3 Insurance Lead Generation Mistakes Costing Agents Thousands

I see the same 3 mistakes happening over and over again. It's happening with independent agents and it's happening with large agencies whenever it comes to their lead generation efforts. Now, the first mistake is definitely costing you business and is, in my opinion, the largest mistake that you can make. And the third one that I'm going to be sharing, this is going to uncover a massive opportunity that 99% of agents are not taking advantage of. So let's dive in. In case we haven't met yet, my name is Shauna and I teach insurance agents and other licensed professionals how they can own their leads, own their marketing, and own their growth. Unlike so many solutions in the insurance space, I do not teach dependency, I teach capability. So if that is something that you're interested in diving deeper into, hit that subscribe button, check out my description below. I always have linked my next live training as well as some other good freebies to get you jump started on the journey of owning your Now, I want you to imagine that you are living in a house that you truly love. You've been there a while, but it just happens to be a rental. But you love this house so much that you've decided to invest your time, your money, and your energy. You've made some upgrades in the kitchen. Maybe you've upgraded the floor a little bit. You've painted the walls to be a beautiful color. And then all of a sudden, the landlord walks in and says, hey, I actually need you to move out because I'm going to be selling this house. Oh no. The reality is he can take that because it's his property that you are just renting. You don't actually own anything about the actual house. That is one of the things that I see happen all the time, whether it is a large agency or an independent agent, when they work with marketers inside of the insurance space. And that is why the biggest mistake that I see, number one, is not owning your marketing. And there's 2 different aspects to you not owning your marketing. So number one is the scenario where you're actually running your ads from someone else's assets, where the marketers actually own the ad account and you are essentially paying them to generate leads. But if you guys dissolve the relationship, they have essentially built up their assets. Let's say we're running Medicare ads. So I've got a page, I've got an ad account that is now optimized for Medicare leads. I can just plug someone else in and then sell those leads to them and set up this done-for-you system that I technically own as the marketer. So that's number one, is not owning your actual assets. And number 2, whenever it comes to not owning your marketing, is all of the generic messaging that is out there whenever it comes to insurance lead generation ads. Most of the time, marketing agencies in your space are using things like Social Security checks, grocery cards, gift card giveaways, even restaurant giveaways, and all of these different sensationalized deadlines lines in order to get people to take action. What they are not typically doing is using a messaging that is going to build trust, set you up for an advisor, and make it where when you actually have the conversation, they're ready to buy whatever you have to offer instead of you having to sell it. The reality is, guys, this is such a detrimental mistake because no one is going to care about your messaging And about what is representing you and your company more than you are. And I understand, like, some of these large agencies I work with, they do need to be outsourcing their ads. I have full ad management with multiple different clients still because they're large enough that they need someone like me to be running their ads. But here's the thing, they need to actually understand what is actually happening inside of their ad account, and they need to understand the messaging. Now, When I worked with clients regularly, um, in more of an agency format, now I'm more focused on helping with the overall strategy. I'm keeping my long-term clients, but the overall strategy and teaching independent agents and working with independent agents on getting them to own their own lead generation. But when my agency was primarily focusing on running ads for different entrepreneurs and different licensed professionals, we didn't create the ads for them. In fact, we had them create the first draft of the ads, so we had their language and their values and what they believed in, and then we helped them tweak that messaging to make it be high-converting for whatever it is we were trying to get— webinar registrations, showing up for an event, maybe a lead magnet, or even a direct-to-consult. The reality is, when you have strong messaging and you have strong marketing and you have already established trust with someone, You don't have to do the selling. It's already going to happen because they're going to understand what they're signing up for. They're going to look at you as an advisor, and they're going to actually listen to what you have to say. I understand what it feels like to be like, I want nothing to do with marketing. Like, a little thing to let you know that I talked about in a previous video, when I first started my online business, it was actually to be a dating coach, and I freaking hated marketing. I was like, can I just hire someone? I actually did. I hired— A