Case Study: Content Marketing? For Insurance?! Presented by: Julie Roth, Manager, Digital Marketing and Communications, Willis Group Insurance content so interesting it can be used for marketing?! Believe it or not: Yes. In this presentation I’ll cover the what, why, and how of content marketing for insurance companies, including a case study of how we’re doing it at Willis. www.bdionline.com

1. CONTENT
MARKETING?
FOR INSURANCE?!
How WillisWire is advancing the Willis brand
19 December, 2012

2. AGENDA
1. What is content marketing?
2. What is Willis doing with content marketing?
3. Spotlight on WillisWire
4. Benefits of WillisWire
5. Tips for Doing it Yourself
1

3. WHAT IS
CONTENT
MARKETING?
A brief introduction
2

4. WHAT IS CONTENT MARKETING
Using content to market
your brand or company—
and it isn’t new
 Advertorials
 White papers
 Baseball cards
 Blogs
 Microblogs
 Video
 Podcasts
 Slideshare
3

5. WHY CONTENT
MARKETING?
Need
 Distrust of traditional
marketing
Opportunity
 24/7 demand for information
 Deterioration of news media
4

6. HOW B2BS ARE USING IT
5

7. CONTENT MARKETING GOALS
6

8. BENEFITS OF BLOGGING
Blogging companies:
 Have more sales leads
 93% of B2B buyers begin the buying
process with search engines—which
+67%
love blogs
 67% more B2B leads per month than
those who don’t blog
 Have more Web visitors
 55% more website visitors
 97% more links from other sites
 434% more pages indexed by search
engines
7

9. WILLIS
CONTENT
MARKETING
What We’re Doing
8

10. SYNCS WITH THE WILLIS CAUSE
9

11. SYNCS WITH THE WILLIS CAUSE
10

12. WILLIS CONTENT MARKETING
What we do:
 Newsletters
11

13. WILLIS CONTENT MARKETING
What we do:
 Newsletters
 Market reviews
12

14. WILLIS CONTENT MARKETING
What we do:
 Newsletters
 Market reviews
 White papers
13

15. WILLIS CONTENT MARKETING
What we do:
 Newsletters
 Market reviews
 White papers
 Social media
14

16. WILLIS CONTENT MARKETING
What we do:
 Newsletters
 Market reviews
 White papers
 Social media
 Video
15

17. WILLIS CONTENT MARKETING
What we do:
 Newsletters
 Market reviews
 White papers
 Social media
 Video
 Podcasts
16

18. WILLIS CONTENT MARKETING
What we do:
 Newsletters
 Market reviews
 White papers
 Social media
 Video
 Podcasts
 Resilience magazine
17

19. WILLIS CONTENT MARKETING
What we do:
 Newsletters
 Market reviews
 White papers
 Social media
 Video
 Podcasts
 Resilience magazine
 WillisWire blog
18

20. WILLIS WIRE
Up-to-the-minute Insight on Risk
19

21. WHAT IS A BLOG?
 Timely commentary,
observation, or analysis
 Short, frequent posts
 Conversational
 Informal, personable in tone
 Invites and responds to reader
comments
 Links out to other writers / sites
 NOT a marketing brochure
masquerading as a blog
20

22. WHAT IS
Executive Risk
WILLIS WIRE?
Risk Control Corporate blog
Weather Risk  ~3 dozen bloggers
 2 languages
Analytics  38 categories
Kidnap &
Ransom
Financial
Services
Employee
Benefits
21

23. WILLIS WIRE
TOPICS
Think Like an Editor
 In the news
 Something new to worry about
 A way to save money
 A way to stay out of jail
 Seasonal
 Just plain cool
Bottom line:
 Insurance Doesn’t Have to be
Boring
22

24. WILLIS WIRE VOICE
 Be personable
 Use “you” and “I”
 Use contractions
 Write informally
 Be clear
 Write simply
 Be understandable,
not impressive
 Be scannable
 Use short sentences & paragraphs
 Use frequent subheadings
 Use bullet points
 Think like your readers
 What do they hope to get from your blog?
23

25. WILLIS WIRE AUDIENCE
 Clients and prospects
 They come for the learning
 Impressed, they hire us
 Media
 Looking for story ideas
 Looking for experts to quote
 Colleagues
 Increase own expertise
 See opportunities to cross-
sell clients
24

26. AUDIENCE STRICTLY BUSINESS
Vacation Season Affects Page Views
Almost Exclusively Weekday Traffic
Typical daily traffic breakdown
25

27. BENEFITS
What the business gets out of it
26

28. REACH BENEFITS: MEDIA
Press pickups:
 Summaries of the posts
themselves
 Interview requests for bloggers
27

29. REACH BENEFITS: REPRINTS
28

30. BENEFITS: COLLATERAL
Printed PDFs:
 Leave-behinds at
meetings/conferences
 RFPs
29

31. REACH BENEFITS: SOCIAL MEDIA
Links to the blog on LinkedIn
 Followers see our post in their news feeds
 Bloggers share with their contacts; it appears on their news feeds
 Associates share relevant ones with their contacts
 Also true for Twitter and Facebook
30

32. TIPS FOR
STARTING YOUR
OWN PROGRAM
A brief introduction
31

33. TIPS
1. Use a CMS you can administer yourself
2. Secure hosting
 Up-time is close to 100%
 No one can hack the blog and publish bad things
 Back ups of data in case of calamity
 Hosting service will stay in business (if outside)
3. Arrange for automatic archival of all posts/comments
4. Get select bloggers to commit to at least a post a month.
5. Get select legal staffers to commit to timely review.
6. Establish an editorial workflow that allows for:
 Copy editing
 Legal review
 Art selection
 Production
32

34. KEY WILLIS URLS
 WillisWire – http://blog.willis.com
 LinkedIn – http://www.linkedin.com/company/willis
 Twitter – http://twitter.com/willisgroup
 Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/willisgroup
 YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/willisgroup
33

35. SOURCE URLS
 Widespread distrust of traditional advertising – Nielsen:
http://j.mp/YRwU2y
 How B2Bs are using content marketing – MarketingProfs:
http://j.mp/12Y3eW6
 Why B2Bs are using content marketing– B2B Magazine:
http://j.mp/12Y3rJ0
 57% of blogging companies have acquired a customer thru that channel –
Hubspot : http://j.mp/S4SkvK
 Marketers with blogs generate 67% more leads – Hubspot:
http://j.mp/T8KPAH
 93% of B2B buyers begin buying process via search engines - Marketo:
http://j.mp/12BmdVn
34

36. WHO I AM
Julie C. Roth
Manager, Digital Marketing and Communications
Willis Group, New York City
julie.roth@willis.com
@cyberroth
35