Abstract

New era needs new technologies and promotional strategies for growth of businesses. In case of insurance, it is also necessary to take the help of digital media to increased customer rate.   Recently in UK, the number of pet ownership is going upwards, which is causing a rise in getting pet insurance in UK’s pet-parents. However, there are difficulties occurring while having insurance and the process is being declined. Here, in the essay the new marketing strategies and policies regarding insurance of the UK’s pets are discussed with a detailed analysis. The discussions and analyses can be helpful to solve the barriers in getting pet insurance in UK as the company is opening new ways of insurance. The detailed market research and customer behaviours will also be helpful for the company to establish better set up of insurance in UKs market.

Introduction  

Popularity of pet ownership is high in the current UK market. Therefore, the needs of insurance should have been increased among the population. However, due to lack of information, pet owners have failed to purchase insurance policies for their pets.  Direct Line insurance has provided a new pet insurance policy in recent markets. The company is trying to expand the business of insurance policy in the development of high customer awareness and improvement of popularity of different insurance in the UK pet market. Therefore, this report has analysed the factors associated with the development of objectives. Moreover, strategy and tactics should be used in the factors for the development of better digital marketing campaigns for the company.

Discussion

Situational Analysis

The average insurance claim in the  market of  pet  insurance in  the UK  is 822 GBP. The market of pet insurance  was 1.13 billion USD in 2021 (pdsa.org.uk, 2021). The market is expected to reach  2.09 billion in 2026.  The GWP (Gross Written Premium ) values 160.4 billion GBP USD  in the UK  market. In  the customers, the  awareness of pet  insurance has been increased so that it  is one of the most effective factors in the development of Direct line’s market in the UK. The pet insurance market of the UK has different competitors such as PetPlan, Tesco pet Insurance , Argos pet insurance, More Than pet Insurance , Sainsburey’s Pet Insurance  and others. Therefore, it can be said that Direct Line has a strong competition in the UK market. With proper and reasonable premium services in the company would help to improve the target  market  and customer segmentation. Therefore, the company should improve the marketing and potential of different activities.   Moreover, the company has promoted  different types of  Facebook, Twitter , Instagram  and Youtube. There are  different factors to improve the potential  of digital marketing campaigning. As a result, the company should improve their social  media and Content media marketing and SEO marketing in the development of better communication with the  customers.   

Objectives

Specific	Measurable	Attainable	Relevant	Time
SEO and Social media marketing for  increasing the numbers of new customers and better acquisition	With better organic  traffic Higher CTR  range Bounce rate Keyword ranking	By  increasing high level of organic trafficWith the help[ of  better  Click Through rate the company would improve the attention of  the customers  By maintaining a lower bouncing rate with interesting landing page would help improve better  reach	The company would be able to  improve  customer acquisition  with better awareness in  both online and offline web presences of the company.	4 months
Increase leads with the help of online advertisement.	Google analytics would  measure the metrics of online advertisement  successYoutube advertisement metrics like Cost per view and video viewershipAd frequency	Better traffic can be used by referral, social, organic and paid search. Moreover, page value and  impression on the customers. Conversion rate can be increased along with better return on advertising spend.	Using different types of sites and platforms  such as youtube and facebook. Website advertisements  in the  google search	4 months
Content marketing would be used  for better reach and unique customers inclusion	Traffic Conversion rate Customer engagement SEO performance Pageviews Average time on page Behaviour flow Page per sessions Performance over time	High quality and comprehensive contents would help to  improve the engagement of customers. Inbound  links and  session duration are the factors  which would help to improve the factors associated with the help of increasing  numbers of visitors.	The metrics would help to improve traffic in the company websites along with attracting  different customers and  increase the page visit duration. Session duration and page depth  would help to improve the engagement of the customers.	4 months

Table 1: SMART objectives for the company

Source: (Self-created )

Strategy

The pet insurance market has a good  record with 3.4 million  insurance holders but the numbers can be  improved  with  proper segmentation and the targeting  of the customers. It has been observed that the pet owners are aged over  55 years  on average (directline.com, 2021). It has also  observed that people with higher education and college degree holders are more likely to  own a pet. 16% of people  in England have pets. In the current  market of  post covid situation, the pet ownership has been  increased among the  UK  market (Forbes, 2021).   In many cases, the younger people also come under the segment of policyholder. Behavioural and  psychographic  factors are  also associated with the development of the insurers’ segmentation for the company (The Drum, 2021).  Therefore, the factors associated with  the target market would also be related to the awareness of the pet insurance and likeness for the pets.

Direct line pet insurance  provides two types of premium coverages such as  Up to £4,000 and  Up to £8,000 (in the advanced covers). Therefore, the company would try to  target the people who have better income range from £25,000 to £125,000. The target consumers should have healthy and young pets. Veterinary registration might be optional as directline can help the pet owners for the registrations of pets to the vets. The pets should not be aged more than 7 to 10 years (depending upon the types of species) (The Healthy Pet Club, 2021). Therefore, with the help of  above-mentioned factors  the company can choose their target market.

