The Insurance Lead Generation Space Is So Scammy For Agents (What My First Ad Audits Exposed)

In 2022, I performed my very first insurance ad audit, and not long after that, I performed my first FMO ad audit. And it was during that time that my eyes started to become open to just how scammy the insurance lead generation space is. And I'm talking about scammy primarily for you, the agent. And for years, I kept my mouth shut. I just stayed in my lane of helping insurance agents learn how to generate their own leads. Until now. In this video, I'm going to share with you some stories about how I got into the insurance space and about my very first insurance ad audits. I'm also going to share how I ended up dedicating my entire business towards helping insurance agents and other licensed professionals learn how to own their leads, own their marketing, and own their growth. So let's dive in. Now, I first entered the insurance space in the summer of 2022, and it all happened whenever I connected with an insurance agent It's Luis Moreno. If you know who he is, he talks about us working together and first meeting back then. And it was when I very first met him and performed an ad audit on his account. Now, his account wasn't the one that was so scammy, so we're going to get to that one in a second. But prior to the summer of 2022, my entire business model was building your typical Meta ads or Facebook ads agency. And at the time, I had clients that myself and my team were managing ads for. Uh, we I had an estate planning attorney, Medicaid planning, long-term care, 2 different doctors, an author, someone that focused on helping HR people increase their skills, someone that was in the meditation spiritual space, and someone that had a course that taught people how to be a bit more green. And the way that I was getting clients at the time was, I wasn't public-facing, I always liked to be behind the accounts, was I actually would go into Facebook groups and I would just answer questions Facebook ads. So I had joined multiple different entrepreneur groups. People would ask a question about Facebook ads. I would go in there and be really helpful and give them answers. And after a little bit of back and forth, I would say, it sounds like you could benefit from an ad audit. I'd get them to book an ad audit with me. And then during that, I would make the decision if, if I wanted to upsell them into having done-for-you ads. Now here's just a little something that I'm going to share with you because it's Super duper embarrassing. Okay. So when I first launched my online business at the end of 2015, 2016, it was not to be a marketer and to be into Facebook ads. In fact, it was to be a dating coach. I wanted to help people write their Match.com profiles. Now look, I learned a lot from my first little venture of pushing to become a dating coach. And what ended up happening was I had to learn how to market my business. And I started messing around with Facebook ads and learning Facebook ads kind of on my own. It was Facebook back then. And I ended up getting a client from word of mouth. And I took them on. I wasn't making much money as a dating coach, so I took them on as a client. And then I did a really good job for them. And then they sent me another client. They sent me another client. And then I had someone come to me that I knew was beyond my skillset that I could not handle. And this was in the beginning of 2017, and I signed them on as a client, and then I went on a mission to find the most robust Facebook ads program that I could find. And I ended up enrolling in a wonderful, very hands-on course. It was about 12 weeks long where I had a wonderful mentor, a group of individuals that I went through the course with and the mentoring with. I managed like 6 to 8 different types of clients' ad accounts with my mentor that helped teach me how to do things the right way. And that was whenever I realized I'm actually really good at this Facebook ad thing. It was something that I originally didn't think that I liked, the marketing side, but taking that helped open my eyes to this is something I'm getting really good results. So I should probably pivot and focus my business around that. Now at the time, people, I had no plan of ever making videos or like building an email list or doing any of the funnel stuff for myself. I just liked working on the backend and Seeing my clients succeed. So the name of my company was Kitty Kat Media. There, I said it. And I like to always say, if when I told you my company's name was Kitty Kat Media, if you didn't cringe inside a little bit, then I don't know who you are. Like, you should have cringed a little bit. It's cringey. Okay. The thinking at the time was cute. It was, look, people misunderstand cats, right? But when you get to know cats, they're freaking amazing. I felt the same way about marketing. Thought I hated it. Got to know it. Liked it. Super, super embarrassing. But what I would do was I would go into the different Facebook groups. I'd make comments, and I would get people that would want to interact with me. Luckily, I did a rebrand in about 2021 to the Social Waves Media. Thank goodness. Can you guys imagine me being at like these Medicare conferences, and