IDBI Federal Life Insurance to spend 60% of total adspend on digital

The life insurance industry has been witnessing a steady growth over the years but the Indian insurance market is still highly under-penetrated as many consider life insurance as just a tax-saving tool.

In a bid to educate consumers about the importance of life insurance, different brands are adopting different marketing strategies.

For IDBI Federal Life Insurance, it’s a mix of mediums, including print, digital, radio and outdoor advertising.

However, it finds digital to be the most effective as it helps to reach its desired audience in the most cost-effective manner, Karthik Raman, CMO and Head, Products of IDBI Federal Life Insurance, said in an interaction with BestMediaInfo.com.

In FY2019, IDBI FLI witnessed a growth of 8% in total premium and 31% in net profit over FY2018. Looking to further grow its business this year, it is going ahead with its same marketing strategy, while taking the philosophy of financial and physical fitness ahead.

“We allocate nearly 60% of our budget to the digital medium, though around the time of our marathons, we do some amount of targeted advertising through print, outdoor and radio mediums. With digital giving us the biggest bang for the buck, we would be going ahead with the same strategy in the new FY as well,” he said.

The brand’s marketing strategy is driven by its overarching organisational purpose, which is to empower people to live the life and lifestyle of their choice. It believes that in order to truly create a lifestyle one desires, one needs to focus on both, financial fitness and physical fitness.

He added, “We have actively focused on encouraging people to improve their financial fitness through educative campaigns around life insurance, financial planning, awareness of various product categories and myth-breaking. Along with financial fitness, we have stressed the importance of physical fitness through our various sports initiatives such as the marathons in four cities, Quest For Excellence badminton programme with the Pullela Gopichand Badminton Academy and Football Mania in association with KheloMore.”

The brand launches its campaigns on a periodic basis with an aim to strike the right balance between physical and financial fitness.

With the 2020 Olympics set to happen in Tokyo later this year, the brand recently had launched its latest campaign ‘#IndianOlympics 100’, which commemorates the 100th anniversary of India’s participation at the Olympics.

Through a series of 30 short videos hosted by sports historian, Boria Majumdar, it is featuring extraordinary stories of achievement and sacrifice by Indian athletes at the Olympics.

In September last year, the brand had launched the second phase of #KeepMoving Mantras series helmed by Sachin Tendulkar, which was targeted at demystifying life insurance. The campaign emphasised the message that in order to create and lead a healthy lifestyle, it is important to focus on both — physical fitness and financial fitness.

After the launch of the campaign, the #KeepMoving microsite clocked over 7 million hits in just a couple of months, with 70,000+ registered users taking the pledge to improve fitness on both counts.

“The #KeepMoving campaign sustained a high engagement rate of 30% on social media platforms. It helped us achieved a significant jump in our brand awareness and consideration scores, besides a jump in our business volumes,” said Raman.

The brand’s association with Tendulkar stretches to 2016. In 2018, IDBI FLI had announced him as brand ambassador.

On the brand’s association with Tendulkar and high focus on fitness, Raman said, “The life insurance sector has for years been selling products on the basis of fear and uncertainty. To break away from this stance, we focused our marketing efforts on the route of sports and fitness through our marathons and other grassroots sports initiatives. We have found that this focus on health and fitness has helped us break through the clutter and establish a deeper and more positive connect with our customers.”

Having adopted digital in a big way, the brand uses predictive analysis to segment customers so that it can customise the communication to customers based on their profiles. Going ahead, it plans to further sharpen the communication by using data, analytics and AI in a more advanced manner. “We also use an email BOT for responding to customer queries that has helped to reduce the turnaround time (TAT) significantly,” said Raman. 

Talking about the life insurance category and the impact of economic slowdown, he said, “With improved awareness and understanding, we see that more consumers are looking at life insurance as a financial safety net during times of uncertainty and hence, an asset that everyone should own. The economic slowdown has not had a great impact on the category but there has been a shift in product mix with a move towards term plans as a basic requirement.”

Info@BestMediaInfo.com