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Consumer inertia is biggest challenge for online insurance category: Sai Narayan of PolicyBazaar.com

The online insurance website has launched a campaign to promote the importance of term insurance. BestMediaInfo.com caught up with Sai Narayan, Head of Marketing, to understand their marketing strategy, challenges, objectives and journey so far

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Consumer inertia is biggest challenge for online insurance category: Sai Narayan of PolicyBazaar.com

Consumer inertia is biggest challenge for online insurance category: Sai Narayan of PolicyBazaar.com

The online insurance website has launched a campaign to promote the importance of term insurance. BestMediaInfo.com caught up with Sai Narayan, Head of Marketing, to understand their marketing strategy, challenges, objectives and journey so far

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Mumbai | February 2, 2017

PolicyBazaar Click on the Image to watch the TVC.

PolicyBazaar.com, an insurance website and comparison portal, has recently launched a campaign to promote term insurance plans. The campaign has been conceptualised in house and executed by production house K Silent Productions. The website has earlier worked with Lowe Lintas and DDB Mudra for their campaigns.

The objective of the campaign is to underline the importance of real life insurance, i.e. term insurance, and create awareness about it. The portal wanted people to understand the importance of term insurance in their lives.

Elaborating on the marketing strategy, Sai Narayan, Head of Marketing, PolicyBazaar.com, said, “We have always challenged two things in this category: The way consumer has bought insurance and the way insurance is sold in this category. Our endeavour is to ensure that comparison is the single most important influential in the consumer's part of budget. In this category, we are the only one that uses television very aggressively. We are more regular in creating a reach than even the life insurance companies. We market all our products. We have done campaigns for two wheelers, car, health and now term insurance.”

Talking about the challenges, Narayan said, “One of the biggest challenges the category faces is consumer inertia. People still feel that they can go to the agent for policies. One question that we ask is 'Why do people don't compare policies before buying?' The second challenge is that if you look at the overall sales of life insurance, maximum sales happen from January to March, when people have to file their taxes. They do not look at the larger picture of term insurance. You need to look at insurance beyond its tax saving capacity.”

When asked that how they stand out from the rest of the market players, Narayan said, “We are completely transparent. The tagline says it all -- Compare. Buy. Save. That's a very powerful proposition for a category that was largely opaque till the comparison sites came into the picture. Our forte lies in empowering our consumers to fully understand what they are buying, knowing both the positives and the negatives. Our website ensures that they should know their options well, and choose what is best for them and their needs. We believe that way, they are more likely to stick with the product.”

The users who visit the website mostly are in the 28-35 bracket of age group. Policy Bazaar receives 60-65 per cent of traffic from top 10 cities in India. They do expect demand from Tier two and three cities to increase in the near future. He further said, “For the amount of traffic that we receive, 85-90 per cent is the direct traffic and that is something huge for a financial category.”

When asked what was the need to launch a campaign, especially for term insurance plans, Narayan said, “The life insurance penetration in India stands abysmally low at around 3-4 per cent. Term insurance, within the spectrum of full range of life insurance products, lies at the bottom despite being the purest form of life insurance. That's a scary status for a developing country that doesn't have a full-fledged national social security system.  Moreover, the bigger challenge is that the largest insurance distribution forces in the country, i.e. the agents, do not promote term insurance.”

The TV commercial starts with a woman who went to meet a psychic to communicate with her dead husband's spirit. The psychic touches the husband's photograph and becomes a medium to communicate with the spirit. The widow asks for the term insurance's papers which the husband's spirit denies as he forgot to buy the policy. To this the husband spirit squeakily replies that he didn't know that he will die. Now, the drama unfolds when the woman starts scolding her deceased husband for not remembering to buy a term insurance. She further reminds him about the term plan of Rs one crore they have decided to purchase on Policybazaar.com for a minimum premium of Rs 490 per month. She enlightens the purpose of getting a term plan with which can pay off their home loan EMI, kid's school fees and the lump sum she would have got for her lifetime.

The commercial consciously takes a humorous route to convey the message, which has been the tone of the brand, in an otherwise serious insurance category.

Stating another reason for promoting term insurance schemes, Narayan added, “People usually end up buying investment linked (money back) insurance products for life protection that leaves them inadequately covered. Term insurance, as a category, is still relatively unknown. We wanted to promote and spread awareness around this pure life insurance product, the one that can take care of the family in case the bread earner of the family is no more.”

Talking about the success of the campaign launch, Narayan said, “It's just the first week and enquires for term insurance has hit an all-time high. Overall, the initial response has been very positive.”

PolicyBazaar.com was the first to be launched in the category. The website has grown by six to seven times since its inception and has been very aggressive in its marketing. It started advertising since 2010 and produced ads for almost all its products, including, health, two-wheelers and term insurance.

“We have over 60 million visitors every year, out of which roughly 60 per cent are unique customers. Having 90 per cent of market share, ours was the first to be launched in the category. We have grown by six to seven times since our inception and we have been very aggressive in marketing. We started advertising since 2010 and have produced ads for almost all our products, including, health, two-wheelers and term insurance,” Narayan concluded.

The TVC:

https://img-cdn.thepublive.com/filters:format(webp)/bmi/media/post_attachments/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/PolicyBazaar.jpg

Credits:

Policybazaar.com Marketing Team Group CMO, Policybazaar.com and CEO, PaisaBazaar.com: Naveen Kukreja

Head of Marketing: Sai Narayan

Manager-Marketing: Samir Sethi

Production House: K Silent Productions

Writer/ Creative Director: Riazat Khan

Director: Ankit Mehrotra

Executive Producer: KC Pandey/ Riazat Khan

Info@BestMediaInfo.com

Info@BestMediaInfo.com

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