5 Lies Insurance Agents Are Told About Leads - That Keep You Dependent

Gaslighting, brainwashing, and even a little love bombing. No, I'm not talking about the modern dating world, but what I am talking about is the insurance industry. More specifically, the insurance industry for the insurance agents. That's right. Today is definitely going to rub some people the wrong way. We are going to be looking at some alleged lead vendor ads. We are going to be dissecting some direct quotes from industry leaders, all while I share with you 5 ways that I am seeing agents being brainwashed and then gaslit whenever it comes to lead generation and marketing. In case we haven't met yet, my name is Shauna and I teach insurance agents and other licensed professionals how to generate their own exclusive leads. Because the truth is, when you own your marketing, you own your growth. Now, when I entered the insurance space in 2022, I came in with about 7 years of experience. I had managed multiple millions of dollars, primarily in ad spend across Meta platforms and then Google, uh, primarily focusing on YouTube I've worked across numerous different industries, and what I saw in the insurance space shocked me. It surprised me how unethical so many business practices are when it comes to you guys, the agents. One, these marketing agencies that set things up in a deceptive way, in my opinion, that they don't fully disclose to the agent that when you pay them, you're actually building up their brand instead of your own brand. And number 2, this whole like dependency model of trying to normalize Is that you should just buy T65 leads for $30, or you should spend $20 to $30 on a final expense lead, and all of your other leads should be somewhere between $15 to, I mean, I've seen annuity leads be like $250, that this is just the norm and that you should just continue buying leads. And the people that are telling you this are often profiting from this business model in some way. So I do things differently. I don't teach dependency, I teach capability. So we're gonna be diving in today, these 5 different ways that I'm seeing agents being brainwashed. And while you're here, if you're into this type of stuff, you wanna learn how to take control of your marketing, go ahead and hit that subscribe button because that is what my channel is dedicated to showing you. So the very first lie that we are going to debunk is real entrepreneurs buy leads. I see industry leaders in your space all the time preach to you that if you have the entrepreneurial mindset, then you buy leads. Now look, we're gonna be pulling some direct quotes from some actual leaders, and for the most part, I have most of their names that are like blocked off. I am not trying to call certain people out, but I am just trying to open your eyes to maybe a different way to see certain things. So the one that we're gonna be talking about for this one is this agency owner has on her Instagram, she shares employee versus entrepreneur. Neither is right or wrong. Figure out what you want and pick your lane. If you don't wanna pay for leads, you're not ready to be an entrepreneur. Mm. I have to wholeheartedly disagree with this. Yes. Do I pay for leads whenever I'm running ads and I'm generating my own insurance agents' leads in order to eventually try to sell my course to them? Yeah, absolutely. But the difference is I'm building a brand, I am building trust, and I'm investing in assets that are only going to continue to propel me forward. When you are buying leads from a lead vendor, you're actually paying for their pages and their branding to continue to build, and you're essentially just renting Now, this exact same agency owner shares in the video that this quote came from. She says, if your first question is, do I have to pay for leads? It's not a bad question, but it's a very telling one. It tells me you're not looking at this like a business owner. Now, I really hate wording things like that because it almost like is ridicule of like shaming you where it's like, you poor little thing, you don't understand what it's like to own a business. You're so cute. I'm gonna teach you right now. I don't like setting things up that way, and there's a lot of things that I I see in this space that is almost like everyone's doing this way. Like, why would you do it the other way? Like, everybody's doing it. And I don't like that. I don't like that at all. Then she continues to say leads aren't an expense, they're inventory. She uses the analogy that it's like if you had a restaurant that you owned, that you wouldn't say, do I have to buy food? You would understand it's inventory. So she says the risk isn't paying for leads, it's what you need in order to make money. Now, interestingly enough, this agency has a program where they set you up where you can buy leads, and then of course course, you can get some coaching of how to actually sell them on the phone. But here's the thing. Well, yes, as an entrepreneur, there are real expenses, there are marketing expenses that you need to actually invest in to grow your business in the longevity. The thing that they are not sharing with you is that you're actually building their lender up, you're building their IMO up, you're building their page up, you're investing in their coaching. To me, it's all a sales pitch that is disguised as advice. The reality is, and the truth is, real entrepreneurs build a brand and generate their own leads. Do I run my own ads and generate insurance leads through running my own Meta ads? Yeah, I absolutely do. Do I have to pay for that? Yes. But here's the thing, I'm building an asset. I'm