BUPA Health Insurance
Introduction
Health Insurance Australia industry is pretty big in as majority of the population would like to have a health cover. Though when it comes to deciding on which company to select for your private health insurance, is never going to be an easy task. There are many health insurances companies that are operating in Australian market, from the largest health funds to the local health insurance service providers (FairHealthCareAlliance.com). However, when it comes to analyzing who’s the biggest or got the biggest market share than there are only few names that comes to your mind, such as Bupa Health Insurance, Medibank, NIB and few more. These company’s despite of having bigger market share are always trying new strategies and tactics to get bigger market share. Bupa Health Insurance claims to be among the top three leading health insurance service providers in Australia, with 26.9% market share, Bupa is the 2nd largest health insurance service provider. The company is foreign owned private company that entered Australian in the late 2002 (Comparingexpert.com.au, 2020).
To be able to analyse social media and web presence of any brand or company there’s a list of social media channels that needs to be analysed in detail. Channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the likes of LinkedIn needs to be analysed in terms of the quality of content that the brand is posting and how often they post content on these channels (Chegwindden. Y, 2016).
Social media Channels of BUPA
Like all marketing campaigns, it is very important and crucial for companies to keep their eyes on social media marketing and if their efforts on social media is working or not. The best part with social media campaign is that, the brands and companies can analyse whats working and whats not. As stated by Jessica. F, 2013, there are various online tracking tools that can be used to analyse the performance of your website and other efforts made on social platforms.
Talking about social media than it wont be wrong to say that Social Media has grown in exponential manner, the large segment of the overall population around the world is now actively involve in the use of social media for various reasons (Pew Research Center, 2014). It is with the help of social media that it has allowed social media users to stay or get in touch with their peers, family members and friends (Schawrtz, 2010). Social Media is not only useful for individual but if used properly is likely to be very useful and effective for brands and companies. Companies are using social media and at the same time believe that it is really very important to have a strong brand presence for the purpose of engaging with customers, provide them the utmost services and retain bigger market share.
Having a social media presence is now considered to be a necessity for both private and professional life in the 21st century. In many ways, social media presence can manifest itself with the use of platforms like Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn and can also be implemented with the help of various applications like online chat and web comments (Malyshev. A & Loop. J, 2013). Over the last few years many changes have been noticed in the business world, how companies used to communicate with their customers is definitely changed. Many popular social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, that crossed the one billion user figure in 2012 has encouraged many companies to use social media for various communication. An interesting figure to note is that in 2012, over 70% of fortune 500 companies were reported using a corporate twitter account that is an increased by 10% over th previous year (Malyshev. A & Loop. J, 2013).
Taking the lessons from other companies and brands many health insurances companies has also realized the importance of using social media to be able to reach to its customers and be able to communicate with them properly. To do the same, BUPA Health Insurance has realized the importance of having its present on various social media platforms and as well as to have its website up to date with full of relevant and quality content and information.
Analysis of each of the social media channels
There is no doubt that Facebook is the most common social media platforms among the majority of the population. It won’t be wrong to say that Facebook remains the primary channel for health insurers (Chegwindden. Y, 2016). As can be seen from the above snippet that in 2016 BUPA health insurance had the most number of likes i.e. 161,750 almost double the amount of Medibank. BUPA is very active when it comes to using Facebook, as the company is posting engaging and valuable contents on its Facebook page on almost daily basis. For example, the company post few images on the mother’s day highlighting the importance of Mothers in our life and how the company is engage in providing quality services to our family members.
Source: (facebook.com/bupa)
As per, social media not only helps in marketing processes, but it also aids in various business functions such as human resources, supply chain management and finance as well. As stated by Huy, Q and Shipilov, A (2012), social media is one of the effective ways to help companies market their products and services, at the same time it also helps in various other business functions like supply chain management, customer service and sales (). Realizing its importance, BUPA is not missing out on using TWITTER to its fullest. As of today, Bupa has over 12.4k followers alone in Australia, which is a big number for any brand to be able to effectively communicate with its customers. The message communicated through twitter is seems to be very much similar to what the company is communicating through its Facebook page. Content is not different at all, is just that Bupa doesn’t want to miss out on such a key social platform to be able to market and communicate with its audience.
