We know the title insurance companies have never marketed directly to the Consumer, i.e. the home buyer or seller. All their marketing focus is directed to the realtor, historically and now the principal decision maker for title insurance. I searched on Technorati and Google for - "title insurance" marketing to consumer - and obviously nothing significant pops up.

Then I searched - pharmaceutical marketing to consumer - which yields a vast variety of articles. Here is an excerpt from this website:

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From Patients to Medical Consumers

Since, in a consumer society, we see ourselves as individuals and as free agents when we exercise consumer choice, it is not difficult for pharmaceutical companies and other privatized health-care deliverers to convince us that it is empowering to think of ourselves not as patients but as consumers. This conversion from patient to consumer also paves the way for the erosion of the doctor's role as expert. A startling report of this was described in a recent New York Times article: “For a sizable group of people in their 20's and 30's, deciding on their own what drugs to take—in particular, stimulants, antidepressants and other psychiatric medications—is becoming the norm. Confident of their abilities and often skeptical of psychiatrist's expertise, they choose to rely on their own research and each other's experience in treating problems like depression….A medical degree, in their view, is useful but not essential”. This phenomenon, the article suggested, is “driven by familiarity” with the drugs. The emergence of this potentially dangerous situation demonstrates an unchecked expansion of the drug industry into an already accepted mode of thought—that “every minor mood fluctuation,” as the article reported, can and should be remedied.
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Yes, the analogy between pharmaceuticals and title insurance is a long shot (try replacing the words implying "doctor" with "Realtor" and read it again).  However, applied to real estate, the principles of direct to consumer marketing espoused above make more sense when the Consumer understands that with internet resources, they can be more informed about their real estate transaction, and can better assess their Realtor's expertise.

The real analogy to make here is the threat of "transparency" to industries whose practitioners hold sway with their expertise. And the moral to the story is - title insurance companies can indeed begin to market to the Consumer when they can define a marketing strategy that will differentiate their products and services to the Consumer. Admittedly, title insurance looks pretty commodity like to the layman because they all generically insure against the same thing - the title claim. Casualty, auto and life insurance seems more differentiated because policies have a variety of terms and coverage levels.

I see a great opportunity for title insurance companies and other settlement vendors to build market share by involving the Consumer together with their Focus Client - the Realtor, Lender, Loan Broker, Developer. The key is to educate the Realtor the power of developing two-way working relationships with their Consumer client. A happy Consumer client who feels more in control of their transaction will be a great referral source, a key success factor for realtors. I will continue blogging about some of the tactics to developing value-based relationships in later posts.