Marketing health insurance in social media: A two-stage approach

Abstract

More than ever, there is a need for health insurers to embrace social media marketing. This need is the result of the health insurance industry undergoing a historic shift due to recent political, legal, social and technological changes. Unfortunately, health insurers have few examples and little guidance on how health insurance can be marketed in social media. The objective of this paper is to offer such guidance. In particular, a two-stage approach is considered in the context of the marketing of Healthcare.gov and proposed more generally for the marketing of health insurance via social media. This approach recommends that health insurers should focus initially on building a robust presence across multiple social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, after which they should focus on leveraging their brand’s multi-platform presence to facilitate electronic word of mouth and virality.