Source:https://twitter.com/bupaaustralia?lang=en
Another important social media platform that any company or brand don’t want to miss out is LinkedIn. Linkedin is more targeted towards professionals regardless of the industry and market they belong to. A lot of recruitment and networking is done through the same channel, as its purely for professionals to make connections and socialise in a more professional manner (Kietzmann, J.H., Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I.P., and Silvestre, B.S. (2011). Among all the social media platforms, LinkedIn is considered to be the most effective platforms when it comes to recruiting candidates. Many companies are making full and effective use of LinkedIn to advertise their present job vacancies that they have, not only this but they have their recruitment staff members to find the the most suitable talent to fit their vacancies. As can be seen from the below image that Bupa is using LinkedIn properly as various job vacancies are advertised on its LinkedIn profile page. LinkedIn is a very dynamic tool that is very effective in the healthcare industry. Though its not a stand along strategy but one should make sure that it is part of your overall strategy and marketing efforts (Zelm. A, 2015).
YouTube
When it comes to posting contents in the form of Video’s YouTube is one of the most common social media platforms. As of 2016, Bupa had 3,369 subscribers on its YouTube page. If we have a look on its YouTube page at present, Bupa Health Care Australia has roughly around 8.05K subscribers in Australia (https://www.youtube.com/user/BupaAustralia). Its YouTube page is full of interesting and quality videos that are created and posted just for the purpose of educating its customers and sharing the knowledge. The channel has over hundreds of videos on its page, clearly indicating the fact that this particular platform is being used by the brand effectively and efficiently.
Source: www.youtube.com/bupa
An interesting point to note here is the fact that all this social media engagement is only possible when its done by a professional. Same is the case with BUPA Health Care, its digital marketing or in simple words, its online presence is being managed by a PR company. The private healthcare giant of Australian has chosen Brando to help in rolling out its consumer PR programmed, that would look after its social media presence and developing its brand personality (Gemma. O, 2010).
Web Presence
For any business, having web presence is really very important, specially in this digital era where everything is online. You can order your food online; you can buy cloths and even study online. So keeping all this in mind, similarly it is important for companies like Bupa Health Insurance to have proper web presence. Talking about web presence, it doesn’t only mean to include or have accounts on social media platforms or have a website, instead one need to have good amount of quality content on number of different platforms. Web Presence can be in the form of blogs, vlogs, PR Articles, newsletters, guides and many more (Curtis. M, 2020). Bupa has made sure that its web presence is effective and must be made available to a larger audience. To do so, the brand have made sure that all tools and applications that are available are used to its fullest. Blogs have been written not only on the company website but on various other blogging websites. A proper YouTube channel is maintained where the brand post informative videos about various issues.
Positives and Negatives of Social Media use
In general, social media is a platform for people to stay connected and to build social networks with other people around the world. Many adolescents are now have online accounts and are using their personal devices like tablet computers, smart phones and laptops to stay connected with the world (Kumar. R & Akram. W, 2017). To do so, they not only share the news but at the same time they do follow companies and brands to see what’s happening in their world. Similar to many other website, even social media websites have their advantages and disadvantages. As for this very reason it is important to make sure that the companies make sure that proper and adequate content is posted on its social profiles. With the help of social media, it help companies to speed up their communication process with customers. A new discovery or any news can be shared by a large group of people in a matter of minutes.
Taking the example of Facebook, it has many advantages and disadvantages, for example sharing customer experience to a larger audience is possible through Facebook, similarly customer engagement is possible by putting up quality and informative content. On the other hand, one of the key disadvantages of Facebook is its really difficult to manage the comments and reviews made by customers (Hill, 2014). Taking the example of Twitter, which is considered to be the second largest social media platform after Facebook, has its own advantages and disadvantages. It’s mainly use for the purpose of sharing news with your followers and subscribers. As stated by Rodriguez, R., Peterson, R. M., and Krishnan, V. (2012), majority of the people make sure that they do read the reviews and feedback of other customers before trying out any new service or product. Same is the case with health insurance service providers, if they want to be on top or be the first choice of preference than they have to make sure that they provide quality service as any negative reviews will only affect their clienteles and might result in loose of market share as well. One of many downsides of using social media is that people actually end up spending unnecessary time on social media, their productivity gets minimised and it becomes an addiction for them to spend more and more time on social media.
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