Generating insurance broker leads and agency leads can be tougher than it seems. Not only because of competitors but also how difficult it is to determine which strategies will work better for your company. As much as some seem to be perfect for every business, that’s just not the case.
However, regular lead generation strategies like building your site and optimizing it, working with email marketing and social media aren’t “what work” but rather necessary for every company. After all, they tend to be the center of what lead gen is today.
Now, when you think about generating qualified leads for your business, remember that several strategies must be implemented at once. Otherwise, your efforts will usually go to waste.
Below, you will find the best options to boost your lead generation process, and this includes some elements you should have already, and the right methods to bring more high-quality leads your way.
Your Website Is Your Actual Office
The internet is the most popular medium for finding and buying insurance products and services. It’s safe for you to assume that the majority of your leads will be generated thanks to it, like with almost every business today, if we are realistic.
Your website should be treated as your new office and place if you are looking to expand your market share and convert leads into clients. Treating it well means it should offer the same value to clients as your physical address.
The website design is an important factor in creating positive experiences for visitors. Thus, it should look professional and provide high-quality content. You can’t expect to generate leads from anything lower than the best.
Your website may include the following features:
- Free online quotes.
- Online premium calculators are available for free.
- The header menu is easy to navigate.
- Animated transitions.
- 24/7 chat.
- Proper landing pages.
- Every webpage has CTAs.
- Registering forms are easy to access.
This can be achieved by having professional web designers and programmers oversee the build. However, if you can’t finance professionals, you can work with it by learning some of the basics and using platforms like Wix with a clean and cheap design yet good enough for starters.
Get Listed on Review Platforms
Underestimating the client’s curiosity is one of the most costly mistakes an agent can make. Before contacting you, most prospects will check out your business on review websites and not only visit yours.
What does this involve for your company? That one bad review or negative testimonial could be enough to make your prospects move on to another agent. Get your business listed on reliable review platforms, and ensure that you are constantly monitoring them to avoid this possible outcome.
If you don’t know where to start, these review platforms can be good places:
- Google My Business.
- Yelp.
- Thumbtack.
Agents and agencies today tend to leave reviews and testimonials on online review sites. However, genuine reviews are more prominent than fake ones. Your audience will likely catch on to it.
Use Contact Forms on Your Web
Contact forms can be one of the most effective ways to generate qualified leads. The forms are easy to create and can be very profitable—all in one.
Your insurance company’s lead generation efforts will be maximized if your developers create efficient lead generation forms or if you just take the time to generate one properly with the tools you’re given.
Contact forms are areas on a webpage where visitors can give you the following information: Name, email address, telephone number, service request, customized message, and any relevant information.
Visitors can submit a contact form to invite you by email or phone them. These interactions can include keeping visitors informed about the latest product additions or sending them your latest email newsletter. You may also need to compile a quote.
It doesn’t matter how you interact with potential clients; it is important to keep in touch.
Contact forms are best placed on every page of your website to maximize their effectiveness. This includes your homepage, articles pages, company information pages, and many other pages.
Each page of your website has the potential to generate new clients. Every lead you lose is another opportunity to gain a client.
Calls to Action Are Needed
Once all your contact information and forms are settled, it is time to ensure that people use them.
Calls-to-action (CTAs) can be one of the most effective ways to increase conversion rates on any page of your website and ensure visitors use your forms. In fact, they are a must on every website.
CTAs are the last sentence of a page telling visitors what to do once they have finished browsing it. This could be contacting you to learn more about insurance or just telling them to take other actions. You might create a CTA saying, “Contact us for a free quote on your car insurance.”
Although asking visitors to contact your company might seem excessive, this strategy is a great way to generate your leads.
You risk losing more visitors to your competition without a CTA because people simply don’t know what to do next or how to take any action without the right CTA.
A/B Testing Your Website
When you have your website settled with all previous elements, you can and should start testing them.
The purpose of testing is to determine what works better: One of the CTAs you included (for example) or maybe a new one.
For this, it is easy to test on a third-party website. You can test by changing the call to action, using different power words, increasing text or whitespace, and many other possible ideas.
You can test anything you wish to do on your website.
A/B testing is one of the most popular forms of doing this because it works best when one element is being tested. This way, you can make sure that the page’s elements are responsible for a rise or decrease in leads.