marketing coach. Uh, someone to run ads for me before I knew anything that I was doing, and I didn't like what the ads were saying, which is what made me start getting into the ads, made me start learning Facebook ads, and then I started getting clients and so on. We can link to that video where you can hear my full journey, but I essentially was like, I don't like this. This is a mystery to me. But the reality is no one is going to be able to speak to your audience better than you can. And if you cannot speak to your audience yet, if you do not know how to speak to people that are considering who they're gonna work with through Medicare, or they They don't even know that they need a life insurance policy, or they're unsure about their retirement planning. You need to know how to do that before you can oversee someone to do that for you. So let's talk about— there are 3 different levels whenever it comes to hiring someone to manage your ads. Okay? And the first 2 are really bad. And the last one is the way that things should be if you're gonna actually be outsourcing it. Okay? So level 1, this is a code red. Okay? Their assets plus their generic messaging. This is essentially the same thing as working with a lead vendor, or maybe you're working with a done-for-you system where it is essentially the marketer's dummy pages that they're running ads from, and then it is the marketer's dummy generic messaging that they're running from. You have nothing to do with the process. They just give you the leads. You don't really know the messaging that they come in with. Level 2, which is Code Yellow, your assets But they're generic messaging. So maybe they are using your Facebook page mixed with their ad account, or maybe it's even your ad account and your Facebook page, but they are setting up the exact same ChatGPT ad creatives for you and for every single one of their clients. There are a lot of these, I will set up your ads for you systems out there, and they will just use the same ads for every single person. So we've got the same AI video for final expense with the same AI testimonial for final expense with the same written content for final expense. It just goes to all of their clients and they like to say, this is a high converting final expense ad and so on. Sure, maybe it will get you some user information, but it's not going to do the same thing as if we are actually branding you and your page. And then level 3, which is in my opinion the only way that you should be outsourcing your marketing, and that is where it is with your ad account. Your Facebook page, and you are involved with the messaging. And like I said, that is the only way that I ever ran ads, whether I was working with a doctor, an attorney, an estate planning attorney. Um, I also worked with other different course creators, people from HR, and people that are in the screenwriting field. All of my different clients were very involved because if you're gonna be spending money on running ads and running assets, then you should at least be building up your brand and you should be building an audience, which we're really gonna touch on with number 3 as I uncover like Like a massive opportunity in the insurance space. But I want you to know, if you're gonna be outsourcing it, if you're gonna be spending your hard-earned money, it should be going towards building up your assets and getting your brand awareness out there. So let's move on to mistake number 2. Now, mistake number 2 is kind of sort of like you are on a road trip, you're driving somewhere, but the only thing that you can see inside of your car is how fast you're going. You can see you're going 60 miles per hour, but you don't know how much gas you have left. You don't know if the engine is overheating. All you are focused on is the speed. And that is why mistake number 2 is not understanding what metrics to look at. So many agents only look at what their cost per lead is. So they launch an ad and then they become obsessed with what their cost per lead is. And you know what? Your cost per lead is super duper important. We of course want to get your cost per lead at something that is going to make sure that you get the maximum revenue back from it. Which by the way, I get asked all the time, like, what's the going rate for someone that starts running their own ads in like the Medicare space or final expense or even annuities or even IUL or so on? What's the going rate? I'm gonna tell you, when agents work with myself, when they are enrolled in my course, it is very realistic for your first campaign to start bringing in leads around what a lead vendor is charging you. So for example, Medicare leads go between $20 and $30. It is very easy for your first campaign to bring you in Medicare T65 leads for under $20, $20 to $25. Now, I always say I will never be a marketer that overpromises and underdelivers, because as we're gonna talk about right now, there are lots of elements that go into why your cost per lead is what it is. And I don't control what happens with Meta. I just know the rules of their playground really well, and I know how to get the best results from it. But when we first launch, you're a brand new ad account and you're running final expense ads. It's very realistic for you to start generating leads between $18 and $20. Now, our goal is going to be to use other metrics and to be able to hone in everything and get