For many insurance agents, salary is determined in part or in whole by revenue. If you want to increase your revenue (and your earnings), it starts with generating leads.
The question then becomes, “How do I get insurance leads?”
There are several strategies you can use to generate an insurance lead online. Keep reading to find out the best free and paid lead generation tactics for insurance agents.
Why You Need Insurance Leads
Whether you’re an independent agent or own an insurance agency, lead generation is an important business activity.
Even the best agents don’t close 100 percent of their deals.
To understand the value of insurance lead generation, you need to understand the basics of a sales funnel.
Digital marketers use the concept of the sales funnel to visualize a potential customer journey.
The stages of a sales funnel are:
- Awareness
- Interest
- Decision
- Action
You can use a sales funnel to understand your insured’s journey, predict revenue, and identify opportunities to improve your sales process.
If you imagine leads entering the first stage — awareness — at the top of the funnel, you can see that the funnel tapers and gets smaller at each sequential stage.
In other words, there’s always going to be some drop-off when moving from one stage to the next. Not all leads in the awareness stage become interested in your product, and so forth.
A sales funnel helps you understand the stages that a lead needs to move through before committing to a purchase.
As you begin to understand your sales funnel, you can calculate conversion rates from one stage to the next. For example, you may discover that 60 percent of leads in the awareness stage move on to the interest stage.
Adding conversion rates to your sales funnel helps you predict sales figures, revenue, and commission. You can also use your funnel to calculate how many leads you need to generate based on your revenue goals and your close rates.
How to Get Insurance Leads for Free
One of the benefits of selling insurance is that there are potential leads everywhere. You can find life insurance leads at the grocery store and car insurance leads at the gas station.
All you have to do is get your leads’ attention.
However, attention isn’t cheap.
Large insurance companies can afford to spend thousands of dollars on Facebook ads and magazine placement, but that’s not realistic for a new insurance agency or independent agent.
Here’s the good news:
There are several strategies you can use to generate leads that won’t break the bank.
1. Content Marketing
Insurance can be an intimidating topic for your potential insureds, making it an excellent industry for content marketing. Content marketing refers to creating and distributing free value (content) to generate leads and ultimately increase revenue.
If you sell workers’ comp insurance, you can create a small business guide or host a webinar explaining workers’ comp requirements in each state.
Other types of content marketing assets include:
The content you create can be shared through social media or email newsletters as lead magnets. A lead magnet is a free piece of content you share in exchange for a person’s contact information.
Lead magnets are shared on landing pages where new leads enter their information to receive your content piece. After you have their contact information, you can send an email marketing follow-up.
Content marketing has the added benefit of giving you high-quality leads that you know are interested in your brand’s content.
2. Referrals
When you’re thinking of lead generation strategies to include in your marketing plan, you should consider referrals from your current insureds.
A whopping 83 percent of buyers trust a friend’s referral more than any other type of marketing. Bottom line: if you’re not asking for referrals, you’re missing out on a lot of quality leads.
Your existing base of insureds is an excellent source of leads, as long as they’re happy with your service.
When you follow up with existing insureds, take the time to ask them if they have friends in need of similar insurance policies. You can also create a referral program that gives insureds a discount or gift when their friends decide to work with you.
3. Organic Search
Online search is the first step of the buying journey for many potential insureds, whether they’re looking for health insurance, life insurance, or local insurance agents.
If you want to avoid spending money on Google ads, you can employ a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy to capture leads from Google search traffic.
SEO, also referred to as organic search, works exceptionally well when paired with content marketing. By creating high-quality content that answers commonly searched insurance questions, you can increase traffic to your website.
4. Social Media
In addition to SEO, you can leverage social media platforms as part of your content marketing strategy. The key with social media is to post content that YOUR specific audience wants to see. In the insurance industry, that can be anything from useful information for small business owners to funny memes and videos related to their industry.
If you can consistently create value on social media, you can generate leads without spending any money on ads. For example, if you build an audience on Twitter, you'll not only show up in your followers' newsfeeds, but you'll also show up in their followers' newsfeeds when they like one of your posts. You can find and like potential accounts on Instagram, and keep your Facebook and LinkedIn pages updated so when people search for you, they can see you're active and ready to engage.
At the end of the day, your leads will have multiple ways to interact with you, which means more opportunities to showcase all the benefits of working with you.
5. Online Directories
There are several online listings that potential insureds can use to find a local insurance agent. Most directories make it free to submit a listing. You can also pay for premium listings, which usually let you upload images and even add your contact information to your listing.
Insurance Guide Local and WalletHub are excellent places to start. We also recommend performing a search for insurance agents in your area to find local directories.
6. Service Bundles
Depending on the type of insurance you sell, you may be able to find leads by bundling your product with a complementary service or software.
For example, if you sell workers’ comp insurance, you know your business accounts need other solutions such as internet, phone service, email, and payroll processing.
Hourly offers time tracking and payroll solutions that work seamlessly with workers’ comp insurance. Premiums are based on real-time payroll data, so your insureds will never overpay or underpay for workers’ comp.
By setting up a service bundle, you can generate more leads and create even more value for your insureds.
7. Networking
Selling insurance is all about relationships, and what better way to start one than in person? It may seem like networking has turned into a business of its own. Companies are making money hosting industry gatherings, paid talks, and seminars.
However, you don’t have to pay for a ticket to an event to make networking work for you.
As an insurance agent, you can find potential leads almost anywhere. One of the best places to network is in your community. As your neighborhood changes over the years, it’s good to revisit local events, meet new homeowners, and hand out business cards.
How to Get Paid Insurance Leads
For some business owners, taking the time to develop a content marketing strategy or SEO-optimized website might seem like too long to wait for leads.
If you want faster results, there are several ways you can buy leads and impressions for your insurance business.
1. Using Insurance Lead Companies
There are lead vendor companies in the insurance industry that capture real-time leads and sell them to agents and brokers.
Lead vendors like QuoteWizard and netQuote provide aggregated lists of insurance quotes to potential insureds in exchange for contact information, such as email addresses or phone numbers.
Some vendors focus on leads for a specific type of insurance, such as auto insurance leads and health insurance leads.
The lead vendor then takes the contact information from the online insurance leads and sells it to agents and insurance companies who can follow up on each lead.
Live Transfers is another lead vendor company that provides insurance leads for agents in the form of real-time inbound phone calls.
Depending on your lead vendor, you may pay anywhere from $20-$35 per lead. Lead type can affect vendor pricing. Some vendors sell high-risk or aged leads in bulk for cheaper.
When purchasing web leads, make sure you research your target demographics first and check ratings and reviews for your lead vendor.
2. Paid Search
As an alternative to SEO, you can use paid search ads to increase your website traffic and generate more leads. However, insurance keywords are among the most expensive in terms of pay-per-click (PPC) costs, running upwards of $50 per click or more.
3. Paid Social
Like paid search ads, you can opt for paid social media ads on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. When you use social media advertising, you can use demographic filters to focus ads on your target audience.
The average CPC rates across popular social media channels range from $0.97 (Facebook) to $5.26 (LinkedIn). But CPC varies widely depending on your industry, audience, and ad design.
Find the Tactics That Work Best for You
Online marketing strategies have made it easier for salespeople to generate leads without buying expensive ads. But, if you want to create a successful insurance marketing and lead gen strategy, you have to be consistent in your efforts.
Alternatively, lead providers and paid ads are excellent paid options for driving new business if you don’t have the time to create content or optimize your website.
Ultimately, there is no single best insurance lead generation strategy. The tactics that work best for your business depend on your resources and goals.
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