How content strategy drove up Max Life's brand loyalty by 25-30%

Aalok Bhan, Director and Chief Marketing Officer, and Rahul Talwar, Marketing Head, Max Life Insurance, offer three smart, easy and simple pointers on how to retain the audience through content — talk about positivity, hope and a bright future.

Talking to BuzzInContent.com in a joint interview, the duo feels even though life insurance is a serious category, the use of music, humour and right influencers can also make their content initiatives engaging and rewarding.

Choose influencers who are not in any kind of controversy and who have over the time proven their abilities, they said.

Both Bhan and Talwar discussed their content strategy, which led to a 25-30% increase in brand’s loyalty in the last six months.

Excerpts:

How important is content marketing for the brand in comparison to advertising? How has your focus on content marketing increased during the Covid period?

Bhan: Life insurance has been in the country for a long time. However, the awareness of it has been less. People know the word life insurance but they don’t know the purpose of it. It's a very typical Indian problem. The Indians are saving-oriented consumers and for them saving means it should be with some extra returns. Whereas, the core purpose of any life insurance is to provide the customer protection for his and his loved one's financial future. The main benefit is realised by the life insurance policy owner after his/her demise.  

Content plays a very important role here as it helps sell something that will benefit only after a person’s demise. For the consumer to purchase a life insurance policy, the content has to strike his heart. It has to be an emotional conversation.

Talwar: Consumers who want to interact with us need that value proposition that will be able to cater to one’s needs most specifically. That’s why content marketing is the right lever to press versus advertising for our category. This is one of the reasons why it brings a tailwind effect to the direct-to-consumer business for a passive category like ours.

How has content marketing helped the brand to engage with consumers during the Covid period?

Bhan: There were two options with brands at the beginning of the pandemic. One was to wait and watch and then see what had to be done and the other was to be with the customer constantly, handling their anxieties.

Our communication took a bit of a flip and we were communicating more with empathy in our tone to reduce the anxiety of society at large. A lot of our activities were primarily focused to help not only our customers but also their community.

We realised if we don’t stick to our consumers and stop communicating, then they will lose trust in us. Our communication only doubled with our customers and the content we have offered was primarily about releasing anxiety and was very empathetic.

In the last six months, the brand’s loyalty has increased 25-30% purely because we were talking with the customer and understanding what he or she wants to do.

Our India protection quotient research with Kantar IMRB, which usually takes place in the Q3/Q4, was advanced to define our content that is much sharper to meet the consumer needs. The insights we got from there shaped our content for the subsequent months and that’s the content that we are deriving right now.

We are a life insurance company where insurance is the product and the other word is life, so we should talk about living life and not death, which is spoken by other players in the category. We are changing the narrative to bring in positivity in all our communication.

What are the challenges associated with content marketing in your category?

Bhan: Historically, insurance as a category has largely been sold based on returns. It is only in recent times that private insurance companies are pushing the concept of the core purpose of life insurance, which is protection.

The biggest challenge is to get consumers to become aware that the most important decision for them to take is what amount they should be covering themselves with, what we call a real value.

Consumers should buy a cover that is a real value to the family.

A customer has to buy the right value and that’s the biggest challenge for us as a category to make consumers aware of.

Insurance is a serious category, and the content created in the field is very informative and educative. Therefore, it is challenging to make it entertaining. So, how can brands in your category create content that is not dull?

Bhan: If your content can talk about positivity, hope and bright future, then you will retain your audience. We used influencers like RCB players and actor Abhay Deol to build the positivity and creativity that can attract consumers to our brand and gives a high recall value.

Positive messaging like ‘protection front foot pe’ and ‘India ke bharose ka the number’ are based on a little bit of humour; we don’t want to show sad faces but only happy faces.

Also, at the back of it we have kept music as an important connection. Both music and humour tonality and influencers will keep the conversation more targeted towards happiness in homes.

What are the common mistakes that brands in your category make while embarking on the content marketing route?

Bhan: It's not the right time for our category to push the product. It is the time you provide solutions, and make your consumers realise the true value of insurance through content.

The brand has also generated content not directly linked to the business. For example, interactive games, Zumba and Yoga, and other such content pieces. How has such content pieces helped the brand? What was the need to do so?

Bhan: Not only we need to provide solutions with our product to the consumer, but we need to help them access such activities and make them partner with us to enable them to improve their health and wellness score.

It's not only health and wellness, we also do our content in online education because these are various anxiety-causing young parents.

How much of a believer is the brand in influencer-led content strategy? How can one do it in the best possible way?

Bhan: Choose an influencer who is not in any kind of controversy. We have always chosen an influencer who is well regarded for his art, also representing millennials.

Last year, we chose Raj Kumar Rao, this year we are working a lot with Mandira Bedi on our fitness initiative.

We have Abhay Deol on board as the brand’s face. We chose influencers who have over the time proven their abilities.

 What are the three most important points that a marketer considers while devising a content strategy?

Talwar: To ensure your content marketing programme is a success, it is important for brand marketers to reflect on three crucial questions;

- Who must the content hold most relevance to?

- What benefit is the audience supposed to receive from consuming this content?

- What distinctive content experience does the programme manage to deliver?

 While the brand engages through content on social media and YouTube, a few people tend to pass negative or unrelated comments. How do you make sure it doesn’t hamper the brand’s image?

Talwar: We have our own dedicated team that looks after reputation management. Our belief is that while you may have issues with operations and customer service, you cannot be quiet with the customer. You have to be with them, keep on communicating and manage them and don’t stay quiet just because they are putting out complaints.

How willing is the brand to try formats like web series and podcasts? Have you tried these formats earlier?

Bhan: It is the age of the future and so we are keen to evaluate; it has to be contextual.