1. Focus on a Specific Niche to Start Attracting Leads Faster

Chris Abrams, Founder, Abrams Insurance Solutions

It’s getting crowded in the online insurance website space, but the best tactic is to niche down. A general insurance website will take longer to rank, but if you have a website focused on a specific niche, it will rank faster in Google. One of my sites is focused on helping marijuana users find the information they need to obtain life insurance. Besides ranking faster, a niche site is also more attractive for other sites in that same niche to link to. You can also use PPC or Facebook ads focused on that niche. On every page and post of the site, I have a life insurance “quoter.” The prospect trades me his contact information for an instant life insurance quote. Then I have a lead to follow up with to see if they have additional questions. Often, these leads turn into a life insurance sale.

2. Sponsor Value-Added Seminars

Jack M. Cordes, Principal Agent, Bridge First Insurance

I know a lot of insurance agents who offer to do “Insurance 101” seminars for real estate agents, but the truth is that it isn’t very sexy when you try to pitch the idea. Instead, I bring in another party who can provide value to their business and position myself as the sponsor of the event. I recently held an event for real estate agents with a gentleman I know who specializes in social media marketing for real estate agents. He showed them some great tips to improve their social media game and I got a few minutes to talk about insurance and offer my services to the real estate agents and their clients.

3. Develop Solution-Based Social Media Content

Chris Jarvis, Author, Speaker and Founder, Jarvis Tower

Develop videos, podcasts, and Q&A segments from an industry leader. The topic would be “Interesting New Applications.” We would create these for agencies or insurance companies to push out to their agents and directly to consumers. The videos/content would offer a free special report with additional detail. This would be procured through a website (the insurance company or the agency’s site) and would generate inbound traffic and leads. I did this earlier in my career and over 15,000 physicians actually called my office or emailed me for special reports, books, and audio.

4. Send Out Insurance Postcards to Encourage Referrals

Joy Gendusa, Founder & CEO, PostcardMania

Think direct mail is dead? Think again—one California agency generated a 1,722% return on investment (ROI) with their insurance postcards, grossing $30,000 in revenue from just ONE campaign. Since referrals generate the easiest new business for agencies, you can use insurance postcards to entice your existing clientele to bring in their family and friends. The trick is to use an irresistible special offer that will reward your clients for referring you new business, such as these:

• $25 Visa gift card
• $15 Starbucks gift card
• Five tickets in a free TV raffle

5. Engage Consumers with Email Marketing

Steve Yi, Co-Founder and CEO, MediaAlpha

Almost everyone is on email, making it one of the easiest and least expensive ways to reach consumers. The key to a successful email marketing campaign is maintaining carefully organized lists, as every customer will not be a good fit for each email. Once the best audience is determined for each message, companies need to fine-tune the subject line for optimal open rates. Shorter subject lines typically perform best, somewhere around 10 words or less, and make every word count. Lastly, companies need to be mindful of the amount of emails they are sending. Customers do not want to receive multiple emails throughout the day; in addition, this could potentially flag the company domain as spam. Instead, focus on quality over quantity. One well-targeted email per month is going to go a lot further than several irrelevant emails every week.

6. Balance Creative Inbound Content with Organic Search

Dmitri Kara, SEO/SEM and Content Marketing Expert, Fantastic Handyman

This is the type of content that is based on a creative/catchy idea rather than a pre-researched, organic search. Of course, it is best to balance, but not always necessary. Personally, I would rather balance my chances. For example, I did this catchy visual representation of some of IKEA’s services, which we also offer. The piece was also published at the popular fan site IKEA Hackers, and while that did not bring leads directly, the post effect did. This post has more than 20,000 visitors, which still brings leads on a weekly basis. The piece incorporates both a catchy idea and a clever set of long tail keywords.

7. Invite Your Website Visitors to Take Quizzes

Larissa Pickens, Owner and Creative Director, Float Design

Quizzes are a great lead generation tool and can range from purely entertaining to extremely detailed and informational. They are a perfect tool for educating and guiding a potential customer who is faced with a purchasing decision they feel uncertain about. The interactive component means you can potentially learn a lot about your lead, but don’t get greedy. Take care to balance information gathering with the user experience. Create an engaging experience with gamification and rewards so the user continues to stay engaged and completes the quiz.

8. Use Every Door Direct Mail’s Insurance Templates for Offline Marketing

Chris Barr, Director of Marketing, Taradel, LLC

Insurance agents are using Every Door Direct Mail’s free templates for lead generation—because there’s just too much competition online. When insurance companies take their marketing offline, it’s much easier to go directly to the consumer. It doesn’t matter if you’re a small business, Geico, or Berkshire Hathaway. Direct mail works.

