Should You Generate or Buy Leads for Insurance?

When working in the leads business, there are endless lists of choices you need to make. What verticals are you in? Are you doing web leads or calls? Are you working with end users or arbitraging? What color do we paint the office? One that we hear a lot more than others, though, is “Should I generate or buy leads for insurance?” Insurance of all kinds needs leads to function, but there are definitely pros and cons to both generating and buying:

Why Generate?

• When generating your own leads, you dictate the quality. If a lead is not good enough for your business, it’s not exactly wasted money - it’s acceptable to toss out leads that don’t fit your standards. This way your insurance agents don’t get stuck wasting time on bogus leads just because you’ve already spent money on them.
• By generating your own leads, you’re really taking charge of your business in a way that buying leads just doesn’t allow. The flow of leads is up to you, any info besides contact info is yours to request, and this allows your business to operate at its own pace. No more trying to rush leads because of your wallet.
• According to Hubspot, on average, generating your own inbound leads is 62% cheaper than buying leads wholesale. That doesn’t sound too shabby now, does it?

Why Buy?

• By buying leads, you really only need to know how to use a credit card and how to use your email. Contrast to generating, which requires knowing how to optimize SEO, work with PPC advertising, remarket, copywrite, and more. Buying leads is popular because it’s simple - anyone can throw down money for leads and start calling right away, which simplifies the business a lot.
• Not only do you need to know how to do all sorts of marketing and advertising, but it gets expensive. Some companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on Google advertising every year, or if you’re Amazon, over $55 million per year! So the cost of generating a lead versus buying a lead may be lower individually, but to stay consistent and grow your business, some investment is necessary.
• It’s always easiest for a business to start out with a single focus and branch out, and lead businesses are no exception. Why focus on generating when the bread and butter of your business is the client insurance side? Buying leads lets you focus on the business side of your agency.