When it comes to selling P&C insurance, having quality leads can make all the difference in the world. When you thoroughly understand your target market and have time to invest in lead generation tactics, you can grow your business significantly. However, many P&C insurance agencies don't have time to invest in lead generation. This is where buying quality leads comes into play. This should be one of your best insurance marketing tools for growing your client base.

Paid Leads Are Crucial For New Businesses

If you're just starting out in your insurance agency, then you have a lot of tasks on your plate. From hiring new employees to increasing brand awareness in your market, this leaves little time for lead generation. 

Having the ability to pay for quality leads can allow your business the opportunity to expand its customer base. This will provide you with the customers you need to help cover those initial bills and set the foundation for a successful future for your company.

Different Types of Paid Leads

Before you can strategically invest money in purchasing new leads for your business, you need to understand the different lead types out there. Each type comes with its own pros and cons that you should be aware of so that you can make more informed decisions about which lead types are going to work best to meet your company's current goals.

Real-Time Leads

These leads generally come in via email, phone, or web forms. Time is of the essence with these types of leads, as they'll need to be contacted right away. Real-time leads can be a great way to get instantaneous customers for your insurance agency, with the understanding that they tend to be higher-touch.

Live Transfer Leads

Live transfer leads are prospective clients that have requested quotes or other information about insurance. They're typically evaluated at a call center to ensure genuine interest before being transferred to your company. A major benefit of live transfer leads is that the customer is already on the line. You don't have to fool around with trying to call and contact them.

Search Insurance Leads

These leads are generated via search engines. Customers are specifically looking for the services that you offer. While conversion rates for search insurance leads are fairly high, their prices can change depending on the bidding price for the specific keyword and chosen location.

Exclusive Insurance Leads

Exclusive insurance leads are those in which your company is the only one obtaining the lead's information. You won't have to deal with a lead who is frustrated from having 5 or 10 other companies calling them at the same time. While these can produce a great ROI, exclusive insurance leads can be quite costly to obtain.

Shared Insurance Leads

Unlike exclusive insurance leads, shared ones are those where multiple companies have been given the lead's contact information. In most cases, reputable lead selling services will sell the lead to anywhere between two and eight other insurance agencies. These leads are much less expensive than exclusive leads and are more widely available because they create more profit for lead-selling companies.

The Various Benefits of Paying for Leads

Before you ever invest your business's money in paid leads, it's very important that you understand the benefits of doing so. Otherwise, you're going to consistently question whether or not it's worth it. There are many different benefits that your insurance agency can enjoy when you invest in paid leads.

Steady Flow of New Prospects

One of the biggest benefits of paying for insurance leads is that it allows you to obtain a steady stream of new prospects. While being a successful insurance agency does require having a vast base of clients, you always need to have new leads coming in to continue to be successful going into the future.

Invest More Time in Effective Conversion Tactics

If you don't pay for insurance leads, then you know that a lot of your time gets invested in lead generation strategies. It can take years to set up successful strategies that bring in quality leads. When you opt for paying for these leads, you can spend much less time worrying about effective lead generation. You can spend the majority of your time developing successful lead conversion funnels. The better your business gets at converting leads, the more revenue you'll make.

Target Specific Demographics

Another great benefit of purchasing insurance leads is narrowing down the target area. When you can target prospects in a particular area, you can have more success with conversion when you're located there. This is a great way to get a long list of new clients for new branch locations that you're opening up.

Tips for Buying Quality Leads

When it comes to buying leads for your insurance agency, you need to always be concerned with their quality level. Leads aren't about quantity, as you could have thousands of leads that simply don't convert. Quality leads are those that are fairly easy to convert for your company. To obtain these quality leads, there are some key tips that you'll want to follow.

Invest in Exclusive Leads

It's crucial to realize that most leads out there are given to multiple companies. Only leads marketed as exclusive will be given solely to your business. These are leads where you likely won't have to compete with many other insurers to get your P&C commission. As you've likely surmised, exclusive leads do tend to be more expensive than typical leads.

Buy in Bulk

Many lead vendors will offer you a significant discount on the price of leads when you purchase them in bulk. While this does require more financial resources to do, it can be worth the additional expense. If your business doesn't have a lot of financial resources to handle the purchase of bulk leads, consider partnering up with other insurance agents. You can easily split the costs and leads while you both are taking advantage of the bulk discount.

Consider Getting Licensed in Multiple States

Another great tactic that can help you to reduce the costs of your leads is to get licensed in multiple states. Vendors will use your geo-targeting requests as a format for determining the cost of your lead. If you want leads in the eastern part of the United States, each lead is going to cost much less than getting a lead in the specific city of Pittsburgh, PA.

How to Successfully Convert Leads

Probably one of the biggest challenges that any insurance agency will have to face is how to successfully convert leads that they obtain into paying customers. While it will take some finesse to determine the best conversion strategy depending on the specific type of lead, there are some key factors that can help you be successful with any lead.

Manage Leads Efficiently

As soon as you get a lead, you want to get them connected with an agent who can convert them. It's imperative that you pay attention to the client's location, insurance needs, and marketing source. You want to efficiently connect them with P&C insurers that have the types of policies that they're looking for. You never just want to hand out a lead to the first available agent as you don't know if they can actually provide what the customer needs to convert or not.

Give Leads to Your Strongest Agents

It's much easier to convert a lead that calls you up on the phone as compared to one that you purchased. It's always a good rule of thumb to give your leads to your strongest agents. Most leads will never have heard of your company, so they'll need to be nurtured properly.

Be Flexible With Contact Strategies

Not everyone wants to get on the phone and talk. You need to keep this in mind when it comes to your insurance sales tools. Consider multiple contact options like email or setting up physical appointments. You'll likely find that there are going to be more prominent contact strategies that lead to conversions over others.

Rely on a CRM

Having a CRM with P&C insurance software comes with many great benefits. One of the best is that it allows you to keep track of leads that don't convert right away. A particular lead may need your services. However, when you reached out to them, they declined. It could've simply been due to bad timing. Having a CRM with P&C software allows you to keep their information on hand and get regular reminders to follow up with that lead until they're ready to make a purchase.

Paid insurance leads are a great strategy for any insurance agency to add to their overall marketing plans. If you're not currently buying paid leads, you should highly consider doing so to receive all of the great benefits that we went over above.