they're like, "And we have Shauna Thorson from Kitty Cat Media." Like, I'm sorry, Social Waves Media, which is, it's got a, it's got a better sound to it. So, thank goodness I decided to start setting myself up for in case bigger things happen. So, at the time, in 2022, Luis Moreno actually commented in a Facebook group, and I wrote him, and we went back and forth a little bit, and I said, sounds like you need an ad audit. And so, he was the very first insurance agent. It's not the scammy one I'm going to talk about here in a minute, but When I performed his ad audit, he was just doing it himself. And he, like, now that I've seen what happens in a lot of insurance agents' ad accounts, he was actually doing a very good job for himself. He was primarily running ads for ACA. Um, I think he was wanting to start running ads for Medicare, but he was primarily running ads for ACA, and he was doing a pretty good job for someone that literally had just like tried to figure it out and YouTubed it. So, we had our ad audit together, and within that one session, the changes that I made though, it decreased his cost per lead by, and he talks about this a lot, I want to say it was something like at least 50%, if not more than that. It instantly just like dropped his cost per lead. And he was so excited, and he was so ecstatic about it, and he was like, girl, like, do you know how many insurance agents could benefit from what you just taught me? Like, I think you could do a lot of things in the insurance space. So I sat on that and I thought, you know what, I think, I think I'm ready to kind of test something different in my business. So I'm going to make a course for insurance agents that teaches them how to run their own ads. Now, I had told my husband for years that the one thing I would never do is have a Facebook ads course, because when you have a Facebook ads course, it means you're committed to always having to update it. So when I told him, Honey, I, I wanna create a Facebook ads course. He was like, that is like the dumbest idea you've ever had. You've always said you weren't going to do one. And I said, I did, but I just like feel inside my gut that I'm supposed to. And so I created a Facebook ads course. And yes, I do keep that course up to date, Insurance Click to Close, which we're gonna get into. I keep that course up to date, but it ended up being the very best thing that I have ever done for growing my business. I launched the beta version of Insurance Click to Close in August of 2022. And the way that it worked was I created a course in the way that I thought would make the most sense for insurance agents. Now, I myself, before I started my own online business, I was actually a SeaWorld animal trainer. That's right, I was a dolphin trainer, a killer whale trainer for 15 years before I decided I need to start my own business online. And my tech skills continued consisted of opening a Word document and sending an email, and I wasn't very good at either one of those. So learning everything online, all of the techie stuff, was something that I struggled with. But now looking back on it, because I struggled with it, I truly think that that is why I am so good at teaching very, very technical, strategic things in a very easy-to-understand and easy-to-follow way, even for people that are not tech savvy. I like things that are visual. I like things that are broken up. I like analogies. So if you like that type of teaching style, then I might be a good mentor for you. But I created the course and I told Luis, I wanna launch this course with your agents for very, very cheap and have some come in so I can see if this course is even very good. So we got a little bit of a list together. I launched that course. He was so kind to let me share it with his agents because he truly wanted them to succeed. I had it for a very, very cheap cost. Mm-hmm. And what I decided to do is meet with those agents once a week for 6 weeks. And this gave me the opportunity to hear from them how it's going, hear their questions. I could make adjustments to the course that I knew that holes were missing. And in fact, we had so much fun meeting together that whenever it came to the end of these 6 weeks, the agents were saying, we, we wanna keep meeting with you. We wanna be able to ask questions. And that's how the Inner Circle was born, which is my membership that only agents that are enrolled in the course get access to that membership so that way they can get help from myself. Mm-hmm. And my team for agents that want a little bit more help. So after moving through that and the initial part of the course launching, I made the adjustments that I needed to. And then my big, like, public, I'm going to share this with the world, was in August of 2022. And I'm very lucky that David Duford and I met, and he decided that he wanted to share the course with his audience. And in him doing so, it introduced me to a completely new audience in the insurance space. And then from all of the agents that enrolled in my course that ended up getting great results, including people like Christian Brindle, you hear me on his YouTube channel, he's got a video on my YouTube channel, and we've got some collaborations coming up. It allowed me to