Exponential visibility growth in the car insurance market with Digital PR

THE PREMISE

Univé is one of the biggest and most well-known insurers in The Netherlands, with more than 10% of the population in their client portfolio. But with the current market landscape expanding, and the majority of the insurers focusing on the same keywords, and therefore increasing the competitiveness and cost of said keywords, it becomes harder to compete with limited budgets. When participating in such a market, it ends up becoming a rat race, which ultimately leads to no winners and a lot of wasted money. All the more reason to come up with something new, and innovative!

THE STRATEGY

To compete with the countless insurers that are doubling down on car insurance-related keywords, a new strategy is warranted. Throughout multiple brainstorms and thorough market analysis, we concluded that Univé was most in need of some high-quality, high-authority backlinks. To get this ball rolling, our experts devised a Digital PR strategy. To flesh out this strategy, our team started with extensive content brainstorming. During this brainstorming, Seeders developed an effective Digital PR strategy that connects search, digital, and PR. Digital PR is a suitable and relatively new method to make brands visible online, boosting their search results in the process.

We can split the objectives of the digital PR strategy into SEO- and media objectives, which are:

• To obtain a top position in terms of visibility on keywords revolving around ‘private car insurance’
• To realize a stable top 5 position for the highly competitive keywords ‘auto verzekering’ and ‘autoverzekering’ (both keywords have over 90,000 searches). In addition, we want to increase the average position for all keywords related to the car insurance domain. This means at least 10 new number 1 positions, 10 top 3 positions, and another 10 new top 5 positions.
• To obtain at least 35 media placements per digital campaign.
• To achieve a media value of at least 15.000 euros per digital campaign with a link value of at least 5.000 euros.
• This sets the goal of the total media at 100.000 euros, with a total link value of 25.000 euros.

The success of Digital PR is determined by the quality and newsworthiness of the content. By doing so, we also minimize the probability that the content will be copied by direct or indirect competition. By creating press releases with high news value, we are creating content that the media cannot (and will not) ignore. For brands, the results are increased exposure, strongly branded backlinks, and improved trust in the brand.

We start with a co-creation approach to brainstorming unique and newsworthy content together with the client. Based on the results flowing from the analysis, we brainstormed relevant angles for the press release that would put the Univé brand in the (positive) spotlight. We always prepare several press releases, each with a different angle (e.g., regional versus national). Hereby we increase the probability of journalists taking up the story and writing an article about it. This will add value through a backlink to the Univé.nl website. After publishing the press release, we keep track of the placements and validate if a link has been added. When a campaign is ended, the link value of the news page will hold its value as a redirect to an interesting landing page.

THE RESULT

The result has been several successful campaigns, which resulted in a vast amount of link value. By correctly redirecting the link value to the landing pages, we have achieved significant improvement in the positions in the organic search engine results. This can be considered a major achievement, especially considering the high budgets and saturation of the market segment that Univé is active in. Below, you’ll find the results per individual objectives specified.

Result Objective 1

• An increase from second place with 83,1% to a first-place with 93,1%

Result Objective 2

• ‘Auto verzekering’ ranking increased from position 4 to 2;
• ‘Autoverzekering’ ranking increased from position 6 to 5;
• 17 new top 1 positions;
• 18 new top 3 positions;
• 10 new top 5 positions.

Result Objective 3

• A total of 135 placements have been achieved;
• The press release with the lowest number of placements is 38;
• The press release with the highest number of placements was 56.

Result Objective 4

• The average PR campaign media value is 24.932 euros;
• The average PR campaign link value is 11.005 euros;
• The total media value of the Digital PR strategy is 104.795 euros;
• The total link value of the Digital PR strategy is 33.015 euros.