Marketing with Holzberger

Lindsey Holzberger sat down with Coverager for an interview about marketing, sandwiches, and insurance among other things.

Holzberger is a good brand name for a…

Luxury watch brand or donut-burger fusion food truck. Could go either way!

What do you do?

I’m a growth marketing manager for a commercial insurtech startup.

Describe your target audience without revealing who they are.

Our target audience helps business leaders make strategic decisions and reduce risk exposure.

If you weren’t doing what you’re doing, what would you do instead?

I’d be developing an app or content platform serving the neurodiverse community.

Why is ‘why’ important in marketing to you?

Why our company exists (and matters) is a powerful framework for guiding any business decision, including marketing decisions. Last year, Hey email launched with a clear why: email should be enjoyable. Now their customers are paying for a service that has been free for more than two decades. Owning why helped them resonate with (and not talk at) their audience.

What’s a strong opinion you have about marketing and why?

Great marketing doesn’t happen in a silo. You can have the most talented, creative team, but if they aren’t working shoulder to shoulder with product development, sales, and customer success, then they lack critical information needed to build high-impact campaigns.

What’s the best marketing tip you’ve ever received?

Talk to your customer – pick up the phone and call them. Don’t just ask them about your brand. Learn about their lives. What you learn may inform your next marketing breakthrough.

What’s the worst marketing tip you’ve ever received?

Don’t waste money promoting blog articles. Au contraire! Putting some ad spend behind great content is a powerful way to get in front of an audience more than ready to ignore your ad.

What are some of the best ads you’ve ever seen?

I still refer to old VW ads for guidance and inspiration. The copywriting, simplicity, and design are fantastic. Commercials by the Harmon Brothers are also charmingly irreverent and relatable.

The Show Must Go On by Amazon was a lovely answer to 2020.

And clever guerrilla marketing and nudge theory-driven campaigns always make it down in my book: the Coca-Cola Happiness Project, Love Has No Labels campaign, Dove Real Beauty campaign are a few that come to mind.

What are your top-of-mind brands/products/things that come to mind when thinking about insurance, sandwiches, pizza toppings, shoes, beer, and music?

Insurance: My company of course, Lemonade, Hippo, Coverager, Oscar, PolicyGenius, LiMu Emu. Sandwiches: Arby’s (We Have the Meats), Pub Subs (what locals around here lovingly call Publix Deli sandwiches); Pizza toppings: Sausage, Pepperoni, Green Peppers, Sidewall (another local chain), Shoes: Zappo’s, MIA Clogs, LL Bean Duck Boots; Beer: Sierra Nevada, Birds Fly South Ale Project, Wicked Weed Brewing; Music: the National, Toro y Moi, Little Dragon, Khruangbin, Alabama Shakes & Brittany Howard, Song Exploder.

If you had to choose one gif to describe yourself, which would it be?

Can’t get much closer than this:

If you could hire one celebrity to promote your company, who would it be and why?

Lin Manuel Miranda. Who better to cast a vision for the future of insurance in song form?

What are a few things your colleagues don’t know about you?

My colleagues and I know a lot about each other, but my love of strategy board games doesn’t come up a lot in a remote work environment. I also once won second place in a flash fiction writing contest for a short story about an old man with pyrophobia, so there’s that.

What dog breed would you choose as your company’s mascot and why?

l love this question. Rhodesian Ridgeback because they’re sleek, loyal, and bred to take down giants.

What company do you work for?

Foresight Commercial Insurance.

What’s your primary role at the company?

As Senior Growth Manager, I strategize and coordinate outbound and inbound marketing efforts with an emphasis on content marketing.

If you could send out a message to your audience, what would it be?

Foresight is the insurtech for middle-market commercial insurance. A wave of insurance innovation has changed small business insurance as we know it, but more complex, mid-market businesses (and the brokers that partner with them) have largely been left high and dry — even as slow processes, preventable losses, and inaccurate premiums continue to plague this market segment.

At Foresight, we believe insurance carriers have a critical role to play in preventing workplace injuries and deaths. We wrap a proprietary risk management technology into our workers compensation coverage. Similar to safe driver auto insurance products, Foresight’s innovative platform ties insurance cost incentives to the adoption of safety technology, allowing us to reward proactive companies with lower premiums and reward brokers with increased commissions.