Comparing brand messaging of competing car insurance brands

In a highly saturated market like car insurance, where price is probably the most important driver for the customer’s decision – knowing how to attract your target audience and distinguish your brand from the competition is vital.

Car insurance brands are using Relative Insight to compare competitor websites and crack the competitive landscape. We wanted to understand how three leading car insurance brands position themselves on their websites. So naturally, we turned to competitor analysis.

Looking specifically at British insurers Direct Line, Hastings Direct and Admiral, we compared the language used throughout the car insurance sections of each brand’s website. While the positioning and product differentiation may not look immediately apparent, this is where Relative Insight really comes into play!

Adopting a comparative approach to text analytics, Relative Insight uncovers the linguistic features that are unique to a company’s website. The platform exposes the differences in how each competitor talks, revealing the words, phrases, grammar, topic and emotion that are more prevalent in one written data set over another.

This form of analysis reveals powerful insight into how the three car insurance brands use distinct language and tone of voice throughout their websites to create brand differentiation in an extremely competitive market.

Direct Line

Electric cars are the future

Direct Line is a car insurance brand that is forward-thinking and moving with the times, evident as the topic of electric vehicles is 8.9x more likely to appear throughout their website copy. The brand claims to be making electric easy for their customers starting with insurance, while the world transitions to a more sustainable way of life. As electric vehicles become a bigger part of our future, the language used by Direct Line helps customers feel ready to embrace this change.

Direct Line also promotes its partnership with Ovo and Co Charger, including offers that give electric car insurance customers access to 100% renewable energy and public charging points. Direct Line is ahead of the curve when it comes to its electric vehicle strategy, ultimately giving them a competitive advantage in the sector.

Offers

A key insight that this competitor analysis of car insurance brands uncovered is that Direct Line is more likely to speak about offers throughout website copy. Words such as bundle, discounts, free, refund, exclusive deals and moneyback appear 30.7x more on their site, suggesting that Direct Line wants to position itself as an insurance brand with promotions that you won’t find anywhere else.

Hastings Direct

Budget car insurance

Consumers looking to buy car insurance often go for the cheapest option. When we compare the competitor websites of these three car insurance brands, we can see that Hastings Direct is infinitely more likely to speak about budget car insurance. In a bid to appeal to the consumer, Hastings Direct gives its audience tips on how to get cheaper car insurance and emphasize their great prices. By adopting this language, not only does Hastings Direct attract the financially cautious consumer, but its content has a far friendlier and more informal tone than competitors.

Female drivers

It’s widely accepted that women are better and safer drivers than men. However, in 2012, The European Court of Justice ruled that having gender-specific car insurance was discriminatory. Despite this, Hastings Direct continues to talk about the differences between male and female drivers.

The brand has an entire section dedicated to women’s car insurance; a word that is does not appear on either competitor websites. On further inspection, we found that Hastings Direct appears in the first page of Google’s search results for this keyword – which has a monthly UK search volume of 1,300. Competitors are presented with a valuable SEO opportunity here. This insight could be used to create an article or landing page dedicated to this keyword, helping other car insurance brands to improve their organic search metrics and compete with Hastings Direct for traffic on the term.

Admiral

Credibility

Creating an authoritative and credible image can help car insurance brands stand out from their competitors, which is certainly the case for Admiral. We found that Admiral is 6.8x more likely to refer to its credentials throughout their website. Phrases such as voted best car and five-star rating indicate that Admiral is trying to build trust in their audiences. This can be further substantiated by the use of superlatives, such as best, highest and easiest.

Similarly, we found that Admiral is 13.2x more likely to use the word reasons throughout their website copy. By clearly spelling out the reasons to choose Admiral over any other insurer, the car insurance brand offers consumers an easier way to make their decision. This again creates an authoritative tone of voice, aimed to instill trust in the target audience.

The results clearly show that each of the car insurance brands has a distinct tone and focus, suggesting carefully tailored marketing strategies. Direct Line deploys a promotion strategy and aligns itself with the sustainability movement. Hastings Direct focuses on specific car insurance types and low prices in a friendly manner. Whereas Admiral uses statistics to create credibility and inspire confidence in consumers.

Using Relative Insight gives you the ability to quickly understand how your competitors approach language, tone and position in relation to your own brand or product. The platform reveals actionable competitor insights which can inform brand strategy, SEO and marketing direction – helping to spot opportunities for content creation and brand differentiation.