You could pay someone to find you annuity leads and convert those clients. Is it worth it? Not at all if you just take the time to learn some tips and tricks in how to handle your marketing and sales pipeline.
Keep in mind that your competitors might be generating hundreds of leads every year, but that’s just part of being a business, and just like them, there’s enough space for you to generate your sales-qualified leads.
Thus, this is what you need to take notes of: It is possible to generate leads for free without paying anyone else; you can start small, just like your business, and scale with the same strategy for months or years. But finally, you must know this takes time even if you pay someone else for the task.
Lead generation for annuity contracts is easy to handle, and although your entire business can be optimized to get the clients, you must give them time to come your way. Therefore, this is a race of patients, not speed in the beginning.
Here, we will help you by providing the strategies your competitors started with, continue to use, and will be useful for the next 10+ years because the internet evolves, but most of the basics remain the same. So expect to get your annuity high-quality leads.
Referrals Are Your Main Source 50%+ of the Time
They are an important strategy for lead generation because those are usually the most qualified leads you can get. They come to you with a very good opinion and base about your services and offers thanks to their friends or family members.
This allows you to have a great influx of clients that are pretty much worth your time and effort, and you can just get many more from these people that came by referrers. It is just a cycle that never ends.
This strategy is a win-win situation for both you and your prospects. In this instance, companies and insurances offer a benefit in return for referrals.
Asking for referrals from people you know and former clients is all that’s required. Keep all the referrals and ask them if you can use their name to contact these leads.
Although it can be difficult to manage referrals, you can simply create a list of people who have reached out to your company through a friend, family member, or close relative. To encourage others to make the same referral, you could offer a discount or gift.
It is very simple but can be done wrong pretty easily. So, take the time to think about what you will offer your referrals and referrers and build an entire strategy for this lead generation process.
Start with Your Website
The internet is the best way to buy and find insurance and annuities, specifically since those contracts aren’t that often searched, but their popularity is finally increasing.
Although some would think the target audience is only elderly people, you can get MANY leads from a wide range. So don’t underestimate how good it is to build your presence, and for it, you will need a website for everything, including the previous lead generation strategy.
Your website is the first place that every qualified lead will go to, which means that if you want to increase your market share and convert leads into clients, you will need one as soon as possible, and it should be treated with the same importance and value as your physical address.
Design plays an important role in creating positive experiences and enhancing user usability. It should look professional and have high-quality content while properly guaranteeing great navigation through each page.
Leads can only come from the best. If you don’t know where to begin with your design, Snapp, Wix, and pages with templates are options instead of using the simple yet so complicated (yes, it is both at the same time) WordPress.
Eventually, you might want to change to it based on your needs and specific requirements to boost your site. But usually, it isn’t required as many of those preset websites have evolved into great hosts for any company, including insurances.
Just remember that regardless of the option you choose for your site, it is vital to add these elements to get your high-quality leads:
- How to annuities and contact form.
- It should be easy to navigate the header menu as well as every page of the website.
- Animated transitions
- Chatbots are available 24/7 to help visitors.
- Proper landing pages.
- CTAs are included on every webpage.
Get Listed on Review Sites
Agents shouldn’t underestimate the clients’ curiosity and their willingness to search for any detail. This is one of their biggest mistakes.
Prospects will not only review your annuities services but other options before making a decision to accept a contract as well. Like your full services, client experience so far, and everything you can offer.
What does this all mean for your business? A negative review or testimonial can drive prospects away from your business.
You should ensure that it is listed on reliable review platforms but mostly guarantee all reviews are positive or, at least, their majority. You should also ensure that they are monitored for potential problems.
If you don’t know where to look, these review platforms can be a great place to start: Google My Business and Yelp.
Potential clients in your niche are more likely to leave reviews and testimonials on review sites. In them, genuine ones are more popular than fake ones.
Consider asking for real reviews from clients you have worked with or contacting prospects so you can get a handful of many good reviews. Tough, most people will do the job for you as long as you provide great services, attention and compete with other people offering annuities.
Add Contact Forms
Contact forms are one of the best methods to obtain qualified leads or, more like the main one, when it comes to online lead generation strategies.
The good thing about them is that contact forms are easy to create and highly profitable, so don’t skip them. If you do, regret will soon come.
Your company’s lead generation process will be enhanced if your developers are able to create effective lead generation forms and if you have the time to make use of the tools available. In advance, a contact form should be done in a matter of 10 to 30 minutes, even for those who aren’t experienced in the creation.
