Today’s consumers are leveraging digital channels with nearly every purchase decision they make. How does this affect insurance companies? Are insurers visible to potential insurance buyers online? We spoke with Robert Bruil, VP Global Partnerships at Uberall, after his award-winning presentation at DIA Munich 2022.

Robert, you showed our audience how to get more leads, the easy way. So why should insurance companies scale up their online presence?

Because online search is skyrocketing with more indirect, mobile and local searches. Even if insurance buyers want to buy in person, they seek information online before moving along the customer journey. And that applies to all kinds of insurance types: car insurance, which is simple and largely commoditized, but also life insurance, which is very complex. What’s striking though is that most consumers don’t have a specific company in mind. That’s when and where every insurer has the opportunity to outshine its competition.

But how can insurance companies stand out in the crowded market?

Well, they must leverage their branch locations to ensure online visibility and brand consistency. Besides insurance companies, Uberall works together with different-sized firms from the finance, retail, automotive, or food and beverages industry. What they all have in common is that they optimized the way they get found, be chosen and drive loyalty. But doing so at scale—across hundreds or thousands of locations—is particularly challenging.

What does that mean for insurers? What’s their major challenge?

Most insurance companies have limited control of their brokers’ or agents’ online presence. They have fragmented workflows and too many dependencies. Also, they have little oversight of local customer interactions or low engagement, to begin with. But local marketing yields great revenue potential. What Uberall’s latest benchmark report unveils is that the insurance sector has the highest local marketing maturity—and yet, it only uses 54% of the features to win over hybrid customers. The opportunity for insurance companies to future-proof their business is to level up the local marketing strategy and design a stand-alone customer experience. Insurers are also up against the insurance comparison sites as well as digital native competitors.

What’s the solution then: posting more on social media and managing more online listings?

That’s part of it but what it really takes is offering seamless customer experiences—that’s what consumers expect with today’s myriad of options. They want to find the local insurance agent with the highest customer service rating and the shortest travel distance. No matter the final sales channel, consumers use both online and offline channels to reach their goal—and insurance companies should do the same. That’s where Uberall comes into play.

As a global SaaS provider, we build a bridge between the online and offline worlds. We help companies to stand out from their competition and build experiences customers want to repeat and share.

How can insurers benefit from working with Uberall?

With Uberall, insurers can manage their online presence centrally to ensure that their information is accurate and brand-compliant. Our platform is a one-stop shop to streamline customer experience, from office locations and opening hours to special offers, reviews, and more. We help insurers to work smarter, not harder. The result is what we call the Uberall CoreX effect: more impressions and better conversion rates translating into a higher ROI.

Let’s take one of our customers as an example: LVM wanted to ensure that their agents are visible when potential customers search online—and they have 2,400 locations! What they needed was consistent data that meets online publisher standards, and what we delivered was a single source of truth. With Uberall CoreX, their information is synced across 60+ relevant online platforms like Google, Apple Maps, Facebook, or Yelp, and agents can now respond to reviews on their own. So what makes Uberall unique is our ability to connect the dots, creating seamless experiences that bridge the digital and real world.