The Auto Insurance Ad War – Staggering Numbers

Anyone who watches television these days knows that in almost every ad sequence, there is at least one ad trying to get you to buy their car insurance.  In NC you don’t see as many of these ads for home insurance because at this point in time, insurance companies are losing money on home insurance and making it back on auto insurance.  So the pitch these days is for your auto insurance policy.  These ads must work or the big players wouldn’t keep buying them.  But just how much is being spent to try and convince you to switch your auto insurance policy?  

I think you will find the numbers shocking.  The biggest spender of all is Geico.  Geico’s marketing costs in 2011 were $993.8 million.  That’s almost a billion dollars!  And this is up over 10% from the 2010 costs for Geico.  And yet, this 10% increase for 2011 is far below the 15% average increase in marketing spending industry wide.  But to help you put Geico’s spending in context, they were responsible for roughly one out of every six dollars spent on marketing in the property and casualty insurance industry.

Bigger is not always better and I’m reminded of this when reading the internal notes of an Allstate presentation last October.  In these notes Allstate says that the volume of calls at their call centers dropped by 30% after they had cut back on direct mail solicitations.  Call centers?  Really?  I hope that most of you reading this understand the value of having your own agent, one that you can call when you need, one that has a direct dial number to his or her desk and one that knows you and your situation intimately.  You shouldn’t have to deal with faceless people at call centers to purchase quality, affordable car insurance.

I find it interesting that while auto insurance represents about 1/3 of the total of all property and casualty insurance sold, the advertising and marketing budgets for car insurance represent more than half of the total spent on property and casualty insurance marketing.  This tells me that these huge insurance companies believe that the average television watcher is the biggest sucker out there.  They surely won’t spend this same amount of money trying to reach commercial insurance customers because commercial insurance customers are too savvy to fall for the idea that all insurance policies are the same and that the lowest price is the only goal when buying insurance.  And people who buy car insurance should be just as careful as business customers because after all, you are buying car insurance to protect your assets that you have worked so hard for over the years.

If you would like to speak to an experienced, well informed agent who will take the time to listen to you, hear your story and then help you find the right policy for your needs at the lowest possible cost to you, then I hope you will consider Clinard Insurance Group.  We insure thousands of families all across North Carolina and would love to have the opportunity to show the difference between huge ad budgets and one on one consistent, professional help.  Give us a call today; toll free, at 877-687-7557.