building my own brand. I'm building trust with the agents. It's my own message that's attracting them, and Every single agent, if you are in this for the longevity of this, if you are, especially if you're trying to build out an agency or even if you're an independent agent, the key here is not renting your growth. It is investing your money. If you're gonna be spending money on buying leads, why not spend it running those ads from the accounts that you own that are going to compound over time? So in several years, you have a highly optimized ad account that you're only having to check on ads like every other week for like 15 minutes. Or if you did decide to outsource it, you actually understand how to manage the person that you are outsourcing your ads to. So the thing that I don't like about this real entrepreneurs buy leads is to me it's disguised as advice whenever it's really just a tactic to get you to continue buying leads from the source that they want you to buy leads from. Lie number 2, and this one really pisses me off. And it is, the lead was good, you weren't. Now, I kid you not, I literally was just on Instagram a few weeks ago and I heard these 2 bros that both happened to sell leads talking about how they cannot stand whenever agents use the excuse, the lead wasn't good. They were saying, the lead, it's never the lead. And I quote this, this is what was saying. I can't stand when agents come back to me and say the leads were no good. I'm sorry, they were interested in insurance until they spoke to you. This really irritates me because this is gaslighting at its finest. It is them trying to flip it around and say that what the lead was generated with has nothing to do with the conversation that you were having. And we all know, listen, the best policies are bought, not sold. And so they sell you a lead without actually showing you the messaging, and then they expect you to be able to get on the phone instantly, build up trust and rapport, even if they came in from a misleading ad, and get them to convert. This is really irritating because the quality of the lead is dictated by the messaging. And I want us to dig in and look at a couple of different alleged lead vendor ads. Now, there is an asset that is called the Meta Ad Library where you can go look at any of the active or even past active ads that are being ran. And I have a very good radar of what pages are being ran as a lead vendor page. Now, I have another video where I break down how lead vendors set up their assets. If you wanna hear more about that, I'd, I love to dive into that. But essentially, I want you to understand that lead vendors are going to have one business asset container that has their public-facing page that's connected to their LLC and all of their branding, and that's what they are posting from. And then they will own a second business asset, and within that they will create lots of different dummy Facebook pages. And when I say a dummy Facebook page, I mean a page that has minimal branding, a generic name. It's got a profile photo, it's got a cover photo. Minimal post, if any, and then they will run hundreds and hundreds of ads from there. They'll have that dummy page connected to its own ad account, and then they will add in their team, whoever they have that's going to be running their ads. And sometimes they'll make the page focus primarily on seniors. So one's primarily for Medicare T65 and then also final expense, and then another one's focused more on life insurance or P&C, or even we've got annuity, we've got IUL, and so on. And they will run these ads. Let's look at a couple of these because I want you to to see what type of messaging the lead that you just purchased might have come from. All right, so let's look at this one. So this one is a final expense ad, and it says, final notice, $40,000 burial benefit is closing soon. Thousands have already claimed theirs. Just a few spots remain. So you can already see that it's hooking people in thinking that they're going to instantly qualify for this. It even kind of alludes to the fact that it might be available to all seniors. I mean, if you watch the video, it alludes that it could even be something that is free from some state burial program. Mm-hmm. Next, it's shocking. Okay, millions with Medicare and Medicaid have zero clue that you can get an extra grocery allowance. So we are literally leading with the fact that you could qualify for more money. So what do you think this lead's going to say when you get on the phone with them? Do I get more money or not? My very first Facebook ad audit with a Medicare agent, I talk about this in a past video, he was getting leads for $2 and something, and He wanted me to look at his ad account and I got nervous because I was like, I don't think I can help you decrease your cost per lead. And then we dug in and these were the types of ads that he had ran. This was back in '22. These are current ads. And he had these types of ads that had been set up by a marketing agency. So no wonder none of his leads were interested. Now this one's P&C and this one breaks down that there's a way for you to get 90% in savings of your Insurance. Now, what's interesting is I literally pulled this ad like right before I started this video, and it still says 2025. So, I guess they just still have it running. So, you can see, massively discounted home insurance. What do you think this person wants when they talk to you on the phone? This one, veterans benefits. They don't realize that they're eligible to receive $2,220 back into their Social Security. Okay, so again, leading with the fact that you could