Essay: Marketing Plan: State Farm Insurance

The marketing plan will be based on the company named State Farm. This company provides insurance and financial services to its customers. The marketing plan will outline the company description, business mission, marketing objective, marketing strategy, situation analysis, and the competition.
To begin, the headquarters of State Farm are actually here in the state of Illinois. To be more specific, the headquarters are located in Bloomington, Illinois. The type of business that State Farm is most commonly known for is insurance, but what many people do not know is that State Farm is also a bank. The company provides insurance, which includes property, casualty, life, and health insurance, and they provide financial services, which include annuities, mutual funds, and bank products. The customers of State Farm are those who are looking to obtaining some sort of insurance or to obtain financial services. The history behind
State Farm began in 1922 when George Jacob Mecherle or G.J. Mecherle, a retired farmer, founded the company. The retired farmer did not think it was fair that he had to pay the same amount of money, living on a farm, that others that lived in the city. Mercherle believed that the risks from person to person are different, which lead him to believe that the premiums should also be different. He wanted to create an company that had fair premium rates, so he began by selling affordable insurance to other farmers. His business then began to grow and they began providing insurance to others and not just farmers. The company eventually grew into the State Farm that we have today, with several different products to choose from. This leads to the core competencies of State Farm. This company is able to provide fair rates for customers. In addition to fair rates State Farm is able to provide over one hundred different types of products for customers to choose from. The quality products and services that State Farm as a company is able to provide has lead the company to be extremely successful. The company was actually ranked number thirty three on the Fortune five hundred, which is a list of top five hundred most profitable corporations in the United States of America.
After reviewing the company description, the mission of State Farm is a vision to do well and do good. The company needs to make profit and create a product of value to their customers. State Farm is not about selling products, it is about making a difference in the lives of their customers while in the process of selling a product or providing a service. The
mission of State Farm is to provide assistance to make everyday life risks manageable, to help recover for an unexpected event, and assist others in having their dreams become a reality. The company of State Farm that provides insurance and financial services, has come to prove that they are achieving the mission that they have set. The organization has been providing high quality products and services to help their customers. State Farm has set a mission to sell insurance and financial services, while also having their customers well educated on the products and services offered. This allows the customer to make the best decision possible when it comes to buying a product or service.
Following the business mission, the marketing objective of State Farm is to help people manage the risks of everyday life, recover from the unexpected, and realize their dreams. Clearly, the guide that will help employees make decisions is the need of the State Farm customer. For almost any operations, whether it be insurance of the State Farm Mutual Fund, the mission statement should be able to be interpreted easily through the actions of employees. The objective of State Farm use to be ‘Like a Good Neighbor’, but has recently been changed. The old tagline was appropriate for showing the value of customer satisfaction, but now the company has broadened from only insurance. The new tagline, ‘Here to Help Life Go Right’, now encompasses their values of selling quality insurance as well as safe mutual funds for investors. That being said, State Farm objectives have always been to satisfy the
customer. In recent advertisements, they say that even in a world with no accidents they would be trying to help people’s lives go right. The State Farm marketing objectives is not based on sales but it is actually based on solely recognizing customer needs and building lasting relationships with them.
Having seen the marketing objective, now we are able to talk about the marketing strategy. State Farm needs to target to all sorts of demographics, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to market differently. As far as automobile insurance goes, everyone is required by law to have it. Although it would be advantageous to build relationships with new drivers, people don’t switch insurance often. As far as mutual funds, however, State Farm would try to fulfill the wants of older, wealthier, and retirement conscious people. The product that State Farm sells is the service of insurance. They pool together money to help people with medical and property damage bills. The place is nation wide and very important. Agents can be found all over and their availability is crucial to helpful customer service. Promotion has recently change to help ensure that the values of the company are interpreted just as effectively in whichever branch of the company.
