Discover the Allianz Trade content marketing strategy

The Editorialist : What are the content creation challenges for a company like Allianz Trade, and for the marketing teams of trade credit insurers more generally?

Olivia Du Boucheron : Trade credit insurance is a unique industry. In the first place, the specialised insurance solutions that we provide are designed solely for businesses. Second, trade credit insurance is not mandatory. As a result, our marketing teams face multiple challenges. They need to interest and engage with targets that are unfamiliar with trade credit insurance, by talking about the issues that these firms face regularly, such as cash management and debt collection. But they also have to persuade these same targets to take out insurance that is slightly costlier than the mandatory insurance cover.

Another challenge, which is connected to the first two, is SEO. We don’t have many rivals. Just three insurers share the French market. So we want to climb as far as possible up the list of daily issues faced by businesses.

T.E : What sort of content do you create with the Editorialist and how does this content fit and work together?

O. DB. : To tackle the challenges that I mentioned, we work with The Editorialist’s teams to produce SEO articles for our blog. They also assist us to design and write white papers that address the needs of our sales and brokerage teams by examining a specific industry, such as wholesale trade or transportation, or digging into a particular business theme, such as insolvency. The Editorialist has also supported us recently as we have got to grips with new formats, such as motion design, industry-specific landing pages for our website and videos.

This joined-up content is gradually building up a library that encompasses an extensive range of topics, sectors, industries and potential issues, which we can draw on to face marketing and business challenges.

T.E : What were the main difficulties in creating these editorial products? And how did The Editorialist help you to overcome them?

O. DB.: The Editorialist helped us enormously from a manpower perspective. I am the only person working on content creation and I can’t do everything! The journalist who was chosen to write our content is so skilled, particularly in doing industry research, which saved us a lot of time. We put The Editorialist’s people in touch with our own in-house experts. We have been very happy with how our content is put together, both writing-wise and in terms of the graphic design.

We do not have The Editorialist’s cutting-edge expertise in the new formats that we are trialling, such as video, so we’ve been delighted to have support in these aspects as well.

T.E : How has the content been received, both inside the company and outside?

O. DB.: Internally, our salespeople use the content extensively to fuel their sales journeys. Likewise, the brokers in our network are always hungry for new content that showcases Allianz Trade’s expertise to prospects. The content has been well received within our organisation, particularly by our experts, who often share it on LinkedIn when it is posted on the company website.

Externally, we are recording outstanding download rates for our white papers, and we have had great social media feedback, especially on the articles.

In short, we find that our content production meets the needs of our internal and external targets alike.

In fact, we said at the start of last year that we would put out fewer white papers. But in response to strong demand for this high-quality, downloadable content from our sales reps, and hence from businesses, in the end we decided to keep up the same pace.

T.E : What were the main stages in your editorial strategy? What are the new issues that you want to address or double down on?

O. DB.: We intend to continue to explore new formats, such as motion design and video, that help to demystify trade credit insurance. We are going to keep producing content that works, such as white papers and SEO articles, while covering different topics.

T.E : How would you describe the support provided by The Editorialist?

O. DB.: Very smooth. We have excellent communications and are in touch almost daily with The Editorialist’s sales & marketing, editorial and graphic design teams. While I haven’t always known what to expect, whatever the content type, including new formats such as landing pages recently, I’ve always been utterly delighted with the results of all our back-and-forth communication!

The Editorialist always lives up to its commitments, especially delivery deadlines. If there is the slightest issue, it’s usually our fault. That’s pretty great.