meet other people in the insurance space. And because the results were so good, it opened up the door of opportunity for me to start meeting more and more agents, more and more agencies, connect with different FMOs, IMOs, and so on. So the launch of my course and all of the success that so many different agents were having from the course and how so many were saying, this is completely different than anything that we've ever experienced before, that got me the opportunity to speak at my very first insurance conference. And the very first one was with David E. Ford, and it was one of his Elite Agent Summits, and that was in November of 2022. And that conference taught me 2 really important lessons. Number one, it was my first time being around a whole bunch of different insurance agents all at once, and I absolutely freaking loved it. I loved meeting the agents. I loved talking to them about their lead generation. I loved talking to them about the different messaging, and that's when people started really complaining to me about some of the other lead systems that they had purchased, buying from different lead vendors. And just started sharing some things with me. And I'm going to tell you, some of the things that they were telling me, I couldn't really believe. I was like, there's no way that these are legitimate businesses practicing this way. You see, when I took my mentorship, I had a very ethical mentor. She was fabulous. Honestly, not to backtrack too much, but Meta, or Facebook at the time, had just released something called the— it's what we call like the business settings or business manager, business Suite, whatever, all these different names. They had basically released this new tool in, I believe it was like in 2015, and there were a lot of marketers that were making unethical mistakes. Like they weren't meaning to. See, basically the Meta Business Suite, the way that I teach it in my course is it's a house. It's like a container, right? It's a container. Your personal Facebook page is you. So I'm Shauna the person, and then Social Waves Media, the business manager is like a building, right? And Shauna has the key to Social Waves Media business manager. It's a container, and in this container I've got lots of different rooms. I've got a room for my business page, a room for my Instagram page, my ad account, my database, my pixel, my verification, um, any of my tracking. All of these different things live in this room, right? In different rooms in my business. Shauna has the key, she's the owner, and I can give the key to anyone that I want on my team to whichever rooms I want them to have access to. Now here's the deal. Once a business manager or business suite claims a Facebook page, it can never leave that container ever again. So if I, as Social Waves Media, am working on your ad account, if your business page is not claimed by a business, by a container, if we accidentally take the wrong steps and I claim ownership of your ad account, it's always going to be in that container. So my mentor was so big on, we have to make sure that we are requesting access to our partner's assets. So Social Waves Media is gonna say, hey, can I have access to all of the rooms in your house? You still can like shut me out if you want to. You own the building, but can I have access? She was so good at hammering that into us about how vitally important it is that the person, the business owns their own Facebook page. The business owns their own ad account, which has all of the pixel data in it, and the business needs to own any assets that you're working on. Because anytime, and I truly believe this, anytime you work with a contractor, if you dissolve the relationship, you should walk away in a better place. Many of those clients that I listed that I had at the end of '22, some of them I still fully run their ad accounts because we've just maintained that type of relationship. Others have moved into a position where I am consulting them on it. So we still have a relationship, even if I'm not doing everything in their ad account. They come to me when they have course launches, they come to me when they want audits, and we have a working relationship in that way because after working with me, they are going off in a better place. And that is why some of the things that I've uncovered in the insurance space that are just normal practices that people tend to say it's fine, it's not okay. I don't agree. It's not okay. The only time it's okay is if the business owner understands what's happening and they're too many things that happen that are secrecy by design. Like doubt is their business. It is, it is to, to not let you know what's actually happening. So I digress. So I got in there and I was shocked, number one, at that conference of how many agents had so many different issues. And then I started making relationships with agents that were saying, hey, we'd like you to look at our ad account and so on. And then number two, what I learned at that conference is Imposter syndrome is a real, mm, it's a real thing. It is very hard. I had been managing ads, like millions of dollars in ads, and overseeing major launches, not only on Facebook, but also like on YouTube ads and so on. And speaking at that