that lead all the way down. So for example, I have one agent that's generating Medicare leads for $3.36. Insane. She says it's the best quality she's ever had. We have a full interview I will link below that you can watch her story. Most Medicare agents are generating leads right now for around like $8, but Your very first launch that you're going to have, it's very realistic for you to start generating leads at whatever lead vendor price is. That is super realistic, and then we can start bringing it down from there. But it all comes down to knowing what metrics to look at. So a lot of agents don't realize that when we're running ads, there's actually over 350 different metrics that the ads manager gives us access to. We don't need to look at all 350. Sometimes it's fun to like scooch around and look at different ones, but there's multiple, there's about 4 that I teach agents to really hone in. So let's talk about these. So the first thing that we're going to look at is the link click-through rate, not the click-through rate. So the click-through rate means anyone that's clicked at any point in your ad, but the purpose of our lead generation ads is to get them to click on the link, whether it's to go to a landing page or it is to bring them onto a Meta lead form. So we're gonna look at that link click-through rate. Now there's a little catch to the link click-through rate that I'm about to tell you about. Number 2, we're gonna look at what the form conversion rate is. Or what the landing page conversion rate is. Now, in my course, Insurance Click to Close, I teach new agents to start off using a Meta lead form for many different reasons. They're optimized for mobile. We've got lots of quality filters like SMS verification, even open it in Messenger and chat. We can add custom questions, we can use conditional logic, and so on. But when we're running with a landing page, we really, really, really need to know what the landing page conversion rate is. Specifically with cold traffic, with people that have never been there. So if your ad, if you've got a super crazy high cost per lead and we look at it and we go, lots of people be clicking on the link, they're going to the link, we're getting them there, but then no one's converting once they get on the landing page, guess what? Your ad isn't broken, it's your landing page. So that tells us the exact hole that we need to start working on. Another metric that we pay close attention to is the CPM, which stands for cost per mille. In other words, it stands for how much Meta is charging you to get in front of 1,000 different eyeballs. Now, we expect that rate to be higher in Q4 because a lot more advertisers are marketing to the same people. And there's some things that we can't control what the CPM is. But there are other things that we can do as advertisers that can help us get Meta to lower that CPM and that can get Meta to give us like a discount for running our ads. Now, if you're interested in learning all about how we can lower our CPM, like what's within our control, drop that down below because I'm happy to talk about it. Um, because like I said, there's some things we can control and other things that we can't. Now here's a little catch whenever it comes to reading your metrics. We have to advertise in the Meta special ad category, so technically we are open targeting 18 to 64. 65+. However, the good news is we live in a day and age where the content finds the user. So when we have very specific messaging, we should see our ads reach who it's actually serving it to. We should see it swing in the first 1,000 to 3,000 impressions, so eyeballs, getting in the right age demographic, or else there's something wrong with our message. So when we are looking at what is going on inside of the ad account, We want to break down the metrics based on age because if I'm running a Medicare ad and I look and I have a 0.5 link click-through rate, that's gonna tell me our click-through rate is not getting enough people to actually click on the ad. But if I break it down and I see we've got a terrible link click-through rate with people that are like 30 to 50, that's like a 0.2. But then whenever I look at 64 plus, I'm seeing a link click-through rate that is like 1.2%. Mm-hmm. It's just the overall average that makes it look bad. I'm gonna go, this ad's doing exactly what I want it to do. I'm gonna let it keep serving. I'm gonna let it keep optimizing, and I'm not gonna change anything because clearly the right demographic is clicking and the wrong ones are not. And when you first start running ads and you're a brand new ad account, it's gonna take a minute for the algorithm to hone in on who it actually needs to be serving your ads to. But that is mistake number 2, is not understanding how to look at the metrics because that is going to give you the overall picture of what decisions we need to make in order to make changes to keep getting that cost per lead down. And this brings us to mistake number 3, which I hope opens your eyes to what I see as the largest opportunity right now in the insurance lead generation space. Now, I want you to imagine that you are going fishing on a lake that you know is well stocked with fish, and you show up in the morning, you can see the beautiful lake, and you can see that there are 20 other Fishermen that have shown up before you, and for whatever reason, all 20 of them are at