get some money. Another one that is for veterans that is saying, and that's the thing, like there will be dummy pages that focus primarily on veterans and so on. They're such a target audience whenever it comes to, uh, these lead vendors. But you can see that only a small part, and it really, really alludes to the fact that if you click and you qualify and you're a veteran, you're going to get this money back. We've got this one for Medicare. There is a deadline. Again, I pulled this from the ad library. Now we are not in AEP, we are not in OEP, and they are trying to say That if you click right now and you claim before the deadline, that you could qualify for more money. Then we've got this beautiful guy. It's a gift card giveaway. Now, if you read the fine print, I think it says that you have to be open to, I can't remember which plan, is it a Medicare plan audit? Is that CMS compliant? Not as far as I understand, but does it stop them from running these types of ads? No. Another one. This is a giveaway. You can win free tickets to Disney World. Tell me, how is someone that wants to win free tickets to Disney World automatically going to be interested in P&C insurance or wants to talk to you about life insurance or all of a sudden has enough money to invest in IUL? Like, probably not. Okay, this one, attention seniors, it's your last chance for $2,500 in groceries. What is this person going to want to talk about whenever you call them? This one right here, it's literally showing you that you can save so much money on your home rates, right? So before and after. What is this person going to expect? This guy right here struggling to keep up with bills. It's literally leaning into people that desperately want more money and are going to click on this ad and are going to convert because it is alluding to the fact they could get $3,300 that could help you breathe easier. And our last example today, this $3,300 Flex Card, tap to claim it. This takes you to where it would be an inbound call where you chat with an AI agent and then it will It'll transfer you over to an agent. These are the things that your leads that you buy from lead vendors are seeing. And if you're buying from a lead vendor that says, which we're gonna get to that next slide, but they say, listen, we have such high quality messaging, then show it to us. Show it to us. Back in the day, whenever SEO, search engine optimization, was such a big thing, people had websites that they spent so much time and energy into optimizing with keywords to rank highly on Google. And a lot of lead vendors did that. They had blog posts that were about how to enroll in Medicare, the IEPs, questions people have for Medicare, comparing Original versus Advantage, what is the supplemental options that they have, all of these things. Because the idea was a senior would be Googling this, would land on this Medicare information website, right? And then that information website would have a way to convert them, like get your free checklist, get your free guide, get your free— back in the day, it was like get your ebook. People liked ebooks. Don't use ebooks now, but get your free ebook. And people would give their information and then they would sell that senior's information as a lead. And most agents were able to know how that lead was generated. They know it takes a lot of time and energy into ranking on Google with SEO or paying per click and that type of thing. So they knew that the lead was coming in interested in Medicare. Enter Facebook ads in like 2016, 2015, whenever you could get hyper-targeted and you could put this very generic messaging out there and zero in on the targeting. That is when lead vendors started using deception as their marketing tactic. If it's so hard to do what they're doing, then why wouldn't they show you the messaging? It's because they know that it would be very easy for you to create a dummy page and start doing the same thing. Or better, you create a real page that is actually your name, that actually builds trust, that actually starts to build a brand that people trust, recognize, and feel proud to recommend you to people. So, So, the truth is, the message determines the quality of the conversation. There is a big difference when you are talking to someone about final expense, and they clicked on it because they thought that they were going to get some sort of free state-funded burial program that would protect their family, and all they had to do was click a button. Talking to that person versus someone that understands there is a plan that is out there. If you're on a fixed budget, this can actually protect your family. What would your family be dealing with if they were hit with a $10,000, $11,000, $20,000 funeral bill. You can protect them from that. What type of conversation are you going to have with someone that clicks on the ad that they actually want to protect their family? Or if you are talking to a senior that thinks they're going to get a $3,300, like, flex card versus a senior that is reading, there are crucial deadlines you have to meet before you're 65. I will help you find the most personalized Medicare plan and make sure that your doctors are in network and your prescriptions are covered and so on. What type of conversation is that going to be? One is defense, one is a real conversation. So I want you to open your eyes to, if you take one thing from this, oh, I just got fired up, didn't I? If you take one thing from this, the message dictates the quality of the conversation. Okay? I could generate leads for my own business with insurance agents by talking like sensationalized numbers