Every business needs a situation analysis to find its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. State farm insurance has a strong position in the United States market. State Farm Insurance holds about 9.7 percent of the market share and is the second largest insurer by revenue, and although the company might be the second largest insurer by revenue, it now insures more autos and homes than any other insurer in the United States of America mutual company. Now knowing that it is the number one insurer in the United States of America, it is obvious that the company has hundreds of producers to be able to achieve being number one. The company is estimated to have more than twenty one thousand agents, which allows State Farm to maintain being the number one insurer in the United States of America. In addition to being the number one insurer, State Farm was also ranked number thirty three on the Fortune five hundred list of largest companies. It was a great accomplishment have even made it onto the list, and knowing that the company made it into the top seven percent of largest companies makes it an even bigger accomplishment for State Farm. Another strength for the State Farm company is the fact that automobile insurance in mandatory which provides a never ending amount of people looking for automobile insurance. State Farm also has the strength of their name recognition and the fact that they are known just about everywhere. The company is based on agents and because the company is based on their agents they have a lot more local agents than anybody else.With people constantly searching for automobile insurance, State farm is given the opportunity to pivot towards different products for these new prospects.
Some of the weaknesses for State Farm is their market concentration. This is a weakness for State Farm because they only provide insurance and financial services in the United states and Canada. The weakness of the market concentration for the company has caused the growth of the company to become slow in the past couple of years. The slow growth is especially seen in the property and casualty insurance. Another one of their weaknesses is that the company has a slow top line management. The perceptions of the company are old fashion strategies, expensive brand and out of date with the younger generation lifestyles in some cases. State Farm’s current business model doesn’t focus on technology development. Making a change in the technology development can really drive more business for State Farm.
Every company has strengths, but they also have their weaknesses. The weaknesses of a company allow for an analysis to be done so that the company could look for improvements and opportunities that will create a profit for the company. For State Farm, the improvements that can be made have a big relation with the Baby Boomers in this country. The large amount of Baby Boomers puts a bigger focus on retirement insurance and pension policies. State Farm, at the moment does not have retirement insurance or pension policies. These two products gives State Farm the opportunity to engage in this new market and add to their revenues. There could be better implementations made towards the products offered. These implementations would allow products to accommodate the changes throughout the generations to come.
The United States of America property and casualty insurance market is highly competitive with various large institutes fighting to be the market leader. State farm is only one of many companies that provide insurance and financial services. State Farm is also facing global companies like AIG and other big companies like Allstate and Farmers Insurance. They are all competing for prospects to become customers for their companies. Big awareness of Geico due to high advertising strategies, causing switcher behaviors and price competition between the companies.
Although State Farm is the number one producer for auto and home insurance, they do have to compete with several different insurance and financial companies in the United States, and also all around the world. One of State Farm’s biggest competition is the Allstate insurance company. Allstate insurance is one of State Farm’s biggest competitions because their target market focuses on consumers of all ages and particularly a multi-cultural community. One of their weaknesses is the higher rates that they usually offer.
Farmers Insurance is also one of State farms competitions they typically target market the middle aged individuals and also families. State Farm just like Allstate have a strong name recognition. Unfortunately, the companies biggest weakness is their appeal to older people and they don’t have the best competitive advertising that is appealing to the younger people.
Lastly, Geico in the past couple of years has come in and caused great competition in the market because of their low prices that they are offering. They do not have one of the most recognizable names but their lower rates and social media and advertising has worked in their favor.
Financial Analysis:
The net worth for the State Farm group ended the year at ninety seven billion dollars compared with $87.6 billion at year-end 2016. The increase was primarily due to an increase in the value of the P-C companies’ unaffiliated stock portfolio. Valuation updates for deferred tax assets and liabilities determined using the corporate tax rate enacted as part of the United States of America Tax Cuts and Jobs Act also increased net worth for the group.
Total revenue, which includes premium revenue, earned investment income, and realized capital gains (losses) was $78.3 billion for 2017 compared to $76.1 billion for 2016. State Farm reported net income of $2.2 billion in 2017, compared to $0.4 billion of net income in 2016.
State Farm is not publicly traded. They do however have a state farm mutual fund. The mutual fund has been for the 35 years. The average return rate for this mutual fund a 5-Year Average Return is 9.74. Total assets under management for Mutual Funds operations at the end of 2017 were $13 billion, they had growth compared to 2016 with $12.2 billion. In the Auto side of business State Farm earned premium was $41.6 billion.
Homeowners earned premium was $21.4 billion. Health (such as individual health insurance operations) for State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance had a loss of about $71 million.
Life insurance for state farm saw a premium income of $5.3 billion and $578million in dividends to policyholders. They had a net income of $492 million.
State farm Bank (credit card services) had a net loss in 2018 they were down $1 million. They had 16.7 billion at the end of 2017 in total assets. Compared to 2016 they had a net income, $39 million and total assets were $18.3 billion.