conference, I struggled, if I'm being honest with you, so much with imposter syndrome. And if this is something you struggle with, let me know. Do you wanna talk about this more? Um, I talk with agents all the time that are scared to put themselves out there on social media. And part of it is struggling with that imposter syndrome of like, uh, what am I gonna say that, that they haven't already heard before? Who am I to act like I'm an expert? Um, what do I have to say that is actually worthy of people hearing? And the one thing I'm gonna give with you to take with it is I truly think that when you Recreate your identity, you go after something new as an adult. So I already had a history of my identity was I was a SeaWorld animal trainer. It was, it was my identity. It was who I was. It was what I identified as. I felt very comfortable in that role. When you reinvent yourself, not only are you having to take on a new identity, but you have to shed the old identity. So you've got double the work that is going on at once. So, if you want to dive into that, we can. I'm at a much better place now, but I will tell you, it's still years later, it creeps up on me just a little bit. I have a better, I'm better at putting it into check. But if that's something that you struggle with and you want to dive into, we absolutely can. And it was from that first conference that I had that got me my very first ad audit with a Medicare agent. Oh, hi. I'm interrupting my own video to do that super YouTube awkward thing where I say, have you subscribed yet? Subscribe. No, but seriously, have you subscribed? If you're still watching this video and you're interested in learning more about lead generation, about ads, how to own your marketing, own your growth, then click that subscribe button because I'm committed to sharing no BS tips and things that actually help you increase conversions. Okay, back to the video. So let's talk about that very first independent insurance agent's ad audit. Now, this guy was in the Medicare space. He had actually been a speaker at the conference that I was at and we had connected and he had told me, he was like, hey, I really want you to take a look at what's going on in my ad account. This is while we were at the conference. And I'm like, oh, what is it? And he said, I'm getting leads. I'm getting hundreds of leads for like around $3. But like, I just, I just think that you need to look at it. And I was like, oh, you're getting leads for $3? Like, that's literally like insanely good even in 2022. Although I'm gonna tell you, I have a Medicare agent in AEP of 2025 that was getting Medicare leads for $3.36, SMS verified, conditional logic. What the heck? Awesome. Anyway, I was like, $3 per lead? Like, I don't think, I don't think I can get your cost per lead lower. And I was trying to kind of like, you know, I, I was struggling with imposter syndrome there too. So I was almost like, I don't know if I wanna perform an ad audit for this guy. Like, he's big in the Medicare space. He trains people how to like close and, and, and how to like sell additional products. Like, he's a big name and he wants me to do an ad audit and he's telling me he Mm-hmm. He wants improvement and he's getting $3 per lead. I don't know if I can give it to him. So I just kind of was like, oh, that sounds really good. And I actually tried to like avoid this ad audit, but he sought me out. He was like, I really want you to look at my ad account. Um, he had had another person that's in this space. He sets up, um, ad accounts for people. Like you just basically, he comes into your ad account, he's at least doing it from your ad account and he'll set it up for you and then you have your ads running. So, uh, this agent had ads running, but he didn't really know how to manage them or anything. So when we set up the ad account, I'm gonna be honest, the, the ad audit, I was nervous because I was like, I'm just gonna look and see what the data says and what the metrics say and just see how it's set up. But like, I can't get this guy lower leads than $3 Medicare leads, right? So when I got in, this was how his ad account was set up. So number one, back then it wasn't a meta special ad category, so we've got some different regulations. But number one, he did have his ad set and it was highly targeted at people that were obviously like 64+. On top of that, this agency, and some people still try to do this, but this is not compliant. Okay. Mm-hmm. This agency clearly had purchased a list of seniors that were in, I guess, his states. Maybe they had lots of different data. Um, created a customer list and also had put that into Target. So we had hyper-targeting happening. Now in today's world, we can't do hyper-targeting. Our ads have to do the work for us. Our ads— we're in the world of content finds the user. So your ads messaging is going to do the targeting. Now in today's world, you can't have generic ads and know it's going to get in front of the right people. And honestly, I love messaging. I love that type of content. So that That makes me happy. But back then, so it was super, super hyper-targeted. And then I got into his ad creatives and that's when I saw, and I have this written down, we had 3 different ads that just