Search strategy for liars - Ask me no questions…
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008So according to the Association of British Insurers, liars are on the up. BBC business reported earlier today that an increasing number of people are lying on their insurance policy applications to gain a better premium.
A dangerous game people are playing. Let’s hope that deception to get the best premium isn’t too much of an emerging trend…it’s certainly a cynical way to ‘get the best price’, but the point I would make is that it shouldn’t be ignored when putting together a search strategy. No consumer trend should.
If the message and proposition in 2009 is all about the combination of price point and reassurance (after all, we can only go so low on price), yet there is a proportion of your audience who are out to get the lowest premium at all costs, then certain, more pragmatic creative should be tested to see how different key messages are received.

Consumers may lie to get the best deal...
Identifying any opportunity based on the behaviour and mindset of the consumer during their ’shopping’ phase is key to maximising return from a search campaign. So if you are an insurer, or indeed any kind of financial institution, you should certainly take the ABI’s findings into account when developing strategy. And equally, the emergence of a more cynical searcher should inform your keyword development - could negative(in the truest sense of the word) searches be on the increase as a whole? How wide does this go and how far are consumers prepared to go to get the ‘best deal’?
It’s a shame that the ABI’s line of ‘honesty is the best policy’ is actually publicising (and, therefore, to a certain extent promoting) lying on insurance forms. And the BBC highlighting the lack of convictions (which is an obvious and fair point to make) easily overshadows any kind of ABI-encouraged moral responsibility the consumer should have.
So don’t forget, as you develop search strategy based on the economic downturn and a belt-tightening 2009, people are cynical, tactics will be employed by them to save money, the way people search will change. And for all our expectations, forecasts and assumptions, search trends will raise eyebrows…it’s just a question of how high they’re raised, and how often…
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