Using Advertising as a customer empowerment strategy.

Some of you may have noticed that i have this morning added advertisements to the blog.

As a first impression you will probably think i am trying to profit from this endeavour and social media experiment. Although i must admit that would be nice, we all dream of being millionaires ;-)

Unfortunately I don't think it is going to happen. Just to be clear profiting from this endeavour is not the goal of the experiement.

See below.

I think that you can see from the above that this is not a profitability strategy.

As such why would i add advertisements to the blog?

There are a couple of reasons for this. Partly i am curious and want to learn what this is all about and how it works but also and more importantly as alot of you have seen Google have changed their privacy policy recently. The idea of which is basically so that they can target you more accurately with advertising.

Now as i understand it the advertisements that will appear on the site are going to be targeted at visitors based upon their previous history of searching google, other web behaviour, their referring source destination to the blog and the way in which the site has been indexed by Google themselves. In this way google adsense should target visitors with relevant advertisements.

This is something that companies of course have been doing for years and i have seen already that If Vakuutus are doing this themselves. As such the question is.

Can I use existing advertising in the Insurance Industry to apply additional pressure to If Vakuutus? 

What i mean with this is,

Wouldn't it be great if one of my site visitors upon landing on the site was presented with a Tapiola or Pohjola advertisement to take insurance from them. As i am getting alot of traffic from If's own facebook pages. I am able to effectively place advertisements specifically for If's own customers or stakeholders. I am sure that If vakuutus in particular would not like that there own customers are firstly visiting my blog but then also being presented with advertisements for their competitors products.

Imaging what would happen if If vakuutus started to lose customers as a result of this advertising. In this experiement this has much more value as a pressure tactic than a profitability technique.

With this in mind how can i influence which advertisements are being presented on My blog? See my later post regarding SEO (search engine optimisation) and Google's affiliate network.

Let me know how succesful i am, let me know are you getting insurance ads? Once again i will update you as to how this pans out later.

If Vakuutus have re-engaged me!

Well thank you If vakuutus. I had almost given up on you. After two days since their last response i have had a new response from them. I do not know really why they have chosen to re-engage me, you would have to ask them, but i am grateful as it means i can still believe in them.

I have been a little critical of their approach in my blog and i have also adopted a strategy of interference on their own Facebook group. I have also added content to If Insurance's other local Facebook groups in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Latvia. Perhaps this has influenced them? Or perhaps it is the growing influence of this blog?

In any case this is what they have to say.

View the entire conversation on Facebook

I think this is quite self explanatory they have agreed to my earlier request to review my feedback which is positive and indicates that they are listening. They are still refusing to settle the claim or reimburse me for the additional costs that i incurred caused by their mis-communication.

Most importantly though now that they have implied that they are considering my feedback it means that perhaps we can actually help protect the other If vakuutus customers from this happenning to them again in the future.

I think that this is the biggest measurement of success of this experiment and if we can achieve that then i will be extraordinarily happy. We will have proved that customers engagin through social media can influence a company so as to change their behaviour. Also from If vakuutus's point of view it will mean that they can still sell and spin this as a success story for themselves. I am once again optimistic and hoping that If will live up to my expectations.

For those who cannot remember my original demands here they are. You can access the entire thread from here.

View the entire thread on facebook

Well amazingly i have now had another response from If Vakuutus. Correct me if i am wrong but i think that this is the first time this has happenned. Here is the new post from If Vakuutus and my own response.

View the thread on Facebook

To be fair If vakuutus are being pretty apologetic but they still refuse to act in terms of settling the claim. However they do seem to be showing some movement in their attitude to re-evaluating their customer support practices which is part of what i want to hear.

I would also like to hear about the request that i made for If Vakuutus to change their terms and conditions so that If vakuutus are responsible for customer costs resulting from their incorrect or misleading information and not their customer.

BTW i should state that the requested phone call conversation was held entirely in Finnish between If and my Finnish girlfriend. We wanted to make sure there was no miscommunication as the phone call was very important to us. I am of course English so thought it was better if the conversation took place between native Finnish speakers. Shame If were not so dilligent in ensuring the competency of their 24hr emergency service number.

Let's see where If Vakuutus go from here. It seems to me that they are trying but without action they are just digging a hole for themselves.