had like, the first one had an image of a senior and then had a big picture of a check on it from Social Security and it said $3,000. And the entire ad said, see if you qualify for up to $3,000 more a month in Social Security. That's it. Didn't mention anything about health insurance, about Medicare, about anything. Okay. Number 2, he had an ad that had a senior smiling really big, and then a big banner that said, free dental for seniors, see if you qualify. And then in the ad copy, it mentioned that there were plans that were available that got All your dental work covered for free. So, see if you qualify for that. Didn't talk about reviewing any other part of your plan. And number 3, it had a picture of a check that said $2,000, and in the little memo it said, for groceries. And it said, see if you qualify for up to $2,000 in grocery credits. That's what his ad said. I was like, what in the world is this BS? At that time, little naive Shauna was in the world of we hyper-target and we make the messaging be hyper-specific to the person. We focus on the pain, we focus on the benefit, we focus on the journey and how we're gonna transform them. I had never seen scammy ads like that, to be honest with you. I, I hadn't. And so I told him, I said, so when you talk to these seniors, are they wanting to talk to you about Medicare? And he is like, no. No, none of them do. And I'm like, so you've gotten like 1,500 leads for like $2 to $3 each, and you're having very low conversions. And I said, here's what we can do. We can reset up your ad account to start like targeting in a way that we know is compliant because like even back then you didn't wanna get banned by Meta or by Facebook. So we can set it up for that. You're still gonna get in front of the right audience. Um, we can also set up a retargeting campaign for anyone that's interacted with you and your page, but we're gonna have to change the messaging. And I said, and when we change the messaging, it is going to increase your cost per lead. There's a chance we can get it down to $3 again, but it's going to increase your cost per lead. And luckily he was like, oh, that's absolutely amazing. I had no idea that this is what my ads were saying, so I absolutely want to do that. We made those changes and he was able to become very happy with the leads that he was generating from his ad account. Now let's talk about the very first ad audit that I performed for an FMO, and this was in early of 2020. Now, I knew the FMO's Facebook page, and I had, before the ad audit that we had, I was still a little nervous. I was still a little nervous, okay? I had looked up their page to see what ads they had running, and I saw that they had one ad that was running from their Facebook page, and it was a very generic ad that was for a Medicare checklist. It had no branding about like, the FMO and about their agents or anything like that. It was literally just like, get your turning 65 checklist, which by the way, lead magnets still work in the Medicare space. You just want to do them the right way. I've got a video on that if you want to watch it. So I had already kind of seen what the ad was. I'm like, okay, I already know that we can change some things with the ad. I then saw the landing page that was attached to the ad. It was very, very generic. By the way, I have a video about how to increase conversions on your landing page. This landing page was like basically like one of those those GoHighLevel pages that just had zero branding and basically was like, get your Medicare guide and a form. So I'd seen those. So when we met together, um, I had their whole team, or I had their like marketing team. So there were about 5 other people that were in the meeting and I'm like, okay, perfect. Let's look at the ad account. And they're like, what do you mean look at the ad account? I'm like, let's pull up the ad account so that way we can look at the metrics and see how things are set up. They all start like going through Like I'm helping them go through their assets to see if it's in any of their ad accounts. It wasn't. Long story short, none of them had access to their ad account, and that's when they told me that they actually had someone else, another company that just like sets these things up the same way for everyone. They had another company that was managing their ads. So instead of me performing an ad audit, I ended up helping oversee them just pull out the information of what was actually happening. And this was my first experience in realizing how many marketers run. insurance agents' ads from their ad accounts. Okay? So just like I was saying, like, as SocialWise Media, I need to have access to your assets. And then if we don't work together anymore, you should go off in a better place than you were when you first started working with me. The way that these people, this company that is still around and sets up ads for people, um, they had set it up in a way that it was The FMO's Facebook page that they owned. So it was their main company Facebook page. It was front-facing for Medicare. They were wanting to move into final expense, but at the time it was just Medicare with this checklist. So their page, right? The marketer's ad account. So my ad account has