one spot of the lake. They have all of their hooks dropped in and they're all trying to pluck fish outta the water from the exact same spot. Are you going to walk right up to where they're at and drop your hook in there? Or are you going to see all of the other opportunities that are within the lake and maybe try to drop your hook at a different location? Because essentially in the insurance lead generation space, Everyone has their lines in the exact same spot. And that is why mistake number 3 is only top of the funnel content. Now, what I mean by that is let's talk about what audience awareness is. So let's take a look at these slides that I have. So there are essentially 5 different levels of audience awareness, but I like to kind of break things down and make it more simple. So the 3 different stages of audience awareness that I like to to focus on are the unaware. They don't even know that they have a problem or that they need your solution. They don't know that they need life insurance yet. They think that their retirement is going to be fine because they have a 401. They think that they have enough life insurance coverage based on their employer. They think that Medicare, you automatically get enrolled, and so on. They're not even aware that they have a problem. Then there are those that are aware, and they're going through a little bit of an interest, a little bit of evaluation. They understand that there might be an issue. They are like, I'm going to have to talk to a Medicare agent. I'm open to kind of looking into different agents and considering who I might want to work with. And then there is the group of people that are ready. They want to take action. They want to show up to your live event about retirement planning. They want to talk to someone about what an IUL is. They know that they don't have enough mortgage protection to keep their family safe if something were to happen within the family. They know that they need dental insurance, so they are ready to Speak to someone. But here's what most insurance agents, and I would say most, like even marketing agencies, seem to forget. Okay? Whenever it comes to the people that are ready to take action, it's only about 3 to 5%. There are only 3 to 5% of all of the fish within the pond that are ready to take action. But here's the thing. So with only the 3%, however, 99%, I'm gonna say every insurance audit I have ever performed, but I'm gonna be safe and say 99% are targeting the same 3%. That means that there is an entire group of people that don't even have any content that is ready for them to be consumed. And I'm gonna tell you, 90% of the content that I see Insurance agents make is also focused on that same 3%. It's all about book a call, get a quote, get a free consult. Do you see the gap that exists in the insurance lead generation space? There are all of these people that are unaware and that are aware that you could jump in, and if you just drop your hook at the right spot, you can move them from being unaware to being ready to actually speak to you. So the unaware people, they don't know. that Medicare doesn't cover everything. They don't know that there's choices beyond Original Medicare. They don't understand enrollment deadlines or penalties. They don't, they're not even thinking about Medicare yet. They don't know that there are very important things that they have to meet whenever they turn 64. So, they're not even looking for you yet. They don't know that they have a problem. Then there are those people that are a little bit aware. They know that they have a problem. They're researching. They know that Medicare has gaps. They know that there's probably Original Medicare and Medicare Advantage options. They know they're going to have They know they have to make a decision. They know there's enrollment windows, but they don't know what plan's right for them. They don't know what questions to ask. They don't know who to trust. They don't know that they actually need an agent, and they can't just talk to someone from 1-800 numbers that are going to be ringing them. And then there are those that are actually ready. They understand their options, and they're ready to move forward. They're just trying to decide what specific plan and who to actually speak to. 3% to 5% of the audience is ready, yet 99% of insurance content is Is focusing around just those people. There is a huge gap in your industry that is just waiting for you to fill and for you to start getting people from that unaware stage all the way up to that ready stage. So let's briefly talk about, I just wanna share this whole like thing of, of a funnel. And I, I understand, I call it funnels too, that we're building where we're taking leads and trying to get them to convert. But so many lead vendors and these done-for-you systems will say, It's just about volume. It's a volume thing. If you just purchase more leads and if you just dial, dial, dial, eventually someone's going to convert. But here's the thing, when you are trying to talk to people that are getting hammered with just that 3% ad, or worse, it's a bait and switch ad. It's an ad that says you're gonna qualify for extra Social Security, or it's an Outback Steak gift card, like that they're actually interested. And you're like, by the way, can we talk about your like home and auto insurance? Instead of thinking about the volume, I like to think about building something that I call the PCB, the prospect conveyor belt. And that is where you are making content that takes people from being unaware to aware to ready to turning into a client. And if you look at all of my marketing efforts, clearly, like, I, I'm very passionate about helping agents, but I do make money from helping agents, right? I have a course that I'm selling. I don't make all of my content about, uh, the, the agents that are just ready to take action. I have nurturing content because that allows people to, one, they get to know me and you either are like, yeah, this girl could be a good mentor for me to learn from. I like her teaching style. Or you're like, I don't like her teaching style. 