10 Insurance Ad Lessons I'd Tell Every Agent (After 200+ Accounts) [Part 4 of 4]

If you want to generate the highest quality lead at the lowest possible cost, these are the 10 things that you need to know. Last year alone, I managed over $2 million in ad spend in the Meta Special Ad category, so working with insurance agents and other licensed professionals. And after over 10 years of managing Meta ads, these are the 10 things that I feel are crucial for you to know in 2026. So if you are ready, Let's dive in. So these 10 things that I'm about to share with you, I am very excited to go through my list because these are the 10 things when really reflecting on my experience last year in managing so much ad spend in the Meta Special Ad category and seeing inside of hundreds of different insurance agents' ad accounts. So I'm talking about agents that were spending anywhere from $10 a day to $20 a day. I really have a pulse on what is and what isn't working. And so, by the way, hi, if you're new here, I'm Shauna, and I am on a mission to free as many insurance agents as I can and other licensed professionals from lead vendors who overprice their leads. They oversell the quality. They live and die by the secrecy of how they actually generate their leads, and these done-for-you marketing agencies that trap you into their system where you become dependent on them. So if that's the type of stuff you're interested in, welcome. Hit that subscribe button because you're in the right place. Now you're actually coming into this. This is part. 4 of a 4-part series. Um, my first video, we talked about Meta special ad category compliance. The second one, we talked about strategy, about the campaign. Number 3, we talked about turning those clicks into conversions, like your landing page and lead forms. And then this one is actually my favorite video because this is where I am just not going to hold back. I'm excited about these 10 things. I've got some predictions about what's going to happen in the future. So if you are ready, then let's get started on the list. All right, so this is going to be fun because this covers so many different parts of lead generation, and especially when it comes to running lead generation ads. So number 1, compliance. It is critical that you are compliant. Now, if you want to know all the nitty-gritty of what you can and can't do, then you want to make sure that you watch that video number 1 where I talk about it in detail. But what you need to know is that Meta isn't jacking around, and I am seeing when there are agents, whether you are a new advertiser or you have an established account, if you try to do something sneaky and shady, they are banning people from advertising at an IP level. So take being compliant and following their rules and the Meta special ad category very, very seriously. 2, advanced forms on Meta. When you are running lead ads, you have the option to either send traffic to a landing page or send them to a lead form. And lead forms first came out— I want to say, I might be wrong— I want to say lead forms first came out in like 2017. 17 or 18. And back then we didn't really use them very often because the lead forms really did generate lower quality leads. It was true, generated a lot of bot leads. It generated a lot of people that just clicked the next button and filled it out. They weren't that amazing. So I didn't even mess with lead forms really until after about mid-2020. And that's when Meta— there was a big Apple update that made it hard for Meta, it was Facebook at the time, to track people that were having activity off of the platform. So they started really focusing on increasing the quality of their lead forms. And now in 2025, and as we move into 2026, these lead forms are so extremely advanced, they're so easy for you to create and easy for people to fill out that I absolutely love utilizing lead forms. So what I mean by advanced is we're able to check a little box and have SMS verification. How wonderful is that? Now you know that you're not going to get another like unknown number, right? You can use something that's called conditional additional logic where it allows some people to become a lead if they answer a question right or not. You can use custom questions. You can use something that is called Open Chat in Messenger, which is amazing, where once someone becomes a lead, it automatically opens up a chat in Messenger, which is kind of your lifeline. If you're not able to get ahold of them, you try to call them, text them, you have it as a lifeline. So I just want you to know the quality behind using a Meta lead form is just continually going up and up. And don't knock it, don't knock it till try it, okay? Number 3, specific messaging. I told you we were going to kind of be all over the place, but specific messaging. Back when I first was running ads in like 2015, 2016, and so on, as advertisers, our little superhero skill was that we were able to target very, very niche audiences. We were able to get down to the nitty-gritty and we were able to make sure our ads only served to those people. Now in today's world, and especially in the Meta special ad category, it is more open targeting. So now the algorithm takes the cues of what's actually in your message in order to target the individual. So one of the biggest skills that you can learn that's not talked about enough is actually to master your messaging. This is one of my favorite things to talk about. It's one of the things that makes me excited. I love