As we all know, the insurance business is all about trust. Becoming a trusted insurance brand is essential to take your lead generation strategies to the next level. However, before you decide to incorporate a certain approach into your marketing strategy to build that brand, ask yourself if it’s the most effective strategy for your target demographic.

So, who are you selling to? It’s best to be as specific as possible. Reaching out to an entire market is too difficult—as the saying goes, you can’t please everyone all the time. Narrow down your potential client base using characteristics like:

• Demographics. Age, gender, income and family.
• Behavior. What are your customers’ spending habits? How do they engage with your brand?
• Personality. What are their attitudes, beliefs and values? How do these affect the choices they make?
• Geographic area. You could make your scope as wide as a continent, country or region—or as small as a neighborhood or area code.

Once you have a clear picture of your target client, adapt your strategies for maximum effectiveness. Here are four ideas you can implement to grab new leads fast:

1) Buying Leads

Purchasing lead lists online is quick, easy and gives you immediate access to a huge database. If your business is new, it’s an excellent way to expand your portfolio.

Of course, this strategy has its downsides. Although you pay for every lead, not all of them are guaranteed to become customers. Buying from a lead aggregator is slightly cheaper, but the leads will be shared among other companies too, creating even greater competition. Plus, if a lead has already signed a contract with a competitor, you could end up wasting your time.

Be sure to do your research when browsing lead generation companies. Watch out for missing contact details, inaccurate information and promises that sound too good to be true. Essentially, make sure you’re buying from a high-quality seller.

Purchasing leads can be beneficial to your overall strategy, but it shouldn’t comprise a whole strategy by itself. Get the most value for money by selecting a legitimate seller, carefully tracking your conversion rate and finding ways to boost it.

2) Referrals

Using your existing client base to attract new customers is one of the cheapest tools in your arsenal. It’s useful in two ways: It helps generate new leads and it gets people talking about your products and services. As many as 87% of agents say referrals from current and previous clients are one of their most successful marketing strategies.

But how do you make sure your customers spread the word about you? You ask them to. Most people won’t think of recommending a company to others until you plant the seed. Optimize your referrals by asking early in the relationship while you’re fresh in the client’s mind. They’ll be more likely to take action when they’re still newly excited about your products and services.

3) Free Consultations

Free consultations are excellent for publicity. The word “free” is irresistible to most of us. Make sure you advertise this everywhere—on business cards, on your website and social media pages, on flyers, and in booklets. Make your call to action as big, bright and eye-catching as possible and ensure it’s easy for potential clients to book appointments with you.

4) Your Website

Consumers often start their quest for an insurance company online. Mobile searches containing “insurance near me” have been trending for years. Therefore, it’s crucial to ensure your website ranks highly in search engines so you can attract prospective customers and build credibility. An outdated, badly designed, sketchy site will have clients running for the hills.

Here are a few tips to bring people to your brand’s online home:

Optimize for smartphones. Out of all the searches made on Google, over half are made on a mobile device, according to Google. Make sure your site is mobile-friendly and your pages load quickly so users can easily access your site on the go. It should also have a responsive design that automatically adjusts to fit smaller screens.

Make a blog. To rank highly in search engines, your site needs to host content containing keywords relevant to consumer search queries. It’s not good enough to churn out jargon-filled gibberish or copy other sites—Google penalizes spam and duplicate content. Your content must be high quality, informative and original. Address your clients frequently asked questions to satisfy search engine visitors.

Use images and videos. Images help break up text-heavy pages and create a more enjoyable experience. Not only that, but Google rewards “time on page.” A user could quickly skim your content and exit after 15 seconds, or their attention could be caught by a video that holds them for a whole five minutes. This can make an enormous difference to your rankings.

Make it clear. Links to calls to action must be bold, clear and clickable. Clients should be able to find everything they need effortlessly. A virtual agent could also be used to engage visitors directly and answer any questions.

Use resources. Lift Local offers local marketing services, helping agents dominate their local markets digitally by building and optimizing the agency’s online presence. Through improved local Google ranking and consistent online reviews agents will get more inbound calls from consumers searching for insurance in their local markets. SIAA members get a discounted rate with Lift Local! Learn more here!

 

There are hundreds of methods of lead generation for insurance agencies to explore. It’s up to you to envision your ideal prospective client as clearly as possible and adapt your strategies to their segment of the market.

You might find a client referral program works best or that attending events in your local community is more effective. If your customer demographic is digitally savvy, maybe webinars and online campaigns will bring success. It’s all about experimenting to find the best solution for your business. Try to listen to lots of different voices and viewpoints when crafting your strategy.

However, one thing never changes: Earn your client’s trust and your business will be stellar.