of like, you could for sure generate leads for this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It would probably bring my cost per lead down. It would, but no, I would rather actually have honest messaging that's going to attract agents that are actually interested in what I have to offer. Just like you should be interested in having ads that are actually about the product that you are trying to offer to them. So when you actually get them in the seat in front of you, it's a conversation and it's not playing defense. Lie number 3, ads are too technical for you to learn. Now, for this little example, I'm gonna pull from a comment that someone made on my own Instagram. Instagram page. So I had posted and I had said, 2 questions every insurance agent should ask before hiring a marketing agency. And then I talk about how when I'm at conferences, I always ask the marketing agencies, hi, do you run your ads from the agent's ads or from your own ad account? And they always run it from their own ad account. So this was a comment that was on my own page, and this person says, there are pros and cons to this. Most agents don't have the time or budget to build a Meta Ads account from scratch. Um, it literally takes like under 10 minutes for you to build it, and then you need a budget of like maybe $10 a day to start running ads. Getting out of learning, building an audience, a lookalike audience, targeting the right people who want to see your ads take time and money. Okay, I, I'm just gonna stop right here because I have to. First of all, the day and age of focusing on just targeting is gone. We live in a day and age where the content finds the user. So even though we're in a, and also we're in a special ad category, so we can't do as much targeting as we used to be able to. We can control the campaign structure, we can control the placements, and we can control the creatives, and we can control the specific creatives to the specific placements, which makes a world of a difference. So we can do that. And the fact that this person says a lookalike audience, You can't build a lookalike audience. This tells me this person's, that they sell leads to whoever they're using. They don't understand how Meta ads actually work. You can't use a, um, lookalike audience and it is not a waste of time and money. You can learn how to run your own ads and set it up in like a week. And then as long as you understand what the metrics means and you know how to read the data and you're committed to learning how to hone in your messaging, it's something that's absolutely doable. Then this person continues to say, piggybacking on someone else's account allows agents to skip the line and still get the leads at cost plus a reasonable management fee. I'm sorry, if you saw my video that is posted, I have a Medicare agent that is sharing how she's getting some leads for $3.36 and her like overall cost per lead is $8.36. Makes sense. How much are those T65 leads normally sold? And what message are those T65 leads normally sold in from? Her messaging talks about finding an agent you can trust that understands that you need doctors in network, that understands how to make sure that you're set up and that answers all of your questions and specializes in your area versus these other things that I just showed you. As long as the agents know the risk to both, they can make better decisions. I agree. And that is why I refuse to overpromise and underdeliver. I want you to go in eyes wide open. I will never guarantee you what your cost per lead's going to be. I get asked that all the time. I'll tell you what agents in my group and in my course are getting and what I'm seeing. But the reality is, instead of guaranteeing you what your cost per lead is, I will guarantee that you'll know why. You'll know why your cost per lead is what it is, and you'll know how to break it down. So I'm gonna say, this was my comment back. I said, I hear you, but I strongly disagree, and here's why. There are only cons to running ads under someone else's ad account. It's not just a bad strategy long-term. In many cases, it's ethically questionable. If an agent wants to work with a contractor or agency, Meta actually provides a legitimate path for this. The agent should own the ad account and simply assign partner access to the marketer or agency to manage their ads from. That way they're building their own brand on their own page with full control and transparency. So here's the thing, and then I go on to say, and to clarify, you can't run lookalike audiences under Meta special ad category and targeting. It's not about targeting anymore. Um, and then I share how I've seen agents Get leads for $5 to $15 within their first month. So look, now my brain's getting everywhere cuz once again, I'm getting a little fired up. Let me put this down. Look, realistically, let me back up just a little bit. When you first start running ads, if you have a good framework of how you're going to do it, it's realistic for you to start generating leads for around the same price that you would buy from a lead vendor. So you could generate your own Medicare leads. I say our goal is to start is like $20 to $25. Okay? Most agents are generating leads for much lower than that. Where are you going? Most agents are generating leads for much lower than that, but it's very realistic for your first campaign for you to start generating leads for around what you would buy them from a lead vendor. And then we're gonna start bringing it down from there. Okay? So that's number one. Number 2, whenever it comes to, uh, you're buying leads at cost with a reasonable