crafting the perfect message. Um, a very simple formula for you to use is make sure you hit on the PB&J. So the pain point that the people might be experiencing, the benefit that they have whenever they work with you, and then the J is where they're at on the journey. Like, are there people that already have heard of you or know about your product, or are they brand new and cold? But either way, the targeting is so extremely critical. One, for Meta's AI to really teach it who to get in front of, and 2, for the user. I'm so happy that we live in a world where the content finds the user, not like we did in pre-2020. So this means that your ad's messaging, it is literally one of the most important elements that you have in your ad to not only get in front of the right people, but to teach the algorithm who to serve it to. 4, ad optimizations. So I want you to understand what the different optimizations are at the ad level before deciding to turn them on. And I'm going to touch on 2 just very briefly that I don't want you to use for especially lead generation. So we are moving in a direction where Meta is making things easier and easier, but it's focused more around the e-commerce business. Most of the ad spend that Meta gets is from product-based services. And I know that it has been announced that there is a vision that eventually advertisers will just connect their website, they'll push a button, and Meta's AI will create the ads and the ad varieties. And this can be really impactful for things about a product. But when it comes to something that is so nuanced and that is so like relationship-driven, such as lead generation, this is not something that we want to take advantage of all of the optimizations. So the 2 biggest ones that I'm like, don't do it, girl, like don't do it, is sitelinks. This is like kind of like, oh, this— whenever I see someone that's running a lead generation ad or a complete registration for a webinar and they have sitelinks on, we don't want that. So what a sitelink essentially is, is when a person is scrolling through and they click on the— and they see the ad, there are multiple different options underneath it for them to explore your website. So for example, if I'm running ads for my estate planning attorney client and we're running it to a live workshop in a specific city, Meta wants to sync up with his website and have underneath it like learn about elder law, learn his about page, book a consult with him, and so on, and have that populate underneath. And if you're newer to advertising, that might sound like it's something that would be beneficial, but it's just not in lead generation. It's not. It's just a distraction. Lead generation, we want one action. Now, if this was an e-commerce product, like let's say I was looking at a pink lipstick and the company targets me and it happens to show me a red lipstick and I'm not into red lipsticks, then it gives me variations on the bottom. It now gives me other options to click to, which actually might increase the chance that I make a sale. But when it comes to lead generation, less is more whenever it comes to the choices. So we don't want to have sitelinks on. And the other one is you don't want to use Meta's AI text generation for lead generation. You just don't. What you have written and you have worked out is going to be so much better than anything that their AI comes up with. Read it, check it out. Maybe you're like, I like this line from it, but don't rely on them and give them the right to be able to put brand new text in there and rewrite your ad. I just have not seen it increase conversions at all in the lead generation space. Now, piggybacking off of that, ad optimizations is number 5, and that is ad enhancements. Now, I'm just going to say, if you hear noise back there, as I've been disclosing, I have been in a kitchen renovation for a very long time, and I got some work going on back there. But today's recording day, so we gotta push through, right? Number 5, ad enhancements. When you go in to create your ad, there are going to be lots of different options to have different enhancements turned on. And the default that Meta AI has is for you to have all enhancements on. Now, these enhancements are always changing. So what's an example of an enhancement? Like we can add music, we can add calls to action. So maybe they can take some of your words and pop it on top of the image if they think it'll increase a conversion. Or let's say they, zoom in and zoom out on the video a little bit. Um, they show the top comments first and so on. Some of these are great, but some of them you want to make sure that they're turned off. For example, did you know a default one that is turned on is to translate your ad in multiple different languages? This can be great again for e-commerce, but if you're not bilingual or even multilingual, you don't want your ads going to a population that doesn't speak your primary language, right? So you want to make sure that you turn that off. So be very aware of those ad enhancements. Number 6, and that is ad placement. So when you are running Meta ads, there's lots of different placements that the ads can be served on. For example, most of us are aware of like the newsfeed, right? So you're scrolling and you see the newsfeed or even the stories, or you click on and see that, or the reels and the videos. But there's other spots that Meta advertises on, such as Threads is a new location on their new app that they have. Audience Network, which means that they're