To ensure that you get as many leads from each page as possible, you can test different pages constantly. Your conversions will improve the more you spend time testing.
Purchase Third-Party Leads
Third-party companies can be used if your company doesn’t provide leads or you don’t like the quality of the leads despite the efforts you have been investing in your lead generation strategy.
These companies are solely focused on selling leads to life insurer agents or, at least, they should when you are looking for sellers.
The process works by giving the company your zip code and how far you’re willing to travel to meet prospects. You also specify how many leads you wish to order. The company will give you a list of leads within the specified geographical boundaries for a small upfront fee.
Third-party leads are a great way to save money but can also be a great way to lose it.
Usually, the provider of the leads does not take any of your commissions. A high-salesperson will only pay a fraction of the commissions for the lead cost. But the problem lies in the quality of the leads offered by some of those companies.
For example, many companies offer exclusive leads that are sold only to you. But shared leads can be sold to you and many other people that are your direct competitors. This reduces the quality of the leads, but it can be useful for some.
Although exclusive leads can be more costly, you will have less competition for your business, and these are the ones we would usually recommend.
Third-party leads have one major drawback: the risk they present. They are paid upfront, so your weekly paycheck will be negative if you don’t sell anything or get a client from those leads provided. This risk is especially prevalent for new agents who are just starting to learn the ropes.
Use LinkedIn to Find Prospects
LinkedIn is a great way to acquire new customers because it is the social media for connecting clients, companies, employees, and employers; you can find great prospects along the way. However, it’s important to understand how to use the site best.
Otherwise, people are prone to believe it is useless. Still, it is just a matter of going step by step and ensuring your profile, along with the other elements, are properly optimized:
- Work on your profile to make it stand out.
Your profile should be distinctive. When someone finishes reading your profile, they should feel that they know you personally and as a professional.
Upload a photo that best represents you as a professional. No selfies, beach photos, or pictures with friends, especially if you’re creating a profile for your business. In that case, have a logo that fits the size of the circle to ensure people can visualize it properly.
You don’t need to pay for a high-end photographer or glamour shot, but you can have a professional headshot taken by a studio. Also, you don’t need to pay a graphic designer either, in the beginning at least.
Next, write a concise summary. The summary should include rich details about your professional history and company. Here you can tell people who you are, what your career highlights, and why you chose to start an insurance business.
Many people will not scroll down to see your entire job history if you don’t provide a concise summary. This involves going over all the clients you have had so far. That doesn’t work here.
The section should be written like a resume with bullet points that highlight your achievements and how you have managed every project you’ve had so far. However, instead of going for the business style, your writing style should be more casual and conversational.
You don’t want to make your visitors feel like they are just reading through a list of your professional achievements and insurance opportunities in your business.
- Engage with groups.
You can search the site’s group search feature to find groups that are related to your niche. These groups are usually meant to be a way for you to grow your network and get leads.
You can gain trust by joining the discussion and making thoughtful comments. This will help you establish yourself as an industry expert.
Professionals in similar fields will feel more confident in sending business your direction if you are an expert. Having someone like you in their networks makes them look better.
- Share your knowledge for free.
You can provide industry advice to people searching on the LinkedIn forums. Don’t be pushy or invasive. You can expect more people to reach out to you based on your expertise as you answer more questions.
- Keep in touch with your contact list to maintain relationships.
LinkedIn is not working if you only contact people on your list to ask for referrals or leads. Reach out to your list to ask for help, wish them a happy birthday, or congratulate them on a recent promotion.
If they have insurance companies to refer to, these contacts are more likely to send it to the agent with whom they have the best relationship.
Connect with Your Local Community
Volunteering is an excellent way to build a reputation for being a caring, committed community member. You can also demonstrate your expertise in the insurance industry by:
- Assisting local charities with their insurance needs.
- Small business owners can host insurance seminars.
- Participating in local meetups and online forums.
- Offer to speak as a guest speaker to business groups.
- When necessary, assist clients’ relatives and friends.
Although it may seem tempting, don’t treat these situations like a sales presentation. We know you want these interactions to be insurance leads, but your primary goal should be to give back to your community.
Your sincerity will help you keep your name at the forefront and attract prospects to your agency when they are looking for your services.
