Not easy getting airtime when you are a small ( but growing!) player.... 

Every business competes in a competitive space and ours is no different as the life insurance battleground is populated by the goliaths of the banks ( AIB, BOI, KBC, Ulster Bank etc)  and large life insurance companies (Aviva, Zurich Life, Irish Life etc). These players have multi-million balance sheets never mind marketing budgets so it is very hard for smaller players like Low.ie to get heard in this space never mind build brand awareness.

 

Sadly, there is no magic wand or genie in a lamp to help us so one has to do what Katie Taylor does …box clever!  You also have to grin and bear it as though you may get brilliant reviews and be  5 Star rated on globally recognised review platforms like Trustpilot and beat the socks off all your competitors on price –  the reality is that most Irish consumers have never heard of you. Needless to add, one of the downsides of this is that, despite their one-trick pony (they only use one life company)  and poor reputation ( not to mention track record) – consumers still flock to their bank in hordes for their life insurance and mortgage protection cover as after all they know and trust their bank!!

 

At Low, we are constantly striving to use whatever medium we can (in the most cost-effective fashion you can be sure!) to get our message out to potential customers. We have done radio ads ( expensive and hard to measure  effectiveness), sponsored charity balls and parish GAA teams ( loads of goodwill but very few policies), put in newspaper ads ( way past their sell-by date)  and written the odd personal finance article ( big plus for credibility) but none can match getting on the radio or national TV with a respected presenter.

 

This isn’t straightforward either (what is!) as you have excellent personal finance experts like Sinead Ryan and Eoin McGee dominating this space so whatever about luck and neck – you’ve got to have the expertise to show you can deliver too. Thankfully ( many thanks Newstalk) we overcame all such obstacles last month when our expert life insurance customer adviser, Andrea Gregory, appeared on the Pat Kenny Show and for ten odd minutes dispensed wise and expert advice on all facets of life insurance and mortgage protection with the help of Pat’s subtle skills. This went down very well with Pat’s 155,000 + listeners with plenty of text and phone queries.

 

So the moral of the tale is………. if you are very good at what you do and you persevere and think smartly – your company,  no matter how small a fish you may be in your pond, can compete with the big boys and highlight to consumers how much better you are. It will be well worth it in the end.

 

Check out Andrea’s slot on the Pat Kenny Show here…….expert-podcast