advertising on apps and also other websites that they have a relationship with. So you've made it for Meta ads, but all of a sudden you're showing up on this random website that is all about who knows what other topic it might be. There is ads on Reels. And what ads on Reels is, is it's whenever someone's watching a Reel. So I'm watching it about a funny little jumping spider and think it's so cute. And then all of a sudden it pops up a little guide down here that is like a tiny little ad. That can be great for e-commerce. If I was just looking at a pair of sneakers, and I didn't buy them, and then all of a sudden they pop up while I'm watching a reel, it might motivate me to click on it. But if I'm watching that like silly little jumping spider video and all of a sudden it pops up and it's like, plan your retirement, like click here for a free workshop, it's most likely going to be wasted serving space. So we want to control our placements and not serve it in places that are likely to attract bots or are likely to not convert very well on lead generation. Number 7 is knowing the difference and strategically planning for living campaigns and testing campaigns, or living ad sets and testing ad sets. And what I mean by that is when we are running an ad, we're running a campaign, which is going to always have multiple ads. Do not ever run a campaign with just one ad. We talk about that all the time on here. If I'm running a campaign and let's just say, for example, it is for a T65 guide, right? So I'm running it and it's working really well, or it's doing pretty well, but I want to test other ad creatives. There are strategies where you can leave that living campaign alone. Like, we're pretty happy with it. Like, we're like, we're getting Medicare leads, T65, for $5.53, and we're like, this is awesome. I don't want to change anything, but could I get it down to $4? Let's find out. And then you have a separate ad set where we are putting specific ad copy in there and kind of forcing the ad spend to go out on that new creative so we can see if it works or not. So we don't touch our living, breathing campaign. It's like doing its thing, getting us some leads. But now we're going to test a few other creatives. And if those creatives do really well, then we pop them into the living and breathing ad set to allow that to start serving. So having a— when I'm teaching my agents in Insurance Click to Close, I actually call it like your main campaign. And then we have a playground where we can still play around because you want to always be testing right now. If you're super happy with how your ads are going, then I've had campaigns with clients that, no lie, I haven't touched for 5 months at a time. I haven't touched for 5 months because we're getting good leads. The ROI is there. The conversions are good. There's no need to change anything. But having that playground allows you the opportunity to kind of test and play around with different things. Number 8 is AI the right way. Using AI the right way whenever it comes to your marketing and your When you ask— so I love AI right now. My favorite AI is Claude. My second favorite AI is ChatGPT. My third is probably Gemini. But I live in the world of mainly like I have the paid subscription right now for Claude and ChatGPT. I love using them. But what I would never do is say, write me a final expense ad. If you say write me a final expense ad, it's going to say, attention, burial insurance is available. Act right now to get regulated insurance that will help cover all of your final expenses. Don't do that. Wait, click the button and learn more. It's going to be very like an ad, right? Or if it's like Medicare, like we'll help you enroll in Medicare. Click the button below and we'll connect you with your with a licensed Medicare agent that will review your plan. We are here to help. No question is wrong. Click the button now to schedule your free consult. It's very ad-like. In fact, if you go into the Meta ad library and you poke around and you see especially like what lead vendor ads are, most of them are this generic messaging, which we're going to get to that in a second. The way that I recommend that you use AI is. You say something like, I sell annuities and I educate people on different retirement plans. Can you please give me the top 10 pain points or frustrations that people are experiencing that would be optimal for my product? Let AI go get you the language that people are using and come back to you for it. Or you write the ad first where you hit on their pain point, the benefit, and where they're at in the journey, and then you pop it into AI to get some feedback. Or if you need an analogy for a page, you say, I need an analogy for this specific thing that I'm talking about. So it's about using AI the right way. Don't have it just write all of your ads. We're not there yet. I honestly, I, I think there's gonna be a lot of crazy changes with AI. I think it's, we live in such a crazy time, right? But I don't think we're ever going to get to a point like people wanna work with people, right? I don't think we're ever gonna get to a point where AI can write all of our ads for us, especially whenever it comes to a client-based business where you are building trust with people and they need to know the human on the other side. Number nine, and this one is good news. Okay, number nine is authenticity wins. This is the biggest takeaway that I want you to think about when you move forward with 2026. Is now is more of a