Tactics

Digital tools and tactics

SEO and Social media marketing:

SEO marketing is one of the  most important marketing strategies to improve  the numbers of unique visitors for the company. On the other hand, local and organic SEO would improve  the  factors for the offerings in the development of higher traffic rates in google search. Use of crawlable and favourable websites would help to improve the factors in online search. According to Google API (2021), mobile queries have increased by 100% in the last two years for searching the term- “insurance near me”. The report also  observed that 45% of the global shoppers rely on google search and SEO for purchasing. Contrariwise, social media  marketing has used different platforms of  social media such as Facebook, twitter and Instagram (accenture.com, 2021). The Companies  are  opting for the social  media marketing to the cost effectiveness and development of better customer range along with higher customer acquisition. American Express started an online communication forum in their facebook page and they got 340000 likes and found 200000 followers in the platform of twitter (Statista, 2021). Therefore, with a minimum investment the companies would be able to generate leads in a better way.

Figure 1: Use of social media marketing by insurance company

Source: (Accenture, 2021)

In the UK , Petsure has included a social media marketing  campaign with the  help of an  advertisement  agency in the country (Campaignlive.co.uk, 2021). Therefore, the popularity of the company among the customers is very effective.

Figure 2: Petsure’s facebook campaigning

Source: (Facebook, 2021)

Online advertisements

Statista (2021) has found out that the UK companies invested 8.4 million British pounds in 2020. The cost of digital advertisement would increase day by day in the UK market therefore, Direct line pet insurance should use different online advertisements to improve brand awareness and customer attraction (The Telegraph, 2021). With the help of different types  of advertisement, the company can leverage their digital presence for the target customers.  Ads might be different types such as pop-up, newsletter, video advertisement and Facebook ads (Statista, 2021). Direct line Insurance might use A/B testing in  the loading pages  of the  company (facebook.com, 2021). Moreover, the cost-per -conversion can be changed  with the help of the online ads.

Figure 3: Online Ad in PDSA

Source: (pdsa.org.uk, 2021)

Content marketing

It is one of the most important approaches for the development of  better and higher rates of customer  engagement. If a pet insurance company would include content marketing in the digital marketing campaigning the effects  would be positive. According to simiarweb (2021), the content marketing would improve the traffic with different types of familiar and important topics for the pet health and  insurance.

Figure 4: performance of content marketing in the market of pet insurance.

Source: (Similarweb, 2021)

Content marketing can help to improve the  factors  related to customer engagement. Moreover,the company would help to improve the  knowledge and perception of the customers so that that company would get better  customer  acquisition. After COVID-19, content marketing has improved the thinking process of the consumers (statista.com, 2021). By this most people would get the support of online assistance through content. The content marketing would help to lower the bounce rate, conversion rate and average time on page.

Figure 5: Content marketing of The healthy Pet Club

Source: (thehealthypetclub.co.uk, 2021)

Recommendations

Email marketing: the company could have used the tactics with the help of automatic mails. On the other hand, welcome, nurturing and activation emails would help to improve the customer acquisition. Above-mentioned email marketing would help to improve the numbers of leads in the digital media.

Chatbots:  This would improve the customer services in solving different queries within a very short time period or instantly. Therefore, the systems would help to improve the large query handling capacity for the company. On the other hand, AI-powered systems would help to  improve the  streamlining of queries.

PPC  marketing: PPC advertisements would help to collect target specific audiences and customers on the basis of  geographic location, age and gender.  The PPC marketing would  improve the search results in the end users’ devices. The conversion rate would help to improve with the help of different  marketing strategies. The  budget allocation  and limitation would be managed.

Customer referral programs:  The change of referral  programs  would be  beneficial for the insurance company. The quotation request  in referral programs would improve the responses of popularity of the  company. As an example; Healthy Paws Pet Insurance & Foundation has offered a referral program in an online setting with a good cause. The company offered a shelter for ombating pet homelessness with the referral program.  

Implemented schedule

Strategies

M1

M2

M3

M4

M5

M6

M7

M8

M9

M10

M11

M12

SEO and social media marketing

Online Advertisements

Content marketing

Table 2: Implemented Schedule for Direct Line Insurance Company

Source: (Self-created)

Action and Control

SEO marketing would be measured by the implementation of organic traffic, bounce rate, CTR and Keyword rankings for the contents and the advertisement of the company’s content. Organic traffic would help to understand the rate of visibility in SEO marketing. It would be helpful for navigating the customer acquisition. The CTR value would suggest that the amount of search for the  particular websites the metric would help to improve the understanding of the factors associated with the customers;’ attention (Hajarian et al., 2021). The metric is used for analysis of the quality in the meta description and content heading. With the help of  bounce rate, both the content marketing and online advertising marketing’s effectiveness would  be observed (Negricea, and Purcarea, 2020). SEO marketing would be analysed with  the help of keywords ranking. This ranking metrics would help the marketers to improve the  factors associated with the effectiveness. With the help of social media marketing the number of followers can be  increased for the particular company. Therefore, social media followers’ count and shares would improve the attraction of customers in the company. Content would help to understand the backlinking’s effectiveness (Jackson, 2021). Pages per visits, Returns on investment can be associated with the campaigning. The success rate of content marketing  would  help to  improve page views, average time in page and unique visitors.

Conclusion

This report has analysed that different types of marketing campaigns  such as  content marketing, SEO marketing, social media  marketing and online advertisement can help to improve different factors such as unique visitors, average time of visits and page views for Direct pet insurance companies. On the other hand, the factors related to the situational analysis and strategic overviews would improve the effectiveness of marketing and campaigning sessions. The report has observed that the planned marketing  containing different activities like online advertising, social media marketing , content marketing would help to attract more customers to the company. Therefore, to improve the effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns would be able to include success and better customer awareness.