Visitors can fill out contact forms on websites to give their name, email address, and phone number. They become leads because they are showing buyer intent and may be interested in an annuity.
Basically, they aren’t just passing by but rather interested in your company and what you can offer them.
When you request email addresses and not only phone numbers, make sure to utilize them by keeping visitors informed about the latest service additions or offers in annuities and sending them the most recent email newsletter.
This contact form can also be used as a request information form that is more specific and includes more questions so you can help the leads and come up with a good contract or offer based on the info they provide.
SEO for Boosting Your Chances
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can significantly increase your website’s traffic from search engines. This allows you to reach the right audience at every stage of your sales funnel.
SEO is always mentioned because even when you have paid options, it continues to be the epitome of what lead gen is and how you can work around it in every aspect. After all, the so-popular keywords are part of it but also many other elements in this process.
But why is it truly important to work on this optimization?
Ranking on the first page will help increase your online visibility. It will also allow you to reach high-quality leads.
Although it entails a lot more than just keywords, having a website, content, and the basic elements most people know about, we can set two main factors to focus on:
- Focusing on niche markets can give valuable insights into leads and prospects. Keyword research is a great way to get insight since these keywords will help your website rank higher online.
- If you want to grow your business, you need to include video content in pages since this content format is well-received and even preferred by search engines.
You Still Need to Advertise
You can also generate leads for annuity sales if you are willing to do some work by advertising your business and services. It is true this isn’t free as we mentioned in the beginning, but it doesn’t have to be expensive either.
You can get your name out by placing ads on billboards, TV channels, radio stations, or local newspapers, or maybe use digital ads like Google and Facebook ads. Some marketing channels might not be worth the investment depending on how many leads you get or the target audience you determine, and what channels they use the most.
However, you can’t go wrong with Google and FB ads.
Offer Seminars & Webinars
Are you open to investing a little more effort in marketing by sharing your knowledge? Hosting seminars or webinars allows you to speak with many people at once and to boost your leads if you’re willing to.
You can also make yourself known as an expert in annuity marketing by hosting it online. This is important because annuities can be a substantial investment. You could increase your chances to make a sale if you earn the trust of your prospects.
Using an educational approach can help you meet people that you may not have otherwise had the opportunity to.
Webinars, for example, allow people to listen from their homes instead of having to travel to an event. Seminars and webinars create a low-pressure selling environment for prospects, making it easier to close sales.
Social Media Is Worth Your Time (Always)
Social media can be part of your marketing strategy to expand your reach and build relationships even when some people believe they are just for another type of business, like entertainment or the usual online stores. That’s completely wrong.
We recommend you only create an account on the social media platforms that have the greatest influence on your business, such as Instagram, Twitter, or even LinkedIn. In fact, you should start with the latter as it is amazing to allow clients and companies to meet.
But social media is more than just posting, creating your account, etc. You need to make sure you’re optimizing every detail properly to guarantee the best outcome. Thus, consider these tips that will help you get the most out of your social media accounts:
- Target smartly: Find the most popular social networks your clients use, and then focus your efforts on these networks.
- Create useful content: Be relevant to your customers and followers. Keep up-to-date with industry news, and create or curate content that addresses them.
- Consistency: Your social media efforts will be more effective if you are consistent. You should post to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites multiple times per week.
- Visualize content: Use rich media such as images and videos to increase interaction.
Using Email Marketing
Email marketing is the best strategy you can still apply when it comes to using online sources and channels, believe it or not. To understand why we need to clarify this, it actually tends to generate more sales for annuities in this case compared to your regular website.
Keep in mind we are not stating website falls way low in comparison, but everything is about Email marketing is essential in any lead generation plan and marketing strategy for insurance. This will allow you to get more leads for your sales team and ensure that you are able to work with prospects who are interested and not only trying to mess around and looking for competitive prices in terms of them starting their own annuity services.
To make your strategy work, convincing CTAs are necessary and an intuitive contact form added to each email if possible.
After you have created your email subscribers lists, it is time to optimize your email marketing strategy. If you offer several options for annuities or just the contracts, vary since it depends on the person, set specific campaigns with your emails to be a bit more precise with your audience.
Consider Blogging to Share Value
Blogs are vital for any website and business because everything is about content today. It isn’t a joke when people just say “content, content, and more content,” and the idea behind this makes sense: You want more SEO, and blogs, in this case, are perfect for it.