better time? There's never been a better time than now for you to be truly authentic and to show that you're human. I thought when AI videos started to take over, I thought that people would watch them and embrace them just like any other entertaining video. Like I thought if people thought it was entertaining, they would stick around and watch. But what's actually happening is people are not responding well the moment that they know it's AI, or even if they think that AI wrote it, they're not responding well. Read the comments. There is this silly cockatoo that is AI generated, and a lot of people did not know it on Instagram. And people follow it. They love this bird. They love the AI. They love the owner. They thought that she was real. And as it starts to become revealed that it's AI— and this page is sneaky, they delete any comment that calls it out— but every now and then there'll be some that catch fire and people will start talking about how it's AI. People are mad. They feel they have wasted their time. People don't want perfectly generated, perfectly edited, perfectly AI-created content. They want you, the real person. So now is never a better time for you to make mistakes, for you to show that you're human, for you to not have the most perfectly edited videos. Having that content out there and leading with your authenticity is so extremely important. And number 10, this is a prediction and it's something that I've already seen start to happen, and I know we're going to continue down this path in 2026. And that is generic ads equal higher cost per lead. The generic ads just aren't going to cut it anymore. And let me tell you who is running the most generic ads that you've ever seen in your life— lead vendors. Most lead vendors are running these super generic ads, and they're running them from dummy pages. So this major lead vendor corporation, they are then creating multiple dummy pages like veteran life insurance, senior living, senior news, just for vets, pets, truckers, and so on. They're creating these dummy pages that don't have any content on them. There's no human behind the brand, and then they are running generic ads. And let me tell you, the cost for those leads is going up. It's just going up, up, up, up, up. And guess what's going to happen? They're going to pass it off to you, and they're going to continue to hide behind their secrecy of, we're doing all the things to generate the highest quality leads. And they're going to gaslight you into thinking that it is normal to spend $30 per final expense lead when they are generating them for— probably right now, I would say mostly vendors are generating them for like $10, maybe $12, maybe $15 for those really generic messaging. But like I can tell you, the final expense agents that are brand new that are in my group are generating leads from $7 to $12. So I am seeing the cost per lead slowly rise in these spaces where they don't have a human behind the brand. And let me tell you, if you are IUL, if you are any type of long-term care, if you are annuity planning, if you are these larger products, products that market to a very specific type of clientele, those costs per lead are going even more up because these are the people that really want to be able to trust who they're speaking to. Like, I'm not going to tell you, yeah, I've got $100K just sitting in the bank account that I'm not doing anything with unless I can kind of trust you a little bit and know that there's a human behind it. So these generic messaging, they're going to continue to go up. And that's why I'm seeing those types of leads be like $100, $150, $175. I've seen one vendor that's offering annuity leads for like $250. Like, are you freaking kidding me? So the reason behind that isn't because their screening and their quality is so high. It's because their messaging is generic. They don't have any trust behind their branding, and they are just hammering out the ad spend. And that's the only thing that they have on you. So just know that as we progress in today's day and age. Those costs are going to slowly go up, and I don't want them to be passed off to you. So even if this is not the year for you to start running ads, start building some sort of a personal brand and presence on social media so that when people land on your page, they know that you're a real person, you're someone that they can trust, you're someone that has empathy for them, and you are someone that they appreciate your character. Whew, okay, that was a lot. I told you it was going to kind of be all over the place, but those are kind of the 10 things that I really want you to know moving forward. Now, if you have a specific question about one, because each of these 10 things could— they could be a video in and of themselves for us to really dive into. If you have any questions, drop them below, or if you have any suggestions of what you want to learn more about, let me know as well. And if you found this video helpful, please go ahead, hit that subscribe button. This is the year that I truly want to get my message out there as much as possible, because the longer I'm in this industry, just the more irritated and And disappointed that I get with how many vendors and systems are out there that are designed to trap agents. And I see how many agents are taken advantage of. I see it. And I just want you to know it doesn't have to be that way. And I'm on a mission to make that change. So thank you so much for watching this video, and I will see you in the next one.