Are You Being Misled? 3 Insurance Lead Generation “Scams” Explained

So many insurance agents are being scammed by insurance lead generation marketers. I'm seeing it happen with independent agents, large agencies, and even FMOs. In this video, I am exposing the 3 most common ways that these marketers are scamming agents just like you. I am probably going to ruffle some feathers with this one, but I don't care because this is information that you deserve to know. You're going to understand how they work. You're going to understand what the cons are to you. And then last but not least, how to safeguard your account and your brand from falling into one of these traps. My name is Shauna, and I teach insurance agents how to generate their own exclusive leads. I believe in empowering you, the agent, to be able to be in full control of your marketing, whether that means that you're doing some of the marketing yourself, or maybe your team is, or if you choose to outsource it. I believe in empowering you to know how to actually manage those that are working on your lead generation efforts. Now, I first started running ads in 2015, and I worked across numerous different industries before entering the insurance world in 2022. And I have to be honest with you, there had been some things from the very beginning that really surprised me about the way that agents were taught about marketing. And now that I have had my foot in your industry for a couple of years, I've had the opportunity to see hundreds of different insurance ad accounts. I can confidently say that many of those things are by design. They are created to make you become codependent on whoever it is that is generating you leads. And some of those approaches that I have seen are completely unethical. So let's break what those are down now. So for the first scam approach that I'm going to share with you, let's talk about a recent ad account audit that I did for an FMO. So this group booked to have an ad account audit with me. They had mentioned that they had an outside marketers that had been running ads for them focusing on Medicare and T65, and they wanted me to take a look at what was going on in their account and see if there was any room for improvements or where we could make strategic optimizations. So they booked the call. I knew the name of their Facebook business page, so I decided to click over to the Facebook ad library and take a look at the ad creatives that they currently had running. Now in the ad library, you were able to see all current and past ads. You can look it up based on a specific Page's name, but you're not able to see any of the data. So it's a good thing for me to be able to just kind of see what ad creative is out there. But where I'm really gonna be able to get into the strategy is whenever I'm able to take a look at the metrics. So they booked the call, the FMO owner was on the call, they had 2 different high-level team members that were on the call as well. And I said, let's open it up and take a look at your ad account. They weren't exactly sure how to get over to their ad account. So I took over the screen control. I looked inside of the owner's ad account, there were no ads in it. Then I said, is there any other ad account that this company could be running your ads from? And they're like, we're not sure, maybe it's so-and-so's, maybe it's so-and-so's. So we started digging around. I asked them, I said, is your credit card being charged from Meta? Are you actually paying Meta for the ad spend or are you paying this company like one big retainer for like a certain number of leads? And they said, no, no, our credit card is definitely being charged. We get the receipts from Meta. And the first time that I saw this, I was shocked. But in this case, I knew exactly what was going on. I knew that they were part of what I call scam number 1, which is your business page, their ad account. So what do I mean by your business page, their ad account? And why is that such a big deal? Well, before we dive into that, it's important to understand how the Meta business ecosystem essentially works. So in order to advertise on Meta, you absolutely have to have a personal Facebook page. Now, you don't have to be active on it, you don't have to use it, but in Meta's eyes, they essentially see that personal Facebook page as you, the individual. Then you, the individual, are able to create business assets that you own. For example, your business Facebook page, your Instagram business page, your ad account, your pixel or dataset that should be installed on your website, and so on. Then we take all of those business assets that you own and we utilize a tool that is called the Meta Business Manager. Now, the way that I like to look at the Meta Business Manager is it's kind of like a house, and then it's got multiple different rooms. So we're gonna move in the business Facebook page, we're gonna move in the Instagram business page. We're going to add your ad account. We're gonna create your pixel in there, and then we're gonna connect them all together. And Meta understands that me, the person Shauna, I own the house of Social Waves Media and all of the assets that are inside. And when your account is set up properly like that, you're able to invite other individuals or other business managers just like me. You're able to invite them into your house and give them a key to what assets you would like for them to work on. So if I'm