Content Strategy for Financial & Insurance Marketers—E2

by | Jul 16, 2019 | benefits industry, Blog Posts, Brand, Brand analogies, Brand building, Brand Experience, Content strategy, Customer Journey, Edutainment, Financial Education, White Papers

    EPISODE 2 OF 3:

—SIMPLIFYING THE CONTENT CONUNDRUM—

The Lives Behind Life Events: A Scenario Example

Jill lovingly gazes at her new baby, firmly swaddled in her crib. A tear slowly traces down Jill’s cheek as she misses her dad, who couldn’t hold on to see his new granddaughter. Life is changing for Jill in ways she hasn’t yet imagined. As effects of these events reverberate throughout every part of her life, all her relationships will change; with people, products, and even her self-concept.

Meanwhile, Ann is working late in the marketing department at a life insurance carrier. She’s preparing a presentation for brokers on life event touchpoints. Her brow furrows as she peers into her computer screen searching through stock photos. She’s imagining the mindset of “Jill,” the name she’s chosen for the new-baby-life-event persona she’ll be presenting tomorrow.

Peter works on the floor just below Ann at the life insurance company. He’s in charge of customer service and just finished delivering a training module to his staff on how to deal with beneficiaries’ claim calls.

At the same moment, Jack reflexively lights the desk lamp in his insurance agency as the sun sinks behind the building across the street. He’s been in deep thought about the first line item on his agenda tomorrow: delivering a death benefit check to Cheryl Thompson, Jim’s widow of only 10 days. After learning of Jim’s death, Jack reviewed Jim and Cheryl’s file. He’s concerned that Cheryl doesn’t have adequate protection of her own. And now with a new granddaughter, Jack knows she’d like to set aside some additional money to help subsidize her future.

The “TouchPath” Perspective

All these stakeholders are on the same “TouchPath” because they each play a role in Jill and Cheryl’s customer experiences.

Did Ann’s marketing and Jack’s relationship with the Thompsons properly set Cheryl’s expectations for Jim’s death benefit delivery? Did Peter’s call center provide brand-aligned tone and responsiveness when Cheryl called in the claim? When Jack delivers the death benefit check tomorrow, will he avoid conflict of interest while truly helping protect Cheryl, Jill, and the new baby? Will he be able to do all this while projecting the carrier’s brand values?

Simplifying Customer-Centric Alignment

Similar scenarios play out thousands of times each day. How can insurance and benefit marketers be sure the expectations of every stakeholder in the ecosystem are aligned to provide the greatest value and efficiencies? How can they simplify the complex web of interactions across the ecosystem from carrier to intermediaries to customers?

Alignment through Content Strategy

A TouchPath content strategy depicts each customer life event in terms of touchpoints along the customer journey. It creates a view of the same life event from multiple stakeholder perspectives, both inside and outside the company. This strategy accomplishes several objectives at once:

  • Simplifies alignment
    Unites expectations of the brand experience among all stakeholders (internal and external)
  • Educates
    Transfers knowledge about product, category, or any other facet of the brand in context of actual customer scenarios
  • Shows how brand delivery should look
    Showcases ideal behaviors of brand ambassadors (employees, distributors, etc.) for internal training and greater visibility into the brand for consumers
  • Reduces costs
    Allows consolidation of resources among departments and functions into dimensional stories that can be edited/targeted for each stakeholder group’s consumption
  • Promotes differentiation
    Storylines steeped in brand values and personality create distinct brand differentiation
  • Provides training content
    TouchPath content as excellent training content

TouchPath content is more dimensional than traditional consumer content because instead of focusing on a single Point of View (POV) the TouchPath approach creates a 360° perspective of each event—similar to our scenario example in EPISODE 1—including the POV of all stakeholders in the ecosystem.

So, how do you build a TouchPath strategic content program?  Find out In EPISODE 3.

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