permission to run ads for your page, right? Then the next thing was the marketer owned the landing page. There are so many of these different, I'm gonna create this system for you. And what they do is they essentially have a GoHighLevel account. So I could get a GoHighLevel account, the admin or whatever that level is, executive account, where then they will create different landing pages. So I own the landing page, I take your domain and I pop it on this landing page. So we redirect it to this landing page, but I own this landing page. You still might own your domain. So some agents are like, hey, but I own my domain. Okay, you do. But your domain is just like your street address. You don't own the house. Like right now, your street address is connected to this house and someone else owns this house. So the marketer owned that page, which meant that the marketer's ad account had the pixels connected. So all the data that's going back and forth to Facebook is from their page and then the landing page. And then they owned, which they sell it as like, we're gonna do a follow-up system for you. Like we're gonna send the first like, uh, 3 emails or whatever it is, and then we're gonna have them scooted into your CRM or into whatever, however you manage your book of business, right? So the marketer owns that. So the FMO had no idea that they were spending money every single month, but they were not doing anything to build up their ad account, their landing page, or anything. I'm on a mission to help you see the truth. I'm not on a mission to tell you don't work with these people or do work with these people, but it was important that the leaders at this company understood. that they didn't own the assets that were being ran. And this is something that's super, super common in the insurance space. And unfortunately, it would be okay if it was disclosed. So, you understood, like, I have to keep paying you a monthly fee because you actually own all of the assets that we're using. And that's totally fine if you know about it. But I'm going to tell you, for the longevity of your business, it makes the most sense for you to own all of your assets and for you to build a rock-solid foundation. Because the reality is, Lead vendors are only able to generate leads because they have such a history and they have such a seasoned pixel. And I'm going to tell you, they're generic ads. The cost per lead is going to start going up. They're going to lie to you and say, we're doing all these crazy high-quality things that you can't do. It's too hard. It's not true. The cost is going to go up because they're not honed in on their messaging. There's no personal brand behind it. There's not an agent or an advisor that people can learn to trust. It's just that generic messaging, and now that the hyper-targeting is like dissolving, that they're not able to do it. It's gonna be people that have a strong foundation that are going to be the ones that get the lowest cost per leads and get the highest quality leads. So at the end of the day, I'm not trying to say what you should allow in your business practices and what you shouldn't. I just wanna open your eyes to what the reality is so that way you can make an educated decision and you can invest your time, your money, and your energy into what is actually going to build your business in the long run. So those 2 ad audits taught me that things might appear good on the surface. Who doesn't want $3 Medicare leads? But it's really a disaster underneath. And that was just the very beginning of me opening my eyes and being shown just how unethical so many of these business practices are by design and how many things are hidden from agents because the goal is to suck you in. to get you trapped, to get you like locked in on a monthly like maintenance fee that you can't get away from. When the reality is these are things that you absolutely can do on your own the right way. So my biggest advice to you, if you are listening to this video, is everything that you do in your business, it is okay for you to have a season of relying on another business. It's okay for you to purchase leads if you're happy with the results that you're getting. But if you want to be in this industry in the long run, You should be making decisions that ensure that you own all of your assets, that you are building a solid foundation, and that you are creating something that is going to give you the longevity of building trust, of creating what I call the prospect conveyor belt, where once you get one person to convert, you know you've just got more behind them, and so on. Now, if you are interested in learning how to generate your own leads, I will have my next. Live training that will be linked in the description below. I also have lots of different videos, but if you have one that you want to hear about, or I've been playing around with the idea of doing free ad audits on here so other people can learn from them. But if you have a suggestion, you have a question, drop it below. Thank you so much for watching. And by the way, if you're here, if you made it all the way to the end, if you sat here during a yap, yap, yap video, you got to hit that subscribe button. All right, thanks. I'll see you next time.