going to be working on your ad account, in my experience, the ethical thing to do would be for me to request partner access. So I would be invited in essentially to your house, and then you would give me access to all of your assets. Then if our business partnership ended or we no longer were working together, we could part ways and you still owned all of your assets. Now, once you have someone that has access inside of your house and you said, here's the key to my Facebook business page, they can technically match that with anything that is already inside of their house. So let me give you a very ethical example for that. So let's say I am a well-known influencer in the cat space and everyone knows Shauna, she's the cat lady. And then let's say Temptations comes to me and says, Shauna, We want to work a deal out where we use your audience. So we run it from the Shauna business page and we promote Temptations. Can we do that? And I say yes, and we work out a contract. Then what would happen is I would give them access to my Facebook business page, which would then allow them to pair it with their ad account. So now Temptations is running ads from their ad account, but they're utilizing my business Facebook page. Once our contract ends, I have full access to my business Facebook page. They have their ad account and we go on our merry way. So that's an ethical example of how you could utilize mixing up assets. But in this case, in my opinion, it's not ethical. So in this case, it was the FMO's branded agency name business Facebook page that ads were being ran on, but with an ad account that the marketers owned. Now, the marketers had set up the Facebook ad account using the FMO's credit card, so they were being charged. But what that means is once that relationship dissolves, which it did very quickly after this ad audit, once it dissolves, this marketer takes that very seasoned ad account, they have access to all the metrics, all the data, all the testing, and also the seasoning that the ad account has done to get in front of Medicare and T65. They take all of that with them and leave the FMO and their business Facebook page basically in the same state that it started. So in my opinion, it's very unethical for 2 big reasons. One, it wasn't disclosed what the relationship was going to look like. The FMO thought that everything was being done ethically and they didn't even know to ask questions about how the ad account was being set up. And number 2, it is a very purposeful approach that is very advantageous to the marketer. Now, in this example, the marketers were using the FMO's credit card, so they were being charged for the Meta ad spend. And then in addition to that, they were paying a monthly retainer for this group to be managing their ads. Something else that I have seen when it comes to your business Facebook page with their ad account is sometimes it will just be their credit card on the ad account, and then they will send you an invoice. Maybe it'll just be one set amount for the monthly retainer, or perhaps they'll itemize it where they'll say, here's your ad spend, and then here's our retainer fee. But irregardless, the cons stay the same. So let's break down what the cons are of this scammy approach. No ad account access. You're not able to see what's actually going on with the ads. You cannot view the metrics. So that means that you're trusting a third party with exactly what they say, and you're never able to see it with your own eyes. Now, this is a big one. You cannot view the ad creatives. The messaging that is converting your leads is one of the most important things that you need to see and be aware of because that message directly affects the type of leads that you're going to be attracting and converting. Compliancy. You do not know if they are running the ads to be compliant or not. And here's the deal. When your name is attached to the Facebook page or the ad account that is running ads, if they are not compliant— and I'm not just meaning with CMS, I'm talking about with Meta's new special ad category rules. If you are not compliant, then Facebook could very easily ban you and everyone else in the account from ever advertising again. I've talked about it in a past video. I'm working with a group right now that is dealing with this. The entire group got banned because a marketer made a bad decision and they were connected to that page. And last but definitely not least, you do not own the data. The entire purpose of running Facebook ads is to be able to slowly increase and improve and increase the quality of leads while decreasing the cost of leads and so on. And that happens from a very seasoned ad account with very strategic decisions that are being made. And when these marketers leave and that relationship ends, they run off with all the data. Are you enjoying this video? I am truly passionate about creating content that will help you grow your business. And if so, there's something you can do that will help support me, and that is hitting the subscribe button. It costs you nothing and it means the world to me. So if you're enjoying this video, consider hitting that subscribe button. All right, let's keep going. Let's talk about scam number 2, dummy Facebook business page with generic ads. Now, what do I mean by a dummy Facebook business page? When I first saw this, it was when a large agency had booked an ad audit, and in their intake form, they had mentioned that