by | Dec 2, 2025

Background Information

The client, a provider of custom benefits plans for mid-sized employers, sells their products through advisors who work directly with business owners and executives. Despite the client’s service levels and offerings being superior to those of traditional benefits providers, the advisors lacked the knowledge to confidently position them versus inferior, out-of-the-box plans.

The company had aggressive growth goals, and recognized overcoming this knowledge and confidence gap with advisors was key to achieving their targets.

Online Marketing Objectives

Core developed a strategic online marketing plan in order to clearly understand the challenges faced by all stakeholders – business owners, advisors, and the client. Research determined that advisors were not well educated about benefits options, so they defaulted to traditional plans. This ultimately meant they were not able to differentiate themselves from competitors, which made winning new business more difficult.

In addition, the plan included a comprehensive analysis of the client’s current online marketing activities, and confirmed the key online objectives.

  • Get found through online searches to generate leads from businesses researching benefits options.
  • Refer leads to advisors to build the channel and demonstrate the business opportunity.
  • Deliver virtual educational sessions/sales training for advisors.
  • Build an advisor database and execute a professional, consistent communication strategy.
  • Help advisors grow their practice by providing them with electronic sales tools.
  • Simplify claims submission for end users (plan members) to create an industry leading service experience.
  • Establish analytics, KPIs, and other metrics to track success of the plan and progress with advisors.

 

Core’s Approach

Based on the objectives and plan recommendations, Core initiated work on building the online marketing infrastructure, and then progressed to relentlessly executing the lead generation tactics and advisor recruiting and educational activities.

Updated Website: Added informative and compelling content, optimized for search engines (based on detailed keyword analysis) for lead generation, improved calls to action for conversion.

Database Marketing: Development and segmentation of a comprehensive database of advisors, design of standardized email templates, creation of an informative monthly newsletter.

Content Marketing:

  • Blogs: Educational blogs to position the client as a thought leader and subject matter expert, optimized for search engines.
  • Webinars: Consistent execution of webinars covering topics beneficial to businesses and advisors.
  • Sales Tools: Creation of electronic sales tools to help advisors close more business.
  • Videos: Development of educational videos to help advisors effectively position the offerings.

Portal: Creation of a benefits administrator portal that differentiated the client and made things easier for advisors and their customers.

Mobile App: Development of an industry-leading mobile app used by companies to submit their claims, making it the simplest claim process in the industry.

Social Marketing: Set up of optimized social media accounts to build an online following, and to share valuable information with advisors.

Analytics: Implemented tracking tools, reporting and dashboards to monitor KPI’s as per the analytics recommendations in the plan.


The Results

The client understood the first twelve months would be an investment in building the online infrastructure and executing the recommended strategy and tactics. As planned, the desired results began emerging towards the end of year one.

  • The client has achieved a 25% annual revenue growth year over year, leading to a tenfold increase in profitability. 
  • A record number of first-time advisors selling their plans and a record number of benefits plans added by the advisor community.
  • Educational seminars and webinars have been attended by over 2,500 advisors.
  • Since the implementation of the new claims app, thousands of plan members have downloaded for use on their mobile devices.
  • A 3X increase in inbound qualified leads from the website.
  • Increase in plan member satisfaction due to widespread mobile app and claims portal adoption.
  • 43% increase in newsletter subscriptions over a 1 year period.
  • 26% increase in branded search impressions over a 2 year period.

Core continues to work with the client to continually improve the online marketing tactics, and to position the client as an innovator in the employee benefits marketplace.

If you’re looking for a partner in creating a strategic digital marketing campaign for your company, please contact our team. We’ll be glad to take a look at your business and see what opportunities there are to help you grow.

Ben Molfetta
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