The customer journey is harder to predict than ever. As a result, foreseeing the user intent for insurance marketing becomes ac more difficult job. In an increasingly connected world, customers demand personalized digital experiences, highly-relevant and tailored communications, and a match for their needs and preferences. Customer expectations are at an all-time high, while their patience is at an all-time low. For this reason, when creating a content strategy, one of the questions we need to answer beforehand is “what does it solve for the client?” or, in other words, “what is the user intent?”. In this week’s post, we will focus on understanding insurance user intent to help you get ahead of your prospective clients.?

Capturing Client’s Attention Is Everything

Nowadays, your clients can learn about your insurance agency and the services you offer through many online and offline channels, which gives them a lot more knowledge and power. At the same time, you also have access to information through your marketing automation software to create more personalized content and ads. This contrast results in overwhelmed prospects which, consequently, end up turning you down.

As a broker, capturing your clients’ attention is everything. Creating more content, sending more emails, paying for more ads or communicating more offers doesn’t make sense in your insurance marketing strategy if there is no one listening. Your efforts need to be more targeted and valuable. For that purpose, listen to your clients: instead of giving them what you think is right, let them tell you what they care about.

What Is Insurance User Intent?

Behind every Google search, there is an intention. User intent is what your target audience really wants and needs at a specific moment. In short, it is what they are looking for. Something to keep in mind is that only 29% of people want to talk to a salesperson to learn more about a product, while 62% will consult a search engine.

The customer journey starts when something triggers a person or a company to think that they need something to help their organization to evolve. But throughout the customer journey, your user’s intent might change while traveling from the discovery stage to the buying stage, and all the possibilities in between. Some might be ready to pay for your services, but others might want to browse or learn more about them before getting in touch with you. They are all looking for the answers to their problems, and if you want to be found by your audience on the web, your content needs to be directed and optimized for their intent. There are three different types of search inquiries to detect insurance user intent:

Informational

If customers haven’t made up their mind to purchase, they will probably look for more informational content. For instance, in this stage, the user might search “company group health insurance”.

Navigational

In the navigational stage, the user is considering the options, but still not quite ready to make a decision and buy. The user will search, for example, “what are the best health insurance carriers” or “best health insurance to offer small businesses”.

Commercial

Users have collected all the information and are ready to make a purchase. This means they are ready to contact you and pay for your services. A search in this stage might look like “health insurance brokers near me” or “health insurance agency NYC”.

If you understand the different stages of insurance user intent, you know what type of content to create. For the first stage users, you can create informative content in which you are not trying to push your services, like a blog post about top trends within the health insurance industry. If the user is in the navigational stage, the content goal is helping the user make a decision. Therefore, create content about how your agency stands out from the rest, maybe focus on the benefits of technology that make an HR professional’s work easier. It may contain links to your services, but you are not pushing the purchase too hard. The commercial stage is when you present your services in a comprehensive and clear manner. Add a call to action that has your prospect asking for someone to reach out to them.

In addition, this will help guide users through each stage of the customer journey. Consequently, if a user discovers you in the informational stage, they will find more helpful content from you when they move on to the navigational stage, and you can lead them all the way to buying your services. Insurance user intent can translate in real return.

Understanding Insurance User Intent

User intent applied to your insurance agency translates into intent-based marketing. Intent-based marketing is defined as any type of marketing program, which, needless to say, aims to meet your audience’s intent. If you know exactly what your prospects are looking for, you can send the right message at the right time through the right channel. For instance, an intent-based email would be sent to a prospect as soon as they sign up for a quote, and the email will contain specific and relevant information about the topic that the prospect showed interest in, nothing less and nothing more.

Assess your Status

You can start by going to Google Analytics and looking at what keywords bring the most qualified traffic to your agency’s website. If you find that your top-performing keyword is “best health insurance to offer small businesses”, which is navigational, and it leads to your services page, which is commercial, you are not giving your audience what they want. Switch out the landing page, so when someone types “best health insurance to offer small businesses”, you lead them to a piece of content that outlines what they are looking for.

A simpler example could be if a customer subscribes to your blog and, instead of just receiving information about your blog, you immediately send that customer information about your services and pricing.

Looking at your keyword performance in Google Analytics is useful to start understanding your user’s intent, but it can’t be the only consideration when creating your content strategy and insurance marketing programs. Keyword search reveals user’s intent as these are the specific words your prospects are using to look for what they are interested in, but your content should serve a purpose: address the needs or solve the specific problems of your audience, don’t use empty keywords unrelated to your content.

Final Thoughts About Insurance User Intent

Leverage the customer journey. Start investing in analyzing intent and create targeted content for each stage. Your marketing programs will become more effective and your content will be meaningful to your target audience at the right time with the right message. If you give the best response to the queries they are looking for, they will become customers as a result. Insurance user intent is a long-term investment. It will help you prioritize time and money, and become more valuable to your audience.