management fee, I just, I just can't. So the reality is, is anyone with a desire to learn this skillset, to transform into your own lead generation expert, you absolutely can. This comes from a girl who I used to train killer whales and dolphins for 15 years. And when I first started my online business, I hated marketing. I hated it. And then I fell in love with it after really learning it. And so if I can learn it after barely knowing how to send an email, I didn't even know what godaddy.com was, how to buy a domain, if I can learn If I can learn it, you can learn it. You just have to have the desire. And then once you know the skillset, even if you decide not to run your own ads, if you wanna outsource it, which most agents, after they learn how to do this and they see how simple it is, they don't. But if you wanted to, if you were running like a huge budget and you wanted to spend like $10K to $100K a month on ads, you might wanna outsource it to someone running it, but you would actually know how to manage them. Let's move on to lie number 4, and this normally is coming from lead vendors that are selling you leads. And that is our leads are highly targeted and high quality. So many different lead vendors like to talk about how high quality their leads are and all of these things that they're doing. And the reality is they don't have access to any other tools that you don't have access to. The only thing that these dummy Facebook pages have on you is they have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on running ads from that ad account. So it's become more optimized to get in front of the right people. But I'm gonna be honest with you, you just saw what types of ads are out there right now. I highly predict that their cost per lead is going to start to go up and they're gonna pass that off to you and say it's because the quality's going up. Now, a lot of them talk about is that it's customized, that they're going to see the agent's name and number. I'm gonna tell you this, I have dug through the Meta ad library and I think that I can recognize from specific lead vendors, I can't give all my secrets away, but to know what pages are owned by who, and I have seen pages. Where on the thank you page it says, it's very generic, so they fill out the page, they get to it, and on the thank you page it says, thank you for submitting it. Agent Bob Smith, license number blah, blah, blah, will be contacting you soon. Okay, so the lead comes in thinking they're going to get a grocery card or they're qualifying for some state-funded burial expense plan, and then they just see Bob Smith, license number blah, blah, blah, is going to call you. Okay. That That does not build up any trust. Even if like there's a quick little photo of Bob, it doesn't build up any trust. Now, Bob was running his own ads and he was talking about the fact that there are these burial programs that are available that are affordable, or talks more about the emotional pull of protecting your family, or even talks about the analytical part of final expense, that the math makes sense. If you lock in this rate, then it's going to fully protect your family and cover all of these expenses. Or if you're pulling on the emotional side with life insurance, and you're like, if you're a parent, one of the most important things you can ask is, do I have enough life insurance to protect my family if something happened? The reality is a lot of people think that whenever they are working for their employer, that they make enough life insurance coverage to protect their family, but they don't. And so on. That type of messaging is very different than the messaging like a gift card giveaway or something like that. The other thing that a lot of them will have on it is, we have a long form. We ask 15 questions. So many agents have the misconception that the more questions that someone answers, the higher the quality of the lead. And that's just not true. Look, social media is disruptive marketing. Okay? People are looking at their grandbabies, at like baby elephants. Uh, they're looking at like silly, funny videos for entertainment, and you all of a sudden pop up. And if you can catch them at the right time, then collecting their information should be as simple and streamlined as possible. We should get their name, we should get their email address, we should get their phone number. We should ask a couple of qualifying questions. If we're running specifically, uh, 65+ or 64+, we can use something that's called conditional logic where we ask a compliant question that allows the Metaform to either exclude them or include them as a lead. Um, helps with optimizations. It also helps with, uh, making sure that we only get qualified leads and so on. But what I wanna move you away from is just because you ask 10 questions or 15 questions, it does not mean that the lead has more intent. What would make the lead have more intent? Oh my goodness, she's so cute. Meow. You're so cute. Okay, that's my 14-year-old little girl, Naya. So just because you have more questions, it does not necessarily mean that they're all of a sudden more qualified. So these lead vendors are marketing them as high-quality premium leads, and the reality is they are generating leads from a dummy Facebook page with generic messaging with no real trust being built with you. So the truth is your premium leads come from a dummy page with generic messaging, and you can do better. You can do better. And lie number 5, worry about selling, not marketing. Now, I have heard industry leaders say this, talk about how it's so complicated to run ads and to do marketing. You