9. Use LinkedIn InMail

Samantha Walls, Social Media Manager, In Touch Marketing

If you want to target specific people, then use LinkedIn InMail. It costs a little more than AdWords or Facebook Ads, but you can really target specific individuals in your niche market. If you have a premium level account that includes sales navigator, then you will have free monthly credits to use to really target specific individuals. Make your message about how you can solve a problem for them, not what services you can offer them.

10. Create Website Content Specifically for Your Target Clientele

Wes Marsh, Director of Digital Marketing, Solodev

In order to succeed in insurance marketing, smaller insurance agencies need to be able to hone in specifically on their target clientele. They must then create a narrative through content marketing that shows how having insurance meets the needs of their target audience. For example, if you’re a company specializing in auto insurance policies, craft content that gives actionable advice, like what to do immediately following a car wreck. Create personas based on real stories from your customer base. Use stories and content around those narratives to draw people to you through that human element. Dispel the misconception that insurance agents only exist to gain commissions through storytelling. It moves you to the other side of the table as someone who is a trusted friend and adviser rather than a salesperson looking to gain a client.

11. Leverage Customer Reviews and Referrals

Gregory Bullock, Marketing Manager, TheraSpecs

One of the biggest assets any service-based business can leverage is genuine customer reviews and referrals. Nothing does more for validating your business and the work you do than when happy customers share their experiences with others, either through online review platforms or directly with their network. Turn your earliest adopters and biggest champions into the loudest voices of support by asking for reviews on your site, and then make sure to display their comments and ratings prominently. You should also consider setting up accounts through third-party services like Yelp, Thumbtack or Angie’s List. These platforms offer expanded visibility and make it easy for your satisfied customers to highlight the wonderful things about your company. You also want to address any negative reviews. Even if you can’t fix a poor experience, you can at least show a “good faith” effort toward making it right.

12. Leverage Social Selling

Jackie Miller, Chief Marketing Officer, Bozell

Social selling is an effective way to generate leads for any type of business. Although often overlooked in more regulated industries such as the financial or insurance space, social media can be a powerful tool to showcase a more personalized side of the industry. People trust people, so allowing them to come to the forefront of lead generation will enable more referrals and position you and your team as thought leaders. Managing Facebook Business Pages and LinkedIn accounts for the insurance sales agents at an insurance company can result in them expanding not only the brand name, but also their clientele. Using social media to connect and form relationships with new clients leads to companies making connections that they wouldn’t have had capacity to before.

13. Claim Your Google My Business Page

Termeh Mazhari, PR, Marketing and SEO Consultant, TermehMazhari.com

According to Google, roughly four out of five consumers use search engines to conduct local searches. Small insurance companies can leverage the power of local SEO by optimizing their Google directory listing to drive more business. Google My Business is Google’s free directory of local businesses. It’s the listings that you see below the Google map when searching for businesses. To claim your Google My Business page, simply go to Google.com/business and go through the steps to verify your business.

After you’ve been verified, you’ll need to complete and optimize your profile with a keyword-rich description, professional photos of your storefront (if you’re an online business, then add your logo and photos that show your work), select a relevant business category, and add your business hours, etc. Finally, ask your best customers to review your business on Google. A five-star review average next to your business listing is a great way to stand out from your competitors!

14. Use of Discount Code Websites to Offer Special Pricing

Tegan Groombridge, Digital Marketing Manager, Discount Promo Codes

Discount code websites can be a great way to extend your brand and offer yourself as a reputable insurer. By advertising the discounts and deals that you provide in a discount code website, a wider audience can look for the best deal for them. Discount code websites offer an insurance category for best offers, allowing you to appear next to larger names but showing the potential for larger savings.

15. Modify Your Offering

Eric Johnson, Digital Content Creator, Feedback Wrench

In some ways, insurance has become something of a commodity. The average person expects roughly the same service from any insurance company—no matter who it is. Because of this, the way to effectively generate leads in the insurance industry is changing. Instead of positioning your company as one that sells products, realign your brand messaging in accordance with the idea that you’re providing a priceless service. Most people would pay well for less of a headache, friendlier agents, and confidence about their decision.

16. Put More Effort into Blog Posting

Jeremy Schaedler, President, Schaedler Insurance Agency, Inc.