The good part is that this niche is rich in content and will lead to many potential clients coming your way. However, remember not to stuff your content with keywords. We don’t want a spammy blog but rather something that works.
Blogs work because they build trust, make your business an authority in the field you are working in, increase brand recognition and expand your network.
But, let’s say you decide to work with this option. If you are serious about making blogging a successful method for finding leads for annuity options, then it is important to have a calendar to be consistent. You can’t just post a blog every month but rather have 2-3 per week.
Regular posts will help keep your blog at the forefront of your mind. You don’t have to post as frequently and maybe just reduce it to once a week, but just remember not to quit it out of nowhere.
It is important that you keep the blog alive and not stop posting for weeks or even months.
Make sure to share your blog post once it is published! Cross-posting your blog to social media is also possible. You can also include links in your monthly newsletter.
Spending Money on PPC (Pay-per-Click)
Why is PPC so successful in generating high-quality leads? Because it is more precise and targeted than other methods, but it is the paid option not many people want to use. Should you? Definitely.
The good part about PPC is that it isn’t expensive. You can spend $5 a day for the next ten days, and you will get amazing results as long as you set your campaigns properly.
Besides driving leads, it also has high impression potential.
It can be hard for other marketing strategies to generate leads due to the many people who are able to find your website using generic keywords that don’t convert. You can be as specific as you like and still get leads when setting a PPC campaign instead.
Considering everything we have said, it is important to start with PPC Keyword Targeting when choosing PPC.
Keyword targeting does not have to be restricted to PPC. Targeted keywords can be used in SEO to increase your website’s visibility and get more leads. Overall, you will be working around them for every single one of your strategies.
Google should be able to understand your target keyword. If not, it won’t show your page in search results. It is this basic, and social media ads work almost the same (not per click in specific) and can work similarly with your keywords and visibility.
As long as you have a keyword strategy, you won’t be wasting money on unrelated search results. PPC lead generation is an efficient and highly effective way to reach potential leads.
In this option, you can also rely on PPC location targeting.
It is important to understand two aspects of PPC placement. The first aspect is how you target your ads. You can adjust your settings to limit the ads shown to users within a particular area.
This will ensure that your website receives less unqualified traffic and more attention to real prospects. This targeting includes ads placement and displays on the search engine result page (SERP).
Even though you can have the most organic page on the internet, the PPC ad will be more prominent than your organic page. Still, the idea is to have both on the first page whenever someone searches for “annuity contracts/services” or any keyword you’ve chosen to use.
Take Your Time to Target Your Audience
We have been mentioning the target audience for a while. Shouldn’t we have mentioned it since the beginning? Well, we just wanted to test how aware you are of it.
This industry can make you feel isolated because you think people are more worried about hiring health or maybe life insurance or other policies. However, as we mentioned earlier, the annuity is gaining popularity, and you can get lots of people interested as long as you know who they are.
It takes a team (or yourself) and being well-organized to ensure you can set the process to identify your target audience.
What is your target audience, though? Every person in a specific age range, preferences, or some characteristics and features that fit the description of whom you know can be interested in your services.
We like to emphasize the importance of understanding your audience, as it is the biggest challenge for any company like yours.
By taking the time with this, you will allow yourself to generate more leads and tailor your messaging for future marketing campaigns.
To make this process easier, you can just set a buyer persona. Look for the standards, and you should be able to get the perfect structure to determine your audience.
You Shouldn’t Overlook Instagram Marketing
We know we discussed ads for a bit and then social media. But we have something to ask: have you tried Instagram marketing for your business?
This strategy is crucial to generate leads and traffic but is often missed or ignored because people consider it is not worth the time in this niche for annuity leads. We tell you, they are wrong.
Instagram continues to be a main social media platform today, and you can get excellent results as long as you know how to optimize your posts and account. You won’t be a store, but it doesn’t mean you can’t use this option.
It is an excellent tool for marketing, no matter if you are a startup, small business, insurance, or anything else. Every company can utilize it.
Relying on Instagram marketing is based on the idea that many people are visual.
People are more connected to things they see than what they read. If you play it right, it is a great way for you to establish yourself and build the brand. This channel is also one the most cost-effective for generating leads.
Just learn about all lead generation tools you have so you can work around marketing qualified leads, working with your sales teams, and setting your lead generation campaigns properly.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your Annuity 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 Annuity 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 Annuity 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.