You can generate your own exclusive leads online – but there are three common mistakes agents make when trying to generate and nurture insurance leads.
Are you making any of these mistakes? If you are, we need to talk!
1. Poor targeting
2. Weak response offer
3. Boring follow-up
Let’s look at each of these:
- Poor targeting: The first step to generating insurance leads is the creation and use of a proper customer persona.
What is a customer persona? “A semi-fictional amalgamation of the various characteristics, needs, wants, worries and aspirations of a target group.”
Too many agents decide what kind of leads they want (auto leads) without identifying who is behind those leads. Customer personas matter because they are the road map for marketing to a particular target audience (they work best when they are given a name, and a face, and maybe even a backstory). When you truly understand who you are marketing to, you know what they are thinking about, where they spend their time online, and what types of content topics and offers they will respond to.
- Weak response offer: A response offer is a “do-this, get-that” exchange that provides incentive to a prospect to do what you want, such as request a quote from you.
Let’s be clear: A “free quote” is not a response offer. It’s a wormless hook. It’s an unanswered prayer.
To generate leads for yourself, you must provide something of value to a prospect in exchange for their personal information and their permission to contact you.
For example, “Contact me for a free auto quote, and I’ll give you a $10 gas card with your quote.”
See how that works? Do this, get that.
If all the other agents around you are bleating about free quotes and you are offering something attractive, like a free $10 gas card with a quote – guess who is going to get the attention from prospects? You.
- Boring follow-up: Agents need to have a follow-up system in place, preferably an automated follow-up system, to keep in touch with a prospect – especially those prospects who do not buy from you now.
The follow-up effort and the information that you use in that effort must be educational, informative and maybe even a little entertaining. The No. 1 reason agents get so little out of their nurture efforts is because the content they are sending is boring, flat and punchless.
Imagine the value in sending an eBook to a prospect with a note that says, “We were thinking of you and thought you might find this information helpful,” and attached to that email is a short, concise eBook, “What Not to Say After a Car Accident.”
How much more attention – and how many times would such information be shared across your prospect’s social media network – when you send high-quality, helpful, educational information to your prospects.
Correcting any one or more of these three mistakes will make immediate improvements in your lead generation efforts.
- Wormless hooks and other insurance lead generation mistakes - March 14, 2016