they were spending between $25,000 to $30,000 a on their ads. So I was super excited to dive in. I went straight to the Facebook ad library. I wanted to nosy around and see what their ad creatives looked like, and their page came up with nothing. The Facebook ad library said that there was no record of them ever running any Facebook ads. I made sure I got their Facebook business page correct. I looked at the creation date. It had been around a while. In fact, this group had wonderful reviews with Google, so I knew that they were legit. So I reached out to them and I asked, is this the right Facebook business page? And they said, yeah, it's the only Facebook business page that we have. And then I said, let me just make this clear. Do you have access to the ad account that all of the ad spend is coming from? I sent them instructions on how to look and they said, yep, we have it. So when I went into this ad audit, the first thing that I did was go to see what business page they were running these ads from. And The entire campaign was set up incorrectly, but that is besides the point. When I went to see the Facebook business page they were running from was from some dummy page. So a brand new page that this agency had created for them with a very generic name. This is not the name, but it was something like Healthy Happy Seniors or Health Insurance for All or Life Insurance for All. And it was a very generic name. There was no profile picture. There was no branding on the page. The only thing that was being ran from that page was a generic ad. Now, I'm going to be honest with you. I don't fully grasp what the benefit is to the marketer to run your ads off of a dummy page, but I have seen this happen time and time again, especially specifically with a marketing group that has positioned themselves as insurance lead generation experts. I have seen it both with the ad account that they, the marketers, own, like the previous example we talked about, or in this case, the agency owned the ad account, but it was connected to the dummy page. But either way, there are several cons that are going to affect you irregardless if they end up using a dummy Facebook page. So let's talk about them. First, generic ads. And this is something that I see across the board in the insurance industry. There are specific generic ads that marketers will use over and over and over with every single client. One that I'm seeing that's popular is using an AI-generated character that talks about like how great final expense is or talks about how enrolling in health insurance doesn't need to be hard and so on. They use that same generic ad across multiple different ad accounts. The messaging that you bring in your leads with is so extremely important. Okay, number 2, compliancy. As I've already talked about, whenever your name, your personal Facebook account that Facebook sees you as the person is connected with any business assets. You wanna make sure those business assets are compliant because Facebook is more and more often banning at a personal driver license IP address level instead of just shutting down the ad account. They say you as a person, no more advertising, and it's not worth the risk. You wanna make sure that everything that your name is attached to is compliant. And last but definitely not least, Zero brand awareness. When you are running ads, and this agency was spending a chunk of change on ads, there should be a very strategic plan to grow their brand awareness, to grow the know, like, and trust in the states that they're licensed in. We are in a day and age that the only agents that are going to make it are those that position themselves as advisors, not commodities. And instead of positioning this wonderful group that had great reviews on Google and clearly was killing it anytime that they did business with people. Instead of growing their online presence within Facebook, it was all being ran to a dummy Facebook page that kind of sort of looks scammy to begin with. So don't let that happen to you. Let's talk about scam number 3, buying leads that are generated for you. Now, to be honest, this isn't so much of a scam as I feel it's just important for you to actually understand what is happening. So in this situation, You're going to be ordering leads that they are going to then generate for you in real time. So they will essentially use their Facebook business page and their Facebook ad account to generate leads specifically for you. Now, one of the things that they're going to boast and talk about and say is great is we're gonna use your name on the privacy policy, which is important so that way you're CMS compliant. And we're also going to use your name on the thank you page and some of the other things that the new lead is going to see so that way that they know that you are their agent. Now what is essentially happening is they have multiple different Facebook pages and they've got multiple different ad accounts that they are running ads for. They have one campaign or one ad set that is set up specifically for you. So I have a campaign that I'm generating T65 leads. Shauna came in, she purchased 50 leads from us. So now we're going to create one ad set that is specifically for Shauna. In the ad creative that the users see, the privacy policy is going to be switched out to say my name, that Shauna is allowed to contact you and that your information is going to Shauna. And then on the thank you page