How to Find Insurance Leads for Your Company

Insurance is one of the world's largest industries, but that doesn't necessarily make it any easier to generate insurance leads. In fact, high competition can often have the opposite effect: PPC (or 'Pay Per Click') ads for insurance leads are among the most expensive around, at around $50 or more per click! It's clear, then, that life insurance leads don't come easy.

But that's no reason to despair. Insurance agents can see the challenging landscape of insurance lead generation as an opportunity to push boundaries and secure the quality leads they deserve.

As in all industries, it comes down to strategy: sales professionals in the insurance industry need to be prepared to take a serious look at their lead generation efforts and adapt them where necessary. They may even need to invest in whole new lead generation channels, update their sales process, or partner with industry-leading lead generation companies. Either way, it's imperative they make the necessary changes to reach the right prospective customers.

That's exactly what we're here to help you with. Leadium has no shortage of experience when it comes to finding insurance leads that convert, and we're here to let you in on a secret or two. By implementing these steps, you'll be well on your way to a fuller sales pipeline and more insurance leads.

Let's take a look.

The importance of targeting

Without perfect targeting and audience segmentation, your lead generation efforts may as well be for nothing.

Many lead generation teams are still stuck in the old habit of sending thousands of copy-and-pasted emails to dead-end leads from outdated databases and calling it a day. But the truth is, today's leads, especially insurance leads, are more discerning than ever before, and are not susceptible to cynical marketing.

Insurance agents should be targeting only the high quality leads who can actually benefit from their insurance products. And the way to find those potential clients is to target.

• ICP ('Ideal Customer Profile')
  
  • Studies show that businesses who use great ICPs find more sales leads and see greater revenue than those who don't. In order to make yours, you need to move beyond the idea of a 'target audience' and really delve into the nitty gritty of your ideal customers. Consider things like: where they work, the size of their company, their job title, how many employees they have, what platforms they like to use, their buying behavior, the tools they use, their pain points, and so on.
  • This is crucial because it allows you to stop wasting time and resources on the wrong leads. If you're selling auto insurance, for example, you don't need to waster time talking to people without cars. Life insurance agents should probably focus on specific demographics. You get the idea...

Leverage digital marketing

There's no getting around it: it's a digital world, and insurance agents should base most of their lead generation efforts online (depending, perhaps, on the demographic they're selling to).

Evidence suggests that around 69% of insurance shoppers start their buyer's journey with an online search. By leveraging digital marketing, especially inbound campaigns, you can make sure your business is the one catching those insurance leads.

Let's take a look at some of our favourite digital lead generation strategies:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

For those of you who don't already know, SEO is the process of optimizing your online content to rank more highly in search engine results pages (SERPs). In essence, that means using the right keywords the right amount of times to match specific search queries - though that's certainly not all there is to it (and Google doesn't permit 'keyword stuffing').

But you should certainly be thinking about SEO when producing content such as blog posts, articles, eBooks, white papers, and landing pages - in short: anything that could link back to your website through search engine marketing.

For example, if you're looking for more life insurance leads, it could be a good idea to publish an article on the benefits of buying life insurance sooner rather than later. When writing the article, consider what people searching for that information are likely to have typed in: for example, 'why buy life insurance?' Then use that phrase once or twice high up in the article.

There's a lot that goes into great SEO and we'd encourage you to research the field. Just know, though, that almost half of all search engine clicks in 2022 were the result of organic searches, demonstrating the importance of SEO.

Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising

Here's a lead generation method that's particularly popular among local businesses. That's because by buying certain keywords (for example, 'auto insurance in Las Vegas') you can drive traffic to your solutions accurately and efficiently.

PPC ads have been proven to increase location-based traffic by around 10% a year. So insurance agencies looking to sell insurance, be that auto insurance, business insurance, home insurance, or anything else, should leverage PPC advertising through search engines to boost lead generation.

Social media marketing

You might think that insurance is 'too serious' for social media. But you'd be wrong. Almost 5 billion people worldwide use social media, and platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and X can be great arenas for powerful lead generation - as well as great places for building relationships and sharing your SEO content.

What makes social media marketing such a good lead generation method for insurance leads is that you can target prospects pretty accurately based on platform demographics. For example, a huge majority of users over the age of 65 only use Facebook, which could suggest more success finding exclusive life insurance leads there than on, say Instagram.

LinkedIn, however, has over 67 million business owners on board. So if you want to sell business insurance, that would be the place to go.

The key to social media marketing is to provide valuable SEO content that establishes your insurance business as more reliable than other agents. High quality content equals high quality leads.

Email marketing

You may be tired of hearing it, but email marketing is still the best online lead generation method around. In fact, 83% of B2B marketers agree that email is their most important channel for lead generation. 'So?' you may be thinking, 'we already use email to contact insurance leads.'

But the question is: are you using email to full effect? After all, the average email click-through rate hovers around just 2.3%. So how can insurance agents boost that number?

There are several things you can do to improve the efficiency of your email campaigns and get those online insurance leads interested:

1. Personalization: Emails with that 'personal touch' can see click-through rate of up to 41%.
2. Better subject lines: The art of the subject line can take many years to learn, but mastering will increase your open rate exponentially.
3. Offer value: You have to provide your insurance leads with valuable resources to keep them engaged.
4. Use stats: On a purely aesthetic level, the human eye is drawn to numbers and bullet points more easily than to long, explanatory paragraphs.

Other lead generation methods insurance agents should use

Unfortunately, we can't go into all the lead generation methods you should use to get more insurance leads here, but we can note a few honorable mentions:

• Networking: Trade shows and events can be great places to showcase your insurance programs and get to know your insurance leads
• Direct mail: Some demographics still prefer to receive contact forms and information packs in the post. Depending on the insurance leads you're selling to, direct mail could be an effective option.
• Cold calling: We often hear that cold calling is 'dead' in 2024. But that's not true; the truth is that most sales reps just don't know how to cold call properly. Phone calls can be a great way to create more immediacy and convey mor personality than through, say, email.

Start selling to more insurance leads today

Modern insurance lead generation requires a lot of adaptability and even more persistence, but by implementing the right range of lead generation strategies for your insurance business, your reps will be able to secure more leads and close more deals.

There are a ton of options for finding insurance leads in 2024 - be it through traditional methods like cold calling, direct mail, and email marketing, or newer methods such as social media engagement, content marketing, or SEO. Ultimately, the lead generation strategy you opt for will be determined by your ICP, and most successful companies utilize a combination of methods.

Many companies choose to outsource insurance lead generation to specialized lead generation companies like Leadium. By partnering with a professional agency, you can cut costs, gain access to world-class lead gen expertise, and spend more time on the other critical tasks filling up your calendar. Don't leave lead generation to chance - reach out for a consultation today!