Provide Valuable Content
A strong online presence is crucial for the success of any insurance broker or agency. For it, it is essential to provide quality content rich with informational value. You must ensure you are maintaining a steady stream of educational, informative, entertaining, interactive, and engaging content to your customers as an insurance agent.
This can keep prospects interested and help drive more traffic to your website and business while also establishing yourself as an important player in the insurance industry.
Your business should be perceived as an insurance resource that is available 24/7, and if you don’t know where to start, you can concentrate on certain types of content:
- Informative blogs.
- Educational videos.
- Instructional sound clips.
- Infographics to explain.
When Done, Promote Your Content
It doesn’t matter if your website is complete and offers everything visitors need; it won’t work if it gets or generates traffic to see the content. Online traffic is what makes your insurance company run, and we are sure we have kind of made this clear considering we have gone over how to generate more traffic and not only sales qualified leads.
However, to go over some of the previous options and add new ones, here are some ways you can increase traffic to your website:
- Social media business accounts on all platforms
It’s easy to create accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. You should also consider creating accounts on other platforms such as Reddit and Pinterest.
This can help you build a following in niche markets and several social media platforms to boost your lead capture with your target audience.
- Influencers.
Influencers are listened to by people! Ask celebrities and influencers you know to help market your business.
- Guest posting.
Guest posting is a great way to generate leads for insurance.
It is the act of writing content for another company’s website. You can gain backlinks to your website by guest blogging or guest posting on well-respected ones.
- Marketing via your personal accounts.
Your personal account can also be used to refer to your business accounts. It is a great marketing strategy to ask your contacts to share your link.
Talking About Traffic… Work on Your SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can significantly increase the quality and quantity of traffic to your site from search engines. It allows you to target the right audience at every stage of your purchase funnel as well.
Let’s say someone is searching for life insurance. For this, they will always rely on Google as the search engine. Your goal is to be among the top results in the search results.
This can significantly improve your online visibility and reach your high-quality leads.
For this to work, it takes more than having content on your site. You should also ensure that all content on your site is reviewed and optimized.
Among the elements you need to consider for SEO, it is necessary to focus on:
- Keyword research in a niche market can give you valuable insights into your prospects and leads. They help you rank higher on the internet. Thus, make sure to create promotional and marketing strategies based on these keywords.
- Prioritize videos: insurance agents need to include video content in their business models if they want to remain relevant and grow their book. It is important to be familiar with the medium in order to do this.
Create a Referral Program
Referring is a great way for you to generate quality leads and expand your business. It’s very easy to do and doesn’t take that much work as other lead generation strategies.
Sometimes, an incentive can make it even more effective if you offer a reward for each referral. Some incentives you might use include:
- Gift hampers or gift cards.
- Movie or concert tickets.
- Coupons Discount.
- Small souvenirs.
- A promo in your insurance policies.
Social Media Shouldn’t Be Missed
Social media can be a part of your marketing strategy to expand your agency’s reach, create relationships and potentially even generate new business. We don’t think we have to explain much more than this.
Although we added LinkedIn and even mentioned creating accounts in previous strategies, this truly needs your attention. Thus, we decided to add it as part of a different lead generation strategy.
To do social media marketing, we suggest you do more than just create your accounts and post. Instead, focus on:
- Targeting smart: Find out which social networks your clients use most often and then focus your efforts on these networks.
- Provide useful content: Keep the content relevant to your customers. Keep up to date with the latest issues in the industries that you serve, and create or curate content that addresses them.
- Consistency is key: Social media efforts will go further faster if you are consistent. It is a good idea to post on Facebook and Twitter daily and multiple times per week on LinkedIn.
- Visualize your content: To increase interest and interaction, use rich media such as images and videos.
- Start conversations: Engage with your followers and create dialogue. You must respond to each inquiry or comment posted on your page.
- Keep your brand consistent: Create a brand image for your company and continue to build it in line with your brand.
Work in Email Marketing
It’s surprising to many insurance companies that email marketing generates 50% more sales than any other form of lead generation. This is why email marketing should be part of your insurance lead generation strategy and ensure you get more prospects to send to your sales team.
But for the strategy to work, you need compelling CTAs and an intuitive contact form.
Also, build your email subscriber list by including contact forms on your website. There are other ways to increase your subscriber base, which can help you achieve a higher conversion rate.