after they sign up, it's going to say, thanks so much. Here's Shauna. She's your agent. She's going to be taking care of you. They generate your 50 leads, they hand them off to you, and then they switch out in that very same ad set. They're going to switch out who the name is that's on the privacy policy, who the name is that they're going to see on the thank you page. They're going to generate more leads and then give them to that agent that ordered them. So for them, they are going to build up very optimized accounts over time, which is something that anyone can do from running ads. So maybe when they first started doing this, they were selling T65 leads to you for $25, and maybe for the first month or 2 or 3, it did cost them anywhere from $15 to $30 for a lead. So it wasn't always super profitable, but I have no doubt in my experience that over time, as their account has gotten seasoned and optimized, and maybe they've switched out some of their generic ad messaging, that they're able to generate those T65 leads for $4 to $10, and now they're turning a profit. So it's not necessarily a scam, but it's important for you as the agent to understand what's happening. And to understand what the cons are from buying into this type of setup. So let's talk about the cons of opting into this type of system. So first, you cannot view the ads. You don't know what the messaging is that is converting the lead. And as we've talked about, the actual messaging is going to greatly influence the type of person that's going to be attracted to completing that form. You don't own the data. That means that you are buying the leads, their account's getting stronger and more optimized, while you're still at ground zero. There's zero brand awareness. When you're making an online presence, you want to take advantage of the opportunity to get your name and your brand awareness out there. And there's absolutely none of that is happening whenever you're buying the lead from them. And last but not least, it's a never-ending cycle. If you don't figure out how to actually fish for yourself, you're always going to be reliant on buying the fish from the market. So let's talk about what you can do to protect yourself from falling for any of these scams, or to at least make sure that your account is set up in an ethical manner that is going to benefit you in the long run. So first, let's talk about if you are wanting to outsource your ad management, you want someone else to take care of it, then there's 5 things that you need to implement. One, you need to know that the backend of your ad account is set up properly. 2, you need to add them to your account as a partner. 3, you need to grant them access to the assets that are needed. 4, you should be involved and approve the ad creatives. This is probably one of the most important things, is that you understand what the ad messaging is and you make sure that it's something that's in line with you and your brand. And number 5, it's very important for you to understand how to view the results. In the backend of the Ads Manager, there are over 350 different metric points and data. There's literally only 14 that matter to you whenever you're generating leads. And there's 4 key point metrics that are going to let you know exactly where you need to make optimizations. So get familiar so that way you can at least have conversations with those that are managing your ads about different optimization things that you could start to implement. And if you're going to purchase leads from an online lead vendor, there are 3 different questions that you can ask. You can ask, where are they getting the leads from? Where are they generating them? Is it from social media or are they generating them elsewhere? If it is on social media, what business page are they utilizing? What is the branding behind that business page? And 3, what is the ad message that is converting the leads? You want to make sure that the ad message that they're using is actually in line with you and your brand. Now, I want to make it clear, am I against ever purchasing from a lead vendor again? No, I am all for anything that is going to help propel your business forward and help it grow. What am I against is getting stuck in a never-ending cycle that makes your business become reliant on another business in order to grow and succeed. So while you are supplementing your business in whatever way is working for you, doesn't matter whatever system it is, buying from leads, using a, a done-for-you system or so on. While that is going on, don't be so shortsighted. Also focus on different avenues that will allow you to grow your brand awareness and create a foundation for your business to last the long haul so that way your never-ending flow of prospects is not dependent on someone else. If you have any questions, drop them below and never forget, you are capable, you are able, and you are worthy of achieving anything that you want in this life. So take the next step and go get it. Thank you so much for making it all the way to the end. Now, since you're here, let me ask, is there a topic that you would like for me to talk about? If so, drop it in the comments. I will either try to answer your question or it will give me ideas about what type of content that you want to see more of. And hey, while you're here, if you're not already subscribed, hit that button. It means a lot to me. All right, I'll see you in the next video.