We’ve found one of the most effective ways to market our insurance agency is through blog posting. Insurance consumers have many questions about the insurance products they are considering; by creating blog posts that add value by thoroughly answering common insurance related questions, potential consumers will view you as a credible source and will often contact your agency when they get closer to making a purchasing decision. Successfully marketing in this manner comes down to effectively adding value, because poorly written articles can portray an unprofessional image and can negatively impact business. Ultimately, if you can find ways to help your customers, your agency will be rewarded with many prospective new clients.

17. Advertise Where Your Target Market Is, Like at the DMV

Curtis Boyd, Director of Operations, Future Solutions Media

Advertise where your target market is. One good example is for car insurance providers. Ever tried advertising at the DMV? Here, people are registering for driver’s licenses, auto registration and other auto-related paperwork. Get your auto insurance co-aligned with the DMV and it could spell big things. In order to advertise at the DMV, you will have to register through the MVNetwork, which regulates what kind of companies can advertise and what kind of ads can be run.

Since these advertisements are on TVs, most likely with the volume off, your infomercial needs to have the following:

• Bold text
• Bold call to action—usually a telephone number/website to call/visit
• Include a DMV coupon or promo code
• Formatted for HDTV
• Clear hook to grab attention

18. Use Paid Search to Bring in Leads to Your Website

Jonathan Holloway, Director of Digital Strategy, No Exam.com

Using paid searches is a great way to bring in targeted leads for your insurance company. It involves creating a landing page with a lead capture form and bidding on relevant search phrases on Google Adwords or Bing Ads. It’s important that you target search phrases that have high commercial intent. Your landing page must provide what the searcher is looking for. For example, if you are bidding on “car insurance quotes roswell ga,” then you want your landing page to align with this by allowing the searcher to get a car insurance quote from an agent in Roswell, GA. See this link for more landing page best practices.

19. Interview Your Clients

Scott W Johnson, Owner, Whole Vs. Term Life Insurance

This one is certainly not done enough. Ask clients to be interviewed about why they use and like your services. “I love my insurance policy from XYZ because they are easy to get a hold of.” Get their permission to use their photo, imagine, or video and promote yourself as working with real people with real faces. Future prospects are more likely to identify with your target market if they see your real clients.

20. Create a Referral Rewards Program

It’s important that you talk about your rewards program. Most insurance agencies overlook this step and just rely on their fliers and websites. However, even the soundest referral scheme requires ongoing promotion in order for it to work and get you new leads. This article gives you a quick guide on developing your own insurance agency referral rewards program, including a launch kit and images to help you get started.

21. Add a Chatbot to Your Website

Not all website owners have chatbots on their site, but there’s no doubt that it will eventually catch on, as this app is no longer just for customer service. Chatbots are becoming popular, with a major function of it assigned to lead generation. Lead generation chatbots can be an effective feature as long as they are used strategically, and improved based on how real visitors respond to the application. Know how to optimize your website chatbot for lead generation with five simple tips.

22. Establish Yourself as a Thought Leader with a Podcast

There are many uses to podcasts, but as a lead generation tool, a consistently well-produced insurance podcast can easily help you gain more clients. Podcasts are live online content, so in order to get attention from your target market, it’s important to know exactly not only what kind of content you should produce, but how to format it in such a way that it interests your potential clients. This article shows you the number of ways podcasts can be used as a lead generation tool for your business.

23. Increase the Time Visitors Spend on Your Website by Adding Videos

The average internet user spends 88% more time on websites with videos as opposed to those without. This statistic alone makes for a sound basis for maximizing the use of videos to improve your sales. Insurance videos for lead generation break the monotony of being fed data from literature. A well-produced and entertaining video can give your potential customers all the information they need to progress in their buying journey, without the usual heavy mood that goes with purchasing insurance. Consider these five ways of using videos to generate insurance leads the next time you visit your marketing plan.

24. Maximize Your Marketing Budget

Running an insurance agency can be costly, and most of the time, marketing is considered as the lowest priority in its operating budget. But marketing doesn’t have to always be costly, and surprisingly, there are lead generation strategies that give you the best return on your investment without the huge cost. This article will introduce you to five budget-friendly tips to help your insurance agency generate more leads.

25. Avoid Common Email Marketing Mistakes

Research shows that the most popular activity on people’s mobile phones is still the checking of email at 78%, proving that email is still a worthy investment as a marketing channel. However, it’s also easy to overlook some of the best practices when using email as a platform, causing missed opportunities to convert. Be aware of these five common pitfalls of email marketing for insurance agencies that can affect your lead generation strategy.