Social media’s purpose has evolved beyond keeping in touch with family and friends; it’s now the first point of discovery for news, entertainment and brand engagement. In fact, 78% of customers purchases are impacted by companies’ social media posts.
To engage their community of customers, brands are utilising social media, building authentic relationships through a mix of fun, impactful, educational, inspiring and varied content, depending on their audience. In addition, social media opens up two-way communications – 68% of consumers have found social media enables them to interact with companies/brands.
Brands have the opportunity to maximise their potential and increase awareness by creating scroll-stopping content that speaks to their target audience. The finance industry has a reputation for being untrustworthy. Only 43% of people feel banks care about their long-term financial success. Therefore, brands within the industry should be making relationship building the focus to build trust with consumers.
Why social media?
Content that is free, unbiased and helpful will help with building a trusting relationship. 18.6 million UK adults trust financial advice shared on social media. This is a huge indication that consumer habits have shifted towards using social media to research and learn more about the financial sector, and that people are open to new sources of information.
Your brand should be utilising social media to connect with a wider audience as well as building a trusting relationship with them. However, creating content needs to be done strategically if it is to be done successfully.
Finding your audience
Appealing to your audience’s needs will make your content feel relatable and show you care. In turn the trust between your brand and audience will begin to grow. But first, you have to identify who they are, and the content that speaks to their needs.
Within the insurance sector the audience possibilities are endless, as every adult in the UK will likely have some form of insurance. To identify the audience you are targeting start by asking yourself some questions, such as:
- What age bracket do you want to target?
- Is the brand gender neutral or does it target a specific gender?
- Are you targeting individuals or groups of people- such as families, couples?
- Where do they live?
- What industry do they work in and how much do they earn?
- What challenges do they face and how can the brand help them overcome these challenges? These may include budget, age, medical conditions etc.
- What is the best way to reach this target audience? Which social media platform are they using and for what?
- What does this audience think?
Most of the data found through analytic platforms can help with answering a lot of these questions.
Breaking down your audience
Once you have a broad demographic persona the next step is to get to the nitty gritty of who you are targeting. Use the type of insurance you offer to develop more specific audience personas. For example, pet insurance audiences may look like:
Pet Pawrents – these could be:
- The modern family – couples whose pets are their children. This couple have a shared income, dependent on their jobs, it is possible they have extra money to spend on their pet but will still have a budget due to other expenses.
- The extra child – Families whose pet is the additional child who is secretly the favourite as they rarely answer back. Due to having children this family will be on a strict budget when it comes to pet insurance.
- The wolf pack – the time rich unattached who are devoted to their pets. Due to their devotion to their pet, it is possible this audience will be willing to pay the most for their pet insurance, however this is also dependent on their income and how they choose to budget their expenses.
Be as creative as you like when building your audience personas. The importance of this stage is that you really understand them and what makes them tick so that you can create on-brand engaging content that speaks to their unique needs.
Being platform correct
Having key insights on your core audience will enable your brand to select the correct platforms to reach them. Some brands go all-in, with presence on every single platform. However, the functionality of each platform differs as well as the demographics, so not all platforms will suit your target audience, meaning you could potentially be wasting resources if you go for an all-in approach. For example, if your target audience is over 50 then we would recommend staying away TikTok for your brand, as 70% of the audience are under the age of 30.
To help you stay platform correct we have summarised the average age demographic and the type of content for each platform.
Over 40% of the demographic on Facebook are aged 45+, the next biggest age group are 25-35 year olds at 31%. The top performing content on Facebook includes – videos (which has reported to have 13.9% organic engagement rate), reactive content to current affairs and humorous content.
59.2% of Twitter’s demographic are 25-49. Twitter has a history of being the most influential platform on the spread of news. Due to the limited characters for a Tweet, short straight to the point visual content works well on this platform. We also recommend creating a hashtag to track consumers’ conversations about your brand and campaigns.
This platform has one of the largest youngest audiences, with 61.6% aged between 18-34. Instagram is a visually focused platform and the content that pushes authenticity performs well; this can include user generated content, memes, behind the scenes, guides and tips, content with influencers and interactive content through Instagram Stories.
This platform is used primarily for promoting personal and company brands. Over 57 million companies worldwide have a page on LinkedIn and it can be one of the best platforms to promote your products and services. Use this platform to post updates and blogs, third-party content, partnerships in addition to images and videos.
To be platform correct it is vital to continue to keep on top of updates and information about social media platforms as they are constantly evolving. You can be up to date through your own research and by signing up to newsletters such as Social Media Today.
Creating social media content for insurance brands
The final step is the fun part. Once you have a clear and thorough understanding of who your audience is and the correct platforms to use you can start creating content. When creating content for your insurance brand, be as open and creative as possible. One of the best ways to start is to get the team together for an ideas session and let the ideas flow. This is how the Jammers created the idea of the Pet Gala for Petsure’s first birthday.
Our client Petsure supports the underdog; pets with existing medical conditions, and older pets who are less likely to be covered by other insurance brands. Our aim was to celebrate a momentous occasion for Petsure across paid and organic social media, whilst showcasing the brand’s ‘pets with an attitude’ approach. We needed to portray Petsure’s core values throughout the campaign and this is how we did it.
The main event: The video shoot
We created a birthday party to remember at Jam Towers, many underdogs were invited to the event, from rescues to those with pre-existing medical conditions.
With a focus on Petsure’s values of pets with attitude, the shoot captured that no matter their age or condition these pets are always up for a party. The social first content was short form and vertical to appear native on the platform as well as appealing to user behaviour. The shoot effectively communicated the brand’s values in a lighthearted entertaining way. The aim of creating the content was to raise brand awareness through high-quality images and video.
Bang on Influencers
To increase brand awareness we collaborated with content creator Deborah of Bang On Style as well as 17 other nano and micro influencers. These types of influencers have been found to come across as more authentic to consumers and their engagement rate is higher than an influencer with over a million followers. For example: an influencer with 1000-5000 followers’ engagement rate averages at 5.6% whereas an influencer with 1m+ followers averages at 1.97%.
Each received a one-pet-party Petsure branded hamper filled with treats and toys. The purpose of the hamper was for the influencers to use them to create content and with a combined audience of 144k, the potential reach to UK pet owners was positive for increasing brand awareness.
To see the final results we generated from the campaign, check out the case study.
