Selling health insurance plans is a challenge in any economy. There is competition from other health care vendors, along with small businesses that constantly watch their bottom lines.
In order to succeed in marketing your health plan business, you need to be able to offer value to the customer that goes beyond health insurance coverage. Insurance is a service industry, and the more service you offer, the better your chances are to increase revenue.
Because of the high level of competition in the industry, marketing is crucial for health insurance agencies. Your marketing strategies must position you apart from the competition and establish you as a reasonable, reliable insurance provider. As you lay out a marketing strategy, consider ways that you can meet the needs of your customers and dispel common insurance fears.
Personal Approach
Your potential clients get health plan offers regularly from other providers, so you need to increase your edge. Start your prospect hunting with a personal touch, and offer that personal approach throughout the term of the relationship. Don’t just drop off information, ask to speak to the person in charge of choosing health plans.
Offer quarterly seminars for your clients’ employees on how to save money on health care and live a healthier life. Make sure your business contact information, and the personal consultation services you provide, is included in all of your literature. Offer your contact information to your client’s employees to help relieve the pressure of answering health plan questions from the human resources department.
Focus on Pricing
A common fear about health insurance is that individuals will not be able to afford the premiums. This sense of the unknown can keep potential customers from even researching their options.
To create transparency about the financial side of health insurance, focus on the affordability of your plans by listing the prices directly in your marketing materials. Because insurance pricing can change based on regulations, use specific pricing details in materials that can be edited easily and at low cost, such as the website, flyers and sell sheets.
For more expensive materials, such as brochures and large-format posters, simply mention your flexible or affordable pricing schemes and provide a link to the website for a quick reference.
One of the biggest challenges for a health plan company is selling to a client that is comparing costs. Sit down with your prospects and discuss their health plan needs. In most cases, health insurance is offered as a benefit used to lure good employees. The more you can tailor a health plan to exactly what the company needs, and the lower you can make the company’s investment, the happier your clients will be. Know your product inside and out, and be able to set your offering side-by-side with the competition and show your client how you can create a health plan specifically for him and his business.
Increase Brand Recognition
When it comes to choosing a health insurance company, people will often go with the name that first comes to mind, or choose one they recognize from a list. If your insurance company is not familiar to potential customers, you are unlikely to be chosen. If you are a new or unknown entity, focus your marketing efforts on building brand recognition.
The key to making a presence is repetition and continuity. Using a consistent design scheme, eye-catching colors, and a logo, put your name in front of customers. Post flyers around town, put up posters in store windows, take out an ad in the local newspaper, buy advertising on local websites and social networking sites and sponsor local events.
Keep Existing Customers
In general, it costs less time and money to retain a current customer than it does to get a new one. With that in mind, be sure to focus some of your marketing efforts on keeping existing customers happy. In doing so, you will minimize the chance of losing them to a competitor. If a customer submits a question, initiate personal contact to provide a speedy answer.
Offer long-time customers special discounts, give referral bonuses and make sure that your office staff is trained to be personable and helpful. By answering customers’ questions about your health insurance plans, claims and premiums and by making them feel valued, you can create a positive relationship that will weather pricing changes and competition.
Your health plans are the basis of your business, and the effort you put into creating plans for your clients is what makes them happy. There are two ways a health plans business can use current clients as marketing devices. The first is to be there for your current clients at least two months prior to the end of the contract year to work out the contract for the next year.
Your competition will be knocking on your clients’ doors to replace you as the health care provider; getting your clients involved in negotiations for the coming year can make it more difficult for the competition to get in. Also, ask your current clients to refer you to other business owners. Offer health plan incentives such as lower premiums or additional services at a discounted rate for referrals. Ongoing savings for referring other clients will keep your customers talking about your business to other business owners they know.
Hitting the bulls eye
In order to target the right kind of market and the quality consumers, in order to establish your health insurance business, you will be required to:
Try different forms of modern advertisements –
Rather than advertising through the TV or the newspapers, try out different other forms of advertisements too. You can start offering affiliate marketing programs with regards to the online advertisements, these are a great way to advertise. You can try the door knob advertisements. You can advertise through the mails and the newsletters. You can try promoting your website through the different social marketing websites. That is a subtle way of advertising your products.
Try to include an email signature related to insurance –
As a business person, you are supposed to have some official emails. So, with regards to those, include a signature based on health insurance. This too is a great way of advertising. Through the signature, you may be able to announce the message that you would like to convey to the others.
Create your own website –
Create and maintain your own website so that you can include the details of the insurance products within the website. If you include articles and messages based on the policies you offer, people coming to your website may get more interested in buying a policy. So, this too is a form of advertisement.
Participate in Local Networking Events –
There are many professional organizations which host the networking events. This helps the business people to meet other business personalities. Try to go to such events as this is great place for advertisement, to catch others attention.
Check Yellow Pages for increased leads –
The consumers use Yellow Pages other than other websites to find the merchants they need. So, get yourself listed in this website and any other such websites too.
Work on search engine optimization or SEO-
Work on search engine optimizations so that you can better your ranking in the different search engines. This helps you with getting more consumers to your website.
In addition to the above, try to offer unique health insurance policies, a bit different than others. This is important because, just like you there must be thousands of other health insurance companies trying to catch up with the consumers. Thus, it is obvious that you will have to be different than others even if it’s a tough thing to achieve. Only then may the customers get interested in buying the health policy offered by you.
By: Dr. Ashish Barua, Former Associate Professor & Officiating Director, Indian Institute of Rural Management &Â Advisor-Placement, Member Insurance Research Board, Member Research Board, ABI USA, Member (Founder) Institute of Rural Management, Co-Chairman Center For Banking and Financial Institutions, Insurance, National Law University, Jodhpur, Published in THE INSURANCE TIMES, Decemabe, 2012
