Helping a Challenger Brand Compete with the Heavyweights
In 2012, Insureon was a tiny insurtech startup with a big goal: rethink how small business owners get commercial insurance. The Insureon approach involved bringing the application process online and making it easy for business owners to compare quotes.
Challenge: Build Awareness and Credibility Among a Diverse, Diffuse Audience
When Insureon entered the scene, a handful of heavyweights dominated the commercial insurance industry. Getting in front of enough business owners to make the Insureon model work would take a massive feat of building awareness – and, crucially, credibility – for a brand no one had ever heard of.
Even harder: Insureon’s target customers were about as diverse a group as you could imagine: owners of any small business, from construction to IT to allied health professions to photography to catering and beyond. There was no one place to reach everyone – or even a majority of these customers. So Insureon set about being everywhere.
Strategy: Target Media Outlets Catering to Customers, Partners, and Investors
Insureon’s in-house marketing team (crowded into one corner of an un-airconditioned office in Chicago’s South Loop) hunkered down to increase the company’s visibility among target audiences via SEM and SEO-powered content marketing. The goal: win SERP real estate for long-tail search terms to create momentum, then tackle the high-volume keywords.
That would take care of visibility, but the team knew they needed help establishing trust. Sure, helpful content over time would do some of that work, but they could turbocharge the process by earning third-party coverage – that is, by getting trusted third parties to cover the work they were doing and their innovative approach to small commercial insurance. So they turned to Propllr.
We focused on earning coverage in three areas:
1. Vertical-focused outlets to reach potential customers
Trade publications are an excellent way to get in front of business owners in specific industries. They often offer coverage that appeals strongly to a narrow population segment. As Insureon’s team added new coverage areas, We placed pieces in the trade pubs trusted by key customer segments: engineers, contractors, IT professionals, landscapers, HR professionals, and more.
A staple of coverage: educational pieces about the risks various businesses face and how to manage those risks.
2. Industry-focused outlets to reach potential partners
Insureon’s promise of comparison shopping was only as good as the number of partners it had on its platform. Partnerships also dictated which verticals it could sell to. We placed pieces in insurance industry publications to establish Insureon and its leaders as visionaries in the realm of small commercial insurance.
3. Business- and startup-focused outlets to reach potential investors
Beyond the story of bringing insurance to more business owners was the story of Insureon itself: it was revolutionizing an industry, after all. And doing so right in the heart of Chicago. We told the story of the scrappy startup coaxing a slow-to-innovate industry into the digital age.
Results: Funding, Expansion, Acquisition, and Industry Dominance
Over the course of our five-year partnership, we helped Insureon secure hundreds of media placements in our target outlets as well as several top-tier publications, which helped the brand get in front of millions of members of its target audiences: small-business owners, insurance partners, and investors.
In 2013, the company moved into a bigger, brighter, and blessedly air-conditioned office in the heart of downtown Chicago. In 2015, two years into our partnership, Insureon closed a $31 million Series B round. In 2016, the company formed an MGA to handle hard-to-place coverage with Lloyd’s of London.
Acquired by Bold Penguin after the end of our partnership, Insureon is today a powerhouse in the world of small business insurance.
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