3 Marketing Strategies For Insurance Agents

Today we are going to discuss three proven marketing strategies that can help insurance agents get more traffic. 

We will also share three sales funnels that you can use to convert that traffic into leads and then into paying customers. 

Traditional Marketing vs. Agile Marketing

Okay, so before we get into discussing specific marketing strategies, let’s talk about two different marketing paradigms: traditional marketing and agile marketing. Which one should you use to promote your insurance business?

What Is Traditional Marketing?

Traditional marketing works like this:

1. You come up with an idea for a marketing campaign.
2. You create that campaign by working on it in isolation without any feedback from your target audience.
3. You launch that campaign and hope that it works. This is known as a “Big Bang Launch” because it’s a discrete make-it-or-break-it event.

What Is Agile Marketing?

Agile marketing works like this:

1. You come up with an idea for a marketing campaign.
2. You create the minimum viable version of that campaign that allows you to get feedback from your target audience with the least possible investment.
3. You launch the campaign, analyze the results, and make adjustments based on the feedback that you receive. Then you repeat the cycle again. Your campaign is a perpetual work-in-progress that you continue optimizing.

Which Approach Should You Use?

The traditional approach to marketing makes sense when you consider the historical context in which it developed: it was the only way to promote your products and services on a mass scale up until the dawn of the digital age.

However, traditional marketing is extremely risky because it requires investing money upfront in an experimental campaign. It’s great if it works. But what if it doesn’t?

Agile marketing is a much better approach because it allows you to validate ideas, optimize marketing campaigns, and scale them gradually once they have been proven to work. 

Keep in mind that marketing is a skill. And just like with any other skill, mastering it will inevitably involve making a lot of mistakes. You are going to lose money. There’s no way around it. 

However, using the agile approach can help you minimize those losses so that you can learn the lessons that you need to learn as cheaply as possible. And sure, losing a few hundred bucks here and a few hundred bucks there is still going to sting. But at least it won’t put you out of business!

Okay, so with all that out of the way, here are the three best marketing strategies for insurance agents…

Marketing Strategy #1: Google Search Ads

Google Search ads are displayed at the top of Google’s search results. 

We recommend using these ads to target transactional keywords related to the various insurance products that you offer.

This can help you attract potential customers who are already actively searching for these products.

You can also target informational keywords used by people who are searching for information about various insurance-related topics.

Just understand that it’s not enough to get people to click on your ads. You then need to convert them into leads and paying customers. 

That’s why the pages that you are driving traffic to should serve as gateways to your sales funnel. 

Say, you can provide the information that the potential customer was searching for, then encourage them to fill out a survey to get a custom quote. This is called a quote funnel. We will discuss sales funnels later in this article. 

Marketing Strategy #2: Social Media Ads

All major social media platforms allow you to run ads on them:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• TikTok

These platforms have amazing ad-targeting capabilities.

While the specifics vary from platform to platform, you should be able to target people using demographic criteria such as location, age, gender, nationality, education, occupation, etc.

Some of these platforms also allow you to use psychographic criteria such as religion, political beliefs, interests, hobbies, etc.

All this allows you to zero in on your dream customers and ensure that your ads will be displayed to people who belong to your target audience. 

But again, merely generating traffic isn’t enough, you need to convert that traffic into leads and then into paying customers. 

You can do that by driving paid traffic directly to your sales funnels. Don’t use social media ads to promote your insurance products, use them to promote your lead magnets instead!

Pick the social media platform that makes the most sense for your business, set up an ad campaign designed to promote your lead magnet, and start running it with a small daily budget. 

Once you figure out how to run ads profitably, you can begin scaling your campaign by gradually increasing its daily budget.

Then, once you have mastered paid advertising on that platform, streamlined your campaigns, and have them running on autopilot, you can start expanding to other platforms using the same agile marketing approach.

Also, if you don’t know which platform to start with, you can set up ad campaigns on several of them, start running them with small daily budgets, and then double down on the campaign that produced the best results. 

Marketing Strategy #3: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization, also known as SEO, is the practice of optimizing websites and web pages so that they would rank higher on Google’s search results for specific keywords.

You might want to consider building a niche blog dedicated to various insurance-related topics relevant to your dream customers. This can help you get organic search traffic from Google.

Something to keep in mind here is that the top three search results get the vast majority of clicks, so your aim shouldn’t be to merely get on the first page, it should be to take one of the top three spots. 