should just focus on selling instead. And there's also so many things out there like this article right Right here. Okay, so let's scroll down in this article and we are going to look at number 12 and it says, buy leads, skip the marketing. Seriously, unless you like marketing or you studied it in school. Okay, first of all, they're not teaching you current tactics in school. It takes time and effort. If you have a staff doing it for you, you have to pay them. Why not just pay for the leads and stay busy making calls in a numbers game? Okay, first of all, insurance is not a numbers game whenever you are generating the right types of leads. Yes, of course we're going to attract whole bunch of leads, they're not going to all convert. Um, in fact, whenever I was doing an interview with, uh, Doug Massey and we were talking about final expense, I had Claude do some deep research on final expense and it came back and said that 55% of seniors that fill out a final expense form are not ready to convert for 90 days. So the reality is you can generate more volume and then using a CRM and using some follow-up nurture emails, You are able to actually nurture them and eventually get them to convert later. So I just want you to like shift that mentality to if you generate a lead, like for example, I'm running ads right now and I'm generating leads of insurance agents, right? Not every agent is going to wanna work with me. In fact, some of them are gonna come in and go, nope, this girl's not for me. I can't stand her teaching style. I don't know why they would think that, but there are those that are going to definitely think that. So it's best for us not to work together. There are other agents that are going to come in and they're interested in learning how to generate their own leads. leads, but they're not ready to invest yet, and that's fine. Sometimes they'll stay on my email list for years before the right time is going to happen. The same thing can happen with an insurance lead. Okay, let's get back to this article. In a numbers game, just dial, dial, dial, which insurance certainly is, the more people you contact on a given day, the more policies you're bound to write. So keep that in mind when you're trying to decide if you want to become a blogger, a video blogger, or if you want to spend time and money marketing yourself. Okay. They make it sound like it is just like so hard. Then of course they plug their own leads, that their own leads are— they make it sound like it is so hard and it is so complicated. You guys, your line of business, learning the nuances of IUL, of annuity, of what Medicare's always changing. Like, so you're telling me that you're smart enough to learn those things, but you're not smart enough? to learn how to have a pre-conversation. So essentially write ad copy, learn how to speak to people before they want to get in the seat and talk to you. You need to only focus on when they get in the seat and how to actually write the policy. I'm sorry, no. Agents are smart enough. They're more than capable of learning how to take their marketing in-house. They just need the right step-by-step guidance, and they just need someone that is going to show them how to do it in a manner that makes makes sense for them. So the truth is the right marketing creates leads who are ready to buy so you don't have to sell so hard. Whew. Okay. We just covered so much and I got a little more fired up than I was expecting. Um, but I do wanna share this. If you're in a position right now where you need to buy leads in order to keep your business moving forward, then you should keep buying leads. There is nothing wrong with buying leads or using a done-for-you marketing system as long as your eyes are open to what's actually happening, and you are okay with that. And in the interim, you can start doing things now that will propel your business forward. Get active on social media. Don't be a secret agent where your pages are private. Start practicing putting yourself out there. Look, done is better than perfect, and the best time to start was yesterday, but the next best time is to start right now. So even if you're not ready to start running ads and learning marketing, maybe you are a new agent and you're like, I just need to focus on getting licensed first. What you can still do is you still can post on your Facebook and Instagram page for free. Not only does it help teach the algorithm who your ideal audience is for when you do start running ads, but it also allows you to start honing in your skillset and learning how to actually put yourself out there. And I wanna tell you, done is better than perfect. Do not wait until you think you're gonna have it figured out. I still don't feel like I have it figured out, and it's been, you know, 10 years that I've been in this industry and I still overthink what I do. So just take the step forward to starting to put your business out there and build a brand that will be recognizable. Look, here's the thing. I'm rooting for you. That's all. I'm rooting for you, and all I want is for you to understand the reality of what's happening whenever you continue to depend on another business for your leads, for your marketing, and so on. You are capable, you are able, and you are worthy You are worthy of achieving any goal that you want for yourself. So take the next step and go get it. And by the way, if there is something that we talked about you want to hear more about, leave a comment. Tell me. I read every single comment. It helps inspire me for what we're going to talk about next. And thank you so much for watching. I will see you in the next video.