Digital Marketing for Insurance in Nepal
In Nepal, insurance is still sold by a person. But the decision now starts earlier: someone searches "term life insurance Nepal" or "third party insurance price", reads for ten minutes, and then decides which agent to call. I help insurers, agencies and agents be the name they call.
Animated insurance quote: a shield pulses beside a quote form that fills in, three plans appear side by side with premiums and coverage compared, and one plan is chosen, showing insurance marketing as quote requests that convert into policies.
I'm Shashikant Shah, a digital marketing expert in Kathmandu. I work with life and non-life insurance companies, agencies and individual agents in Nepal on what decides who gets the call: the Google Business Profile, the product pages, the search ads and the tracking. I haven't published an insurance client yet, and I say so below. I have worked inside a regulated finance organisation, Jyotipunja Cooperative, and the nearest result I can show is a Google Ads account whose cost per lead fell by 40%. My prices are published, and because I'm also a software engineer I build the pages, the forms and the tracking myself.
Short answer: digital marketing for insurance in Nepal is mostly local search, plain pages and fast replies. You need a verified Google Business Profile for every branch and agent, product pages a customer can understand, Google Ads on the searches that buy this week, and a WhatsApp or Viber line that answers. All of it written within the Nepal Insurance Authority's advertising rules.
How people choose insurance in Nepal
Insurance in Nepal is still mostly sold by a person: an agent in the family, a colleague at the office, the bank when you take a loan. But the search comes first. Someone types "life insurance Nepal" or "which insurance company is best" and reads for a while before they decide which agent to call. If your company or your agency has nothing to read, they call someone who does.
Non-life is faster and more local. A bike owner searches "third party insurance price" the week the old policy runs out. A student going to Australia searches for the insurance the visa asks for. A shop owner searches "insurance agent in Lalitpur". They want the price, a phone number and a way to pay with eSewa, Khalti or Fonepay, and they want it today.
Trust is the rest of the decision. A customer reads the Google reviews of the agency, asks in a Facebook group how the claim went, and messages the agent on Viber or WhatsApp before buying. Renewals follow the same path: the agent who replies within the hour keeps the customer for another year.
Then there is the regulator. The Nepal Insurance Authority has rules on advertising, so a page that promises returns or a claims experience nobody can promise is a problem, not a selling point. I write plain pages within those rules, and your compliance team reviews every line before it goes live.
The problems I see most often:
- Product pages written in policy language, so a customer has to call just to find out what the cover includes and what it costs.
- Agents and agencies with no page and no Google Business Profile, so "insurance agent in Lalitpur" finds nobody in particular.
- Lead forms that ask for a citizenship number and full details before anyone has said hello.
- Ads that lean on promises, when the Nepal Insurance Authority has rules on advertising and customers don't believe promises anyway.
- No tracking, so nobody knows what an enquiry costs or which branch, agent or ad it came from.
What I do for insurance
- Google Business Profile management: a verified profile for every branch and agency, with the right category, hours, phone and a reply to every review, so the local search finds a real office.
- Local SEO: a page per city and per product in the words people type, so "third party insurance Butwal" or "health insurance Kathmandu" lands on your page and not on a directory.
- Google Ads for the searches that buy this week: renewals, vehicle cover, travel insurance for visas, with a cost per enquiry you can see.
- Meta ads for life products: the right age groups in the right cities, and the families of workers in the Gulf, Australia and the UK who buy cover for people at home.
- Plain product pages with the cover, the premium and the way to buy, a quote form that asks three things, and a WhatsApp or Viber line to the agent. I build it myself, as part of web development.
- An AI chatbot on WhatsApp or the website that answers what agents answer all day, which documents a claim needs and when a policy renews, and hands over to a person when it matters.
The first 90 days
Days 1 to 30. I audit what's already there: the product pages, the branch profiles, the forms and any ads running. The Business Profiles get verified and cleaned up, the forms get shorter, and tracking goes in so calls, WhatsApp clicks and form fills are counted from day one.
Days 31 to 60. The plain product pages and the city pages go live after your compliance review. A small Google Ads campaign starts on the searches that buy now, so I can see the cost per enquiry before spending more. If you run agents, each one gets a profile and a page that names them.
Days 61 to 90. You and I look at the numbers together: enquiries, cost per enquiry, which pages and branches they came from, and what happened after the call. Then the budget moves to what worked. You get all of this as a written plan before we start, with what's not included.
Who I've worked with in insurance
I haven't published an insurance engagement yet, and I won't invent one. The nearest published work is Jyotipunja Cooperative, a finance client, where I delivered a technical infrastructure audit covering vendor SLAs, API security and staff training. That's a regulated, careful organisation, like an insurer, and it's on my case studies page under that scope.
The closest published result by mechanism is an education consultancy's Google Ads account, where the cost per lead went from NPR 3,500 to NPR 2,100, a 40% drop, and leads roughly doubled on the same NPR 300,000 a month spend. That is the same enquiry campaign work an insurer or an agency depends on. It came from an engagement I worked on as part of an agency team, so read it as the account's total.
What it costs for insurers and agents
My prices are published. An audit of your pages, your profiles and your tracking with a 30 day action plan is USD 249, about NPR 34,000. A four week sprint is USD 899, about NPR 122,000. Ongoing work is USD 1,800 a month, about NPR 245,000. What each one leaves out is on the pricing page. The first thirty minute call is free, and if a single agent only needs a profile and a page, I'll say so.
Questions insurers and agents ask
Can you write about specific policy types?
Yes, in plain language, and you review every line for product and regulatory accuracy before it goes live. I write within the Nepal Insurance Authority's rules on advertising: no return figures, no claim promises, no comparisons I can't back up.
Do you promise a specific number of leads?
No. I don't guarantee leads or rankings. I set up the profile, the pages, the ads and the tracking, and I report what each enquiry cost. How many people buy depends on your product, your premium and your agents picking up the phone.
How long before an agency sees enquiries?
A verified Business Profile and a small Google Ads campaign usually bring the first calls within the first month. The cost per enquiry settles in two to three months, once I've seen which searches convert. Ranking for "insurance agent in Pokhara" without ads takes longer, usually three to six months.
What budget should an agent or an agency set?
Start with the audit at USD 249 (about NPR 34,000). Ad spend sits on top of my fee in your own account, and I won't name a monthly figure before I've seen the search data for your city and products. If a single agent only needs a profile and one page, I'll say so and stop there.
Do you work with individual agents, or only companies?
Both. A company needs plain product pages, branch profiles and tracking across every office. An agent needs a verified profile, one page that says who they are and what they sell, and a WhatsApp or Viber line. Most of the work is remote, in your own accounts.
When are you not the right person for an insurance business?
If you want someone to sell policies, run a call centre or write a national TV campaign, that's not me. I'm one person who does search, pages, ads and tracking in your own accounts. If it's bigger than that, I'll say so on the first call.
Related pages for insurers and agents
All industries · Where I work · Google Ads management · Local SEO in Nepal · Google Business Profile management · All services.
Tell me about your insurance business
Send me the company or agency name and the city. I'll search for you the way a customer does, look at your profile, your product pages and your forms, and tell you the one thing I'd fix first, whether or not you hire me.