Do you sell insurance? If so, where do you get your leads? If you do your own marketing, that’s great, but if the majority of your time is spent managing clients and prospects, chances are you don’t have enough time to fully optimize your marketing spend. I would bet that your cost per lead is higher than it needs to be.
If you purchase leads, you’re taking a step in the right direction, but what do your leads look like? Are you working from a long list of data rather than pre-qualified customers reaching you the second that they are ready to purchase? If not, I wouldn’t just bet that you’re wasting time and money. I would guarantee it.
If what I mentioned above describes you, then I’ve got an introduction for you. Insurance agent, meet your new best friends: insurance lead generation companies.
Insurance lead generation companies are marketers. They spend virtually all of their time building both online and traditional marketing campaigns that are designed to not only gather customers that are looking for insurance, but gather specific details to prequalify their inquiry and direct them to the best possible provider.
Because insurance lead generation companies spend virtually all of their time tweaking and optimizing their marketing campaigns, they can maximize their lead volume while keeping their cost per lead as low as possible. If you handle all of your own marketing, it makes sense to think that you are saving money. However, it is much more likely that you are spending extra time generating too few leads for a higher cost per lead than necessary.
If you’re already buying leads, but in bulk lists, then you’re really not buying leads at all. You’re buying aged data. Lead generation companies generate leads and sell them individually in real-time rather than sending you lists of 'leads'. This means that if you buy leads from insurance lead generation companies you are never wasting time and money calling out on old, unqualified data.
To this point, I’ve been discussing insurance leads fairly generically. While each insurance sub-set is certainly different, in the lead generation industry they each go hand in hand. We’ve written extensively about the insurance lead verticals from a lead generators perspective.
While these insurance verticals tend to generate the most attention from lead generation companies, it is still very easy to find insurance lead generation companies that focus on homeowner’s/renter’s insurance, specialty auto insurance and more.
As mentioned above, most insurance verticals are treated the same way by lead generation companies. One of the biggest reasons for this is the insurance lead distribution process. For the most part, insurance leads are bought and sold in real-time using a technology called ping post. Ping post allows you to bid in real-time for each lead your providers generate.
For example, let's assume your are buying auto insurance leads. When your lead provider generates a new lead, they ‘ping’ you partial lead information such as state, zip code and driver age. Based on this information, you (your system) decides if you’d like to bid on the lead and if so, how much. If you win the bid, your lead provider then posts the full lead details (including contact information) to you or your CRM so you can immediately begin your outreach. Although this process may seem complicated, your lead requirements and bidding preferences can be easily configured and run automatically.
If you’re interested in learning more about ping post, check out our Basics of Ping Post whitepaper.
Buying insurance leads in real-time allows you to focus on selling insurance to qualified prospects rather than worry about marketing or wasting time on bad leads. When you start working with insurance lead generation companies, you can specify exactly which types of leads you want to purchase. You can identify specific geographic areas that you cover, every insurance type that you operate in and even more specific details depending on which insurance verticals you choose.
Because you identify your qualifications, you already know that every lead you purchase meets your standards so you don’t need to waste time qualifying leads. You also receive every lead in real-time just seconds after the lead submits his/her inquiry. You know how important speed to lead is. Buying leads from a lead generation company gives you every advantage to contact the lead at the time they are most ready to purchase.
Not only can you outline your lead qualifications, but you can also specify how much you are willing to pay for each lead. For example, if you are an independent agent you might pay top dollar for a lead in the zip code you live because you can take advantage of your proximity and increase your chances of closing the deal. However, you may pay the least for leads coming in at the edges of your coverage area. The best lead generation companies will even give you the option to adjust your bidding based on the time of day or day of week. This would allow you to bid up on leads early in the day to make sure you reach a certain threshold and lowering your bids later in the day to decrease your volume, but lower your cost-per-lead.
In order to properly work with insurance lead generation companies and take advantage of ping post lead distribution, you need a system to handle the automated bidding and purchasing of the leads.
At boberdoo, we’ve been building technology for the lead generation industry since 2001. Although our core product offering focuses on the needs of lead generation companies, we have helped many insurance companies utilize ping post to purchase leads. If you are interested in learning more about buying ping post leads and the technology required, please give us a call at 800-776-5646 or fill out the form below.