Technology has opened up many new marketing opportunities for insurance agents. In addition to traditional outbound marketing, inbound marketing is effective when looking for lead generation strategies for insurance agents.

Sitting around waiting for the phone to ring in an insurance office is a thing of the past. There is a wealth of marketing activities for insurance agents to experiment with. The best approach to lead generation for insurance agents is an overall marketing strategy that leverages multiple inbound and outbound marketing activities. To get you off on the right foot, we are providing lots of proven ideas for inbound and outbound marketing activities you can implement starting today. 

Lead Generation Strategies For Insurance Agents 101

Whether you are new in the business or you have new goals for building your book of business, lead generation is a staple of your workday. 

The easiest way to think about modern lead generation is to view it in three stages – attracting prospects, nurturing them, and converting them to customers. There are two paths to getting leads – inbound marketing and outbound marketing. 

Effective insurance agents keep their insurance sales pipeline filled with the following three kinds of leads:

  • Cold leads
  • Warm leads
  • Hot leads

The goal when incorporating these lead generation strategies for insurance agents is to turn cold leads into warm leads, warm leads into hot leads, and hot leads into sales. The process is not necessarily linear. A lead of any temperature can enter your sales funnel at any time. 

lead generation strategies for insurance agents - sales funnel

A strategy some insurance agents try is to purchase long lists of cold leads. This is not usually a successful strategy. Moreover, it can cause unexpected problems. People get on lead lists because they opted into something, but that may not be an interest in insurance. When you contact them, they just get annoyed. Furthermore, the internet universe may put your email address on the blacklist of contacts people are complaining about, and it can be hard to get it off. 

The best way to get people interested in insurance is to interact with them repeatedly. According to RAIN Sales Training, salespeople make an average of eight interactions with prospects to make a sale. Interactions can happen with inbound marketing, outbound marketing, or both. 

Inbound Marketing Strategies for Insurance Agents

Inbound marketing involves new clients finding you. How does it work? 

In a nutshell, an internet user discovers your business through a search engine, website, blog, or social media page. If they are interested, they click on a call-to-action (CTA) button which takes them to one of your landing pages where they give you contact information in exchange for an offer. 

lead generation strategies for insurance agents - inbound marketing

An offer is something of value to them. Some examples are a home inventory checklist, auto maintenance checklist, or identity theft prevention tips. 

Software is available that collects visitor details and adds them to your database. These leads are considered warm leads. 

The following inbound marketing strategies will bring a string of leads flowing into your inbox:

  1. Create landing pages: A landing page is a separate web page from your website that you can link to an email marketing string, online ad, or social media post. When a user clicks on a CTA button, they go to the landing page where you collect their details and send them an offer. 
  1. Add a blog to your website: Insurance impacts people’s lives in many different ways which means you have plenty to write about. Write an insurance blog at least weekly and direct followers to read them. Good topics are safety tips, maintenance tips, or events in the news. If you cannot think of topics, check out your competitors’ blogs for ideas. 
  1. Set up social media accounts for your business: Set up business accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and maybe even Pinterest or Instagram. The idea behind social media accounts is to be social and interactive. Social media is a great way to interact with leads and nurture them.
  1. Design and develop email marketing campaigns: Email marketing software programs such as Constant Contact, MailChimp, or others will allow you to set up automated emails to follow up on leads. Most programs have easy-to-use templates for creating sales emails. 
  1. Purchase paid search ads: This is also known as pay-per-click ads or PPC. Facebook and Google Ads both have programs that make it easy for anyone to create ads for targeted audiences. Paid search ads are also easy on the budget. You can start and stop ad campaigns at will to keep your budget in check or run them only during the most active times.
  1. Claim your Google My Business listing: Google has a program for businesses that brings up a sidebar that tells more about companies. The listing is only as good as the information you add to it. Claim your listing and add contact information, business hours, photos, and links to your website. This is also a good place to ask people to post online reviews of your services.
  1. Host a podcast: Choose a podcast hosting service and either write a script or interview someone about insurance. For example, you might ask the local fire chief to come on and provide fire safety tips. Spread the word about your podcast on your social media accounts. Be sure to give a CTA and an offer at the end of the show. 
  1. Create informational videos: Post occasional videos about insurance on YouTube. Answer the most probing questions your clients ask every day. Ask visitors to like your videos and subscribe to your channel. 

Any or all of these inbound marketing strategies will complement your outbound marketing strategy nicely. 

Outbound Marketing Strategies for Insurance Agents

A mistake many new insurance agents make is to rely fully on inbound marketing. It happens because they are uncomfortable with cold calling. Nonetheless, insurance lead generation is all about relationships, and relationships can be built in person as well as online. 

In contrast with inbound marketing, outbound marketing involves clients finding you, and it allows them to get acquainted with your brand. Any time you are advertising or sharing something about your services, you are engaging in outbound marketing.

lead generation strategies for insurance agents - Outbound marketing

The following outbound strategies will round out your marketing efforts:

  1. Narrow your target market: Pay close attention to patterns in outbound marketing. Who is buying insurance from you? Note how old they are and whether they are single or married. Do they fall within a certain age group? Do they live in a certain area? Develop a persona of the perfect client and pursue that demographic.
  1. Register for a booth in trade shows: Most communities have trade shows, home shows, and other events. Set up an eye-catching booth and give away a promotional item. This is a good way to get your business cards into people’s hands.
  1. Sponsor a local sports team: Sponsorship gets your brand in front of many people. Consider attending a game or two to get personally acquainted with people.
  1. Send out direct mailers: You may believe that direct mailers are old-school, but they can be effective when you are sending them to your target market. More than half of consumers welcome direct mail from brands they are interested in.
  1. Invest in an auto dialer: Many phone systems now have autodialers or you can get one by subscribing to SaaS software. This is an efficient way to make cold calls from leads you gathered at events or to ask for referrals. 

A combination of inbound and outbound marketing strategies will keep your sales funnel flowing continuously. 

Tips for Effective Inbound and Outbound Lead Generation

With your inbound and outbound marketing activities in place, the following tips will help you perfect your lead generation strategies:

  • Use a customer relationship management system (CRM) to record client details in one location.
  • Leverage data to inform you of the best times to call leads. Get their renewal dates and find out if it is best to call during the day or in the evening. 
  • Use data to personalize interactions with prospects. Record the name they prefer to be called. Note their children’s names and ages. For example, this can be useful for knowing when they need to add a young driver or young drivers will be leaving for college. 
  • During conversations, subtly try to find out if they have other insurance needs. For example, if they enjoy boating, motorcycling, or snowmobiling, you may ask about insuring these vehicles. 
  • Schedule your day. Plan a certain number of hours in the workday for inbound marketing, outbound marketing, and sales.
  •  Do A/B split testing to see which strategies work best. This is very effective with email marketing. 
  • Add a heatmap to your website. A heat map will tell you the parts of your website visitors frequent the most. 
  • Build your online reviews. Encourage your clients to post reviews on sites like Trustpilot, Google My Business, Facebook, and Yelp. This will improve trust and credibility in your services. 

Final Thoughts

You may have a preference for either inbound or outbound marketing, yet you will have the best results by doing both. The important thing is to establish an overall marketing plan and work your plan consistently. 

At Easy Insurance Pro, we have the tools to help you succeed in insurance. Contact us at 800-327-6623 to learn how to design effective websites and landing pages to drive healthy leads to your inbox today.