Shauna Thoresen identifies three lead generation traps that waste insurance agents' money: buying generic leads with no brand value, hiring marketers who run ads from dummy accounts the agent doesn't own, and using done-for-you systems where the provider owns the landing pages and CRM. When partnerships end, agents lose everything and start over.
Chapters
You dissolve the relationship, you walk away starting from zero, they walk away with an optimized ad account for T65, final expense, annuity, IUL, whatever it is that you're running ads for. There are 3 different hamster wheels that insurance agents get stuck on all the time. And here's the really bad thing is the first one, most agents know, yeah, I'm on a hamster wheel, and they might even think that it's temporary. But the other 2, they think that they've achieved freedom when in reality you've just hopped on another wheel that you got to keep running on. The first one is obvious. It's purchasing leads from lead vendors, and you know the drill with this. You're essentially gambling your money because you have no idea what the actual ad was that attracted the individual. You also know going in that none of the ads are actually branded to you as an individual, so there's zero trust whenever you finally decide to pick up that phone and call someone. The second hamster wheel is hiring someone to generate leads for you. Now, this might feel like, oh, I've achieved freedom. I have this person that's going to be running ads, and any leads that they get from those ads, I just pay a monthly fee. They're gonna send them over to me. But here's the thing that so many agents don't realize. Many marketers that operate that way don't disclose the fact that they're actually going to be running those ads on their ad account in their dummy Facebook pages. You're not going to have access to any of the metrics. They're going to be using the exact same generic ads for every single agent that they run ads for. You're just another person that they plug into a specific ad set. You dissolve the relationship, you walk away starting from zero. They walk away with an optimized ad account for T65, final expense, annuity, IUL, whatever it is that you're running ads for. The third one is even more deceiving, and it's these done-for-you lead generation systems where they say that they're going to help you customize everything. You're going to build a landing page, maybe it's a VSL funnel, and they're going to help you have everything set up. But again, what they don't disclose is that they're actually going to be building all of your assets on ones that they own. So essentially, your landing page, your initial CRM automation that's being sent out, the ads that are being ran, and so on are actually owned by them. Once again, you decide to dissolve the relationship, you walk away with nothing, they walk away with more optimized accounts. The most impactful thing that you can do for your business is to take control of your lead generation, whether you're running it, someone on your team is, that you're actually running it with your own assets. Because when you own your leads, you own your marketing, you own your growth.