It is crucial that you optimize your email marketing strategy once you have established your email subscriber lists. This could mean segmenting your email list, which is essential if you offer multiple types of insurance such as car, real estate, and business insurance.
Additional tips to increase your email marketing campaign and increase lead generation rates are:
- Personalize your emails.
- Try out different send times and days.
- Optimize your email for desktop, tablet, or mobile devices.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your Insurance Broker Business
All right! So, everything is about building properties and generating leads. But how does the process actually take place? Are there other steps I need to know?
The steps I mention below are what students from our local lead generation program follow to generate leads for businesses like yourself. So I’ll help you see what we do. And how if you join our program, you can simply generate leads for your own business (unless you want to start a side hustle and build a laptop lifestyle business).
Essentially, our lead generation can be divided into four steps:
The first is prospecting. You need to take the time to do market research on a niche (industry) and determine how many phone-driven businesses are there.
Keep in mind that this is local research as you need to know how many companies need leads. For example, you may search for “plumbing services Youngstown OH.”
You will find dozens or even hundreds of businesses trying to get themselves in front of the customers by ranking on Map Listings, organic results, and even Ad.
The second step, building. When you find a niche (plumbing, tree services, a software company, real estate…), you will need to start building your digital properties. You don’t need to be an expert in HTML or coding. It can be easy with the right tools.
The third step is now taking time to rank your lead gen website. With the site done, you need to work on SEO strategies and start dominating those Google search results. If you’re new to SEO, it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
To keep it simple, it consists of the entire process of growing a company’s visibility on search engines like Google and generating organic traffic. And remember this, local lead generation is part of the strategies.
Moving on to step four, once you rank the site, you will start getting your ROI and profits. You only need to rent it out to a local business interested in the leads the site generates. You can offer a couple of free leads to their move on with the actual pay per lead.
To review steps 1-4 above, I described it to a normal student who is building a lead gen business to help local service providers generate more calls. But replace the student with you as the business owner. And replace sending the leads to a business to simply siphoning the leads to your personal business.
By the way, fun fact, about 20% of our students in our local lead gen program are actually business owners who went through the program. And they use the skillsets we teach to generate leads for their own business.
An Example of Lead Generation: Home Advisor
You must be thinking, “if lead generation sounds so good so far, how come I haven’t seen any company?” That’s the thing; there are many out there. You just don’t know they are dedicated to it.
HomeAdvisor is one of the best examples you can find on the Internet as it is a top lead generation company that has spent millions building its brand but also earned even more zeros for this same reason.
They started small as everyone else but invested in building their brand awareness to make people who are looking for home services go to their website and find what they need. They are over 75% of people’s first choice when they need those services.
If you don’t get HomeAdvisor that much or need a refresh, users need to submit their information to request a service and get a professional or expert who can provide it.
HomeAdvisor’s job is to share your information, which makes you a lead, with local companies so they can contact you and offer the service you’re requesting. For sharing this lead information, HomeAdvisor gets paid by the companies. This happens for every single lead they send to multiple businesses.
Business owners who don’t have marketing skills or don’t even know how to have any online presence will always rely on those pages to list their services. They will save time and effort, but companies like HomeAdvisor can make them spend lots of money as leads aren’t exclusive (one lead is sent to multiple companies after all).
Using Facebook Ads aka Paid Ad Platforms: Do They Generate Leads?
They DO generate leads. If not, no one would use them.
However, you need to remember two facts:
- Paid ads or platforms can be expensive.
- They don’t generate “natural” leads.
Whenever someone sees or clicks in one of those ads, over 80% of them did it by accident or are trying to close/report it.
Why? Because they aren’t looking for those services. At least not at the moment.
What those ads do instead is interrupt their time on the platforms. Users aren’t there to find companies or businesses unless they are searching for a specific company’s user, and for that, there’s a search bar. This is why it is hard to convert them to actual customers who will show interest in the companies’ services. Also, you’re limited by a budget.
When using lead generation, everything is organic. You aren’t forcing others to pay attention to your business but rather being there when they need you. This is why Google’s organic traffic will always beat paid ads, and the reason companies continue investing in it, which is a lot cheaper as well.
What Is Local SEO?
Don’t worry… I didn’t get it at first either. Following the short explanation, local SEO focuses on scaling businesses’ visibility on search engines. However, this is only for those who serve their communities face-to-face.