2, I can take you from being unaware that you are capable of running your own ads to making you feel confident that you can, to making you go, I'm gonna trust her and I'm gonna enroll in her course. It all is working. Once I get one conversion from an agent, I know that I've got others that are right behind. Maybe you're one of them. If you think that I'm a right mentor for you, I hope I'll see you at my next live training that is linked below. But you can do the same thing with no matter what your product is that you're offering. Now, this is what I want you to do. I want you to get obsessed with what your prospects are actually saying. At different points of their journey. I want you to get obsessed with what their problems are, what their questions are, how you can actually speak to them. The reason why I am good at selling to insurance agents is I am obsessed with what you guys say. I am lurking in your Reddit forum all the freaking time. I'm in so many different insurance groups, not because I'm trying to sell you anything. I'm trying to get to know you. I wanna know what keeps you up at night. And then I take it a level deeper and I'm obsessed with what What the Medicare beneficiary is stressing over. I want to know what someone that is going to sign up for annuity planning, or that is going to talk about long-term care, or that is going to be interested in an IUL— I want to know what those people are obsessed with. What are people thinking when they purchase a house that we can get them to realize that they need home mortgage protection? And so on. These are the things that are so crucial and important that only you can do for your business. If I just said to someone, I have this course, I just wanna focus on the course content. You go make me some AI ads and build up trust with agents. You wouldn't trust me. Agents trust me. I have thousands of agents that I work with because they get to know and like and trust me from seeing me. It's the same thing with you. When you're running ads, people are going to click over to your page and they're going to be interested in what you have to say and what you have to offer. And whenever you have things that can help them open their eyes in a different way, you can help them realize You do need final expense. You can help them realize this is actually something, if you are on a tight budget, this is actually something that is created for you to protect your family. You can show them that. You can show people that you have gaps in your coverage, and your kids, if they have one bad dental bill and one bad accident, this is what it could cost you. Talk to me, and I'm going to help you find a custom plan. Can you see how passionate I am about getting to the actual problem that you're going to be solving? And then it's a beautiful thing. You don't ever have to sell. All you have to do is help people be matched with the right solution for them, and it just makes the whole process feel good. And that is why mistake number 3 is not knowing how to speak to your audience at different levels of awareness. I hope that you learned something today and you enjoyed this video, and if you did, I'm going to ask you to click that subscribe button. I'm truly on a mission to get in front of as many insurance agents as possible and share this information that I truly truly believe that you deserve to know. Now, the biggest takeaway from this is you don't need to understand the entire journey and the entire hike that is in front of you to just start walking in the right direction. One of the biggest things that you can do is just start becoming obsessed with what your ideal client has to say. Go in their Facebook groups, have an AI do a deep research, check out what they're saying in different communities so that way you can truly get to them. Marketing truly is, in my opinion, a 3-part skill set. It is the science of data mixed with the art of intuition with the skill to execute. It's all 3 of those. It's the science of data. That's actually understanding what the metrics mean. It is the art of intuition. This is honing in your messaging and knowing how to speak to the people in a way that they're going to actually listen, mixed with the skill of execution. Execution, and that's actually understanding how to navigate the platforms that you're going to be advertising on. You don't need to understand it all at once to start moving in that right direction. As always, if you have any questions, if you have any comments, if you have any ideas, drop them below. I truly do read every single comment, and it means the world to me that you have stuck with me until the end of the video. So until next time, I will see you in the next video.