information, quality content and the right platform. However, a cookie-cutter strategy won’t work for the Indian insurance industry. There are stricter guidelines, which you should take into account for every part of the process. Before publishing anything, we suggest looking at that document to ensure you’re not violating any guidelines.

Understanding Your Audience

We all agree that almost everyone will need some sort of insurance product at some point in their life. However, that doesn’t mean that you can just cast a wide net and hope for the best. Like with any other market, you should identify your target demographics. The more detailed the information you have, the better. For example, the approach for addressing professionals in Bangalore will be different from targeting families in Tamil Nadu. It’s also important to consider cultural sensitivities. From the information you gather, you’ll be able to identify and address their different insurance needs, including health, life, motor and home, among others.

Crafting Compelling Content

Native ad content can still be engaging even when faithfully following the guidelines created by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority in India. Here are some tips that you may find useful in this careful balancing act:

• Use clear language to avoid misrepresenting or misinterpreting facts;
• Make sure it’s clear to the audience what you’re trying to sell;
• Design your native ad in a way that aids the understanding of the message.

Honesty can go a long way! And because education is at the heart of creating content here, remember to simplify complex insurance terms and concepts.

Choosing the Right Platforms

The platform that you select should always depend on your target audience. Let’s say that you’ve seen outstanding results for an advertiser who largely uses Google Ads to promote advertising products. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you should also go with that option. Consider the following:

• Existing budget for the campaign;
• Competition on the platform;
• Fit for the native ad content that you want to make.

By doing your due diligence, you’re putting yourself in the best position to generate huge success. Feel free to select multiple platforms so that you can follow your audience around in more places.

Pros and Cons of the Top Digital Platforms for Native Insurance Ads in India

If you’re not sure which digital platform to prioritize, we’ve condensed the most important considerations for you.

Case Study: MGID’s Success with Native Ads in Insurance

MGID has achieved amazing outcomes for its various clients within the insurance sector. One of the clients that we’ve helped through native advertising is a leading InsurTech platform that offers various kinds of insurance products. Through their partnerships with more than 35 insurance providers, they make it easy for site users to find the insurance coverage that they need.

Background

MGID is a leading native performance and programmatic advertising platform that helps connect advertisers and publishers. We also have a team of experts who have helped clients in the finance industry reach their campaign KPIs. When an insurance sector client came to us, they wanted to focus on young men and women aged 24 to 30 years old who earn at least 70,000 INR. The challenge was the same one that we’ve overcome many times already: use a non-intrusive way to engage their target audience and drive registrations.

Strategy and Implementation

For this case, we went with a straight sale approach. As part of the native ads, we paired various images and calls to action. Many of these images displayed a young family, considering this is the current stage of life of the target market. Clicking on the ad directed users to a landing page that focused on making smart decisions when selecting an insurance plan. And by entering their mobile number, they could compare quotes between various offers.

Results and Outcomes

The campaign received 3 million clicks, an average clickthrough rate (AVG CTR) of 0.75%, and an effective cost per lead (eCPL) ranging from $0.58 to $2.48. Evidently, being straightforward worked for the target market in this campaign. This was because, with a monthly salary of 70,000+ INR, we assumed this demographic had some level of financial literacy, which meant there wasn’t much of a need to nurture leads. The audience was expected to prioritize finding the best deal for their requirements, which is what was offered through our Indian native advertising strategy. This case study reiterated the fact that knowing a lot about your audience is essential. While successful here, the same strategy would have failed with a target market with a lower level of financial literacy.

Future of Native Advertising in Indian Insurance

The digital landscape will never stop evolving, and native advertising is expected to play a bigger role in the strategies of the Indian insurance market. With this, entities promoting insurance products will be able to continue to reach their target audience. Of course, being able to get in front of your market isn’t enough to do the job. To keep their interest, you need to continue to innovate and adapt. More importantly, you need to create ways to convert this interest into sales reliably. So, how do you make this happen? Let us walk you through emerging trends, long-term benefits and future native advertising strategies in India.

Emerging Trends

Right now, we’re already seeing these trends and innovations surface. We expect them to become even more widespread in the future.

• Increased personalization: With the improvements in artificial intelligence and machine learning, native advertising content will become even more personalized.
• Voice search integration: Voice search is becoming more common, so native advertising needs to be compatible with this format to maintain information accessibility.
• Interactive content: In the insurance sector in India, this can be used to help clients determine their needs.

However, with how quickly technologies develop nowadays, it’s important to be prepared for the unexpected. Keep these trends in mind, but know that these won’t necessarily set the direction of Indian native advertising in the future.

Long-Term Benefits

With Indian insurance entities adopting native advertising as part of their strategies, we expect to see greater insurance penetration in the country. This will be thanks to the following developments.

• Enhanced financial literacy: With more people seeing the value of insurance, they become more likely to buy a policy.
• Improved consumer trust: This will help build long-term customers, even if they don’t end up making a claim while their insurance product is active.
• Recurring purchases: Insurance products generally have a high retention rate. So, if more people become educated about this, the penetration rate will climb, too.

Combined with an easy claims process, these benefits will definitely be retained.

Preparing for the Future

Do you see the potential gains? Make sure that your native ad strategies for the Indian insurance market focus on these very important aspects.

• Create valuable content: With native advertorials, you can continue to educate while getting your target audience closer to an inquiry or sale.
• Use advanced analytics: By doing so, you’ll be able to refine your strategy and generate even better outcomes for native advertising strategies in India.
• Be flexible: Stay ahead of your competition by being flexible to new innovations and even ad formats.

With knowledge and expertise in Indian native advertising strategies, it will be easier for you to face the challenges ahead.

Boost Campaign Outcomes in the Indian Insurance Sector with Native Advertising Strategies

As more Indians connect to the internet, how and where they consume media will also change. You need to be where they are constantly. And while traditional display ads were able to get satisfactory results before, the same can’t be said today. However, by incorporating native advertising to reach an Indian insurance market, you’ll be able to achieve more growth and engagement. The seamless transition between the platform content and the ad encourages them to interact with your native ad. If you need assistance in engaging your target market for Indian insurance products, register on the MGID platform. We’re happy to replicate the successes that we’ve generated for our clients in the finance industry.