What does this mean?
Experts and professionals like painters, plumbers, and dentists (but not only them) offer their services to their local customers. Why? Because they can’t deliver them unless they are located in the same area of their customers.
To make sure those businesses get more leads, you need to rank them locally by claiming the business listing on Google to place them on Map Listings. Local SEO also involves online reviews, citation management, and how you manage your entire online presence in the local area.
If you are going to bet on lead gen, you need to adapt yourself to today’s world: The Internet.
Keep in mind that although traditional channels and methods like billboards, warm calls, and pamphlets still work, they aren’t part of your tools. Whenever someone needs a service, they go to Google and search for it.
“Dentist in Miami” or “plumbing services in Orlando,” etc. And you can keep coming up with services or professionals people need and look for. Thus, you need to make sure you’re using Google to get the companies in front of their clients.
Users will always click on the first search results (those near the top), and many of them will be either Ad links (people paid to place their websites there), Map Listing, and then you get websites. Almost all of them are your goal and where you should always aim to place yourself.
Can My Insurance Broker Business Utilize a Local Lead Generation Strategy?
If you want customers, you better know you need it. Following the previous explanation, lead gen is all about placing businesses in front of their customers, choosing them over their competitors.
Put it simply – it’s all about closing deals and having clients for those companies to make money. The main difference with the usual methods companies use for this is how lead generation approaches different channels to get them in the right place of the market to get customers.
Those channels are all focused on the Internet as most people are searching for products but also services across the net. The issue is that the Internet is way too broad, and businesses don’t know how to place themselves. They usually try, but they get one common result: losing money and time.
How Powerful Are Organic Insurance Broker Leads from Google?
For companies looking for customers, it’s everything. For you? Pretty much the same. When you build a business with digital properties, you get to make thousands of dollars a month.
This isn’t a “get started today and get rich tomorrow” thing, but it is HIGHLY scalable, and ROI + positive results are guaranteed. Learning a fairly decent and very needed set of skills to create your digital properties and start ranking them on Google is required.
I have invested in several online businesses over the years, and if there’s something uncertain, whether you will get your ROI or not, even more than the actual profit.
However, this business moved my earnings from five figures a year to a month in ONLY passive income while sitting comfortably at home.
On my laptop. Anywhere. Anytime.
You can look at one of the first sites I built back in 2016, and it continues making me over $1.000+ every month. The best part is that I don’t need to touch it or the rest I’ve built over the years, just like this digital property.
What Makes Lead Generation SO Alluring?
Here it goes: you can work from home.
The main issue with regular business opportunities is how much you need to invest in staff, equipment, or rent to have a place to sell your products or offer your services.
We all know the hassles of traditional businesses that involve regular expenses, which are extremely high. Can you afford it? I don’t think so, and even if you can, is it worth it? Now, it isn’t only about the money. You also need to put in a lot of work, and it isn’t only during the first couple of months or years. Usually, it is as long as you continue running it.
You can save yourself those headaches and bone-breaking tasks and expenses with lead gen since it is more about generating leads with digital channels—mainly websites.
Websites can be VERY cheap to build, and with many tools online, you get to do it in a couple of hours instead of days. Any virtual or digital business is scalable and won’t need constant maintenance.
So, let’s summarize this:
- You save money in regular expenses with traditional and most online businesses as what you need is yourself and digital properties (websites).
- You can bet on passive income.
- There’s no need to hire more people to get started.
- You can generate leads in multiple industries, which allows you to work on any niche you want.
How Can I Get Started in the Local Lead Generation Program?
Anyone can start and learn. That’s the beauty of this business model. I knew nothing about SEO, Map Listing, and everything I’ve mentioned so far. It is all about learning the skills, gaining experience, and deciding to take the step.
Remember that this business model will never get old as business owners are always looking for leads. They need to do business and scale their companies. Why not do the same while helping others and still making money?
You can start with this local lead generation course highly recommended for anyone wanting to grow in the business. It is a close training that will take you through each step and make sure you are able to get your ROI, profits and take control of your life.
You will be added to an incredible lead generation family ready to help you 24/7 when asking questions on the group. Anyone is welcome who’s willing to put in the work. Click here to watch the lead gen webinar.