For marketing campaigns to be successful, insurance agencies need to employ targeted tactics for attracting viable leads. Traditional marketing can be hugely expensive and too broad-reaching to engage the right prospects. Social media activity without strategy can feel like wasted efforts with no return. Understandably, your message can easily get lost in the shuffle of a crowded marketing space. How do you get your message in front of the right people?

Are you getting the most out of your agency’s website? Your website can be a powerful leads generator and a billboard for your business that attracts new insurance prospects. But it can also become an albatross of an investment if prospects can’t find the information they're looking or don’t know how to interact with you. To optimize your website’s impact on your business, follow these steps to improve lead conversion.

Over the past four years, the insurance industry has undergone major shifts from the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Insurance carriers—like Aetna and UnitedHealth Group—are opting out of the ACA marketplace in a number of states, citing financial losses. Younger demographics—who typically use less healthcare services than older patients—are choosing to risk paying out-of-pocket expenses versus paying for health insurance.

Many agents start their careers with a phone and an empty desk—smiling and dialing their way through a list of cold-call contacts.

Open enrollment is the most hectic time of the year for health insurance agents. So how does one cut through the noise and efficiently market their brand to shore up sales during this period? Below are three digital marketing tactics aimed at reaching more prospective clients and increasing your sales throughout open enrollment and beyond.

In April, UnitedHealthcare announced its plan to exit 26 of its 34 healthcare exchanges beginning in 2017. To many, this didn’t come as a surprise, as the insurer had been warning since late last year that the exchanges were a risky investment. (To date, Aetna, the nation’s third-largest health insurance provider, Humana, the fifth largest health insurance company in the U.S., and Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina have also pulled subsidized health plans from select states—citing financial losses as the primary driver.)

Efficiency drives business. Without a system in place that allows and nurtures efficiency, a business is going to spend excess time on tasks that should be routinely, or in some cases, automatically done. A system that is inefficient is also a system that results in a loss of opportunity in sales and unnecessary operating expense.

Efficient management of leads, whether inbound or outbound, is key to maximizing your agency’s multi-channel distribution model. In part one of the series, we discussed inbound leads and team member profiles. Here, we dive into effective lead management and outbound (dialer) strategies to help your agency maximize close rates.

The importance of technology platforms is ever-increasing in necessity among insurance agencies. More often than not, we see agencies using multiple platforms to manage their leads, quoting, enrollment and customer management which significantly impacts efficiency. In part one of our series on maximizing multi-channel distribution, we discuss agency roles, how these roles enhance the sales process, and why an all-in-one agency platform optimizes sales.

Millennials are the generation of instant gratification. As millennials interact with the insurance industry, the industry finds itself facing a more demanding group, but also a group that is willing to listen. When it’s time to purchase an insurance policy, half of millennials turn to family and friends for advice and referrals. These conversations don’t just take place in person or over the phone; they take place in the social community. It’s as simple as someone posting a question to social media asking “Looking for health insurance. Recommendations?”