Here’s a process for creating articles that have a chance of making it to the top:

1. Do keyword research to identify a promising keyword. There are plenty of free keyword research tools out there but we recommend investing in Ahrefs which is what SEO professionals tend to use.
2. Do competitive research to see what’s currently ranking on the first page of Google for that keyword.
3. Write an article that targets that keyword and is better than everything that’s currently ranking on the first page of Google for it.
4. Consider using Clearscope to optimize your article. This tool will provide a recommended word count and tell you how many times to use your primary keyword as well as various semantic keywords. It’s pricey but popular among SEO professionals.
5. Publish your article and then build as many backlinks to it as you possibly can. This lets Google know that your content is legit!

We can’t emphasize the importance of building backlinks enough. It’s arguably the main reason why so many entrepreneurs struggle to rank for their target keywords. Creating high-quality content is easy, going out there and getting backlinks is hard, so people tend to focus on the former while ignoring the latter. But you need to be aggressive about link-building if you want your content to rank well!

You should also make sure that you have a system for converting organic search traffic into leads and then into paying customers. Promote your lead magnet at the bottom of your articles and with an exit-intent pop-up that is shown when the visitor is about to leave the page. You can also create content upgrades for the articles that get the most search traffic. 

It will probably take you at least 12-18 months of consistently publishing high-quality SEO content and aggressively building backlinks to reach the point where you start getting a decent amount of organic search traffic. You need to be in this for the long haul if you want to stand a chance at building a niche blog!

Convert Visitors Into Leads and Then Into Customers With Sales Funnels

Okay, so now you know how to generate traffic, but how can you convert that traffic into leads and then into paying customers?

Here are three proven sales funnels that can help you do that:

The Quote Funnel

The quote funnel is a sales funnel where you use a custom quote as a lead magnet. 

Its structure looks like this:

• Page 1: A survey page – Ask questions to get the information you need to create a custom quote.
• Page 2: A squeeze page – Ask the potential customer for their email address so that you can send them a quote based on their survey answers. You can either create this quote manually or generate it automatically.
• Page 3: A thank you page – Thank the potential customer for filling out the survey and letting them know when they should expect their quote.

Then, when you send them an email with their quote, end it by encouraging them to book a 30-minute free consultation with you and close the sale on that call. 

This funnel can work really well for insurance businesses because people who are looking to purchase insurance will likely be interested in getting a custom quote. 

You can use Google Search ads to drive traffic to survey pages for specific insurance products. Just make sure to include something along the lines of “Get a FREE Quote!” in the ad copy!

The Squeeze Page Funnel

The squeeze page funnel is the most popular sales funnel out there. 

Its structure looks like this:

• Page 1: A squeeze page – Present your lead magnet and ask the potential customer for their email address in exchange for it.
• Page 2: A thank you page – Thank the potential customer and provide instructions on how to access your lead magnet.

We recommend creating an educational lead magnet where you provide a solution to a problem that your dream customers are struggling with.

You can then use Google Search ads to promote your lead magnet by targeting relevant informational keywords.

You can also use social media ads to target people who may be in need of that information. Say, if someone is looking to buy their first home, they might benefit from your guide to homeowners insurance. So why not promote it to them with ads?

Finally, you can promote your lead magnet on your website. Say, if you have a popular article about homeowners insurance that’s getting a lot of organic search traffic, you can promote your guide to homeowners insurance at the top of it and at the bottom of it and direct visitors to its squeeze page so that they can download it. 

The Webinar Funnel

The webinar funnel is a sales funnel where you use a webinar as your lead magnet.

Its structure looks like this:

• Page 1: A webinar registration page – Explain what your webinar is about and encourage the potential customer to register for it by providing their email address.
• Page 2: A thank you page – Thank the potential customers for registering for the webinar and let them know that you will be sending them email reminders 24 hours, 1 hour, and 15 minutes before the event and then the last reminder once the webinar is live.
• Page 3: A webinar page – This is where the potential customer can either watch the webinar live or watch the recording if they can’t make it to the live event.

The webinar should be a 45-60 minute presentation that provides a solution to a problem that your dream customers are struggling with.

At the end of it, transition into a sales pitch for your offer, then end the webinar either by encouraging the attendees to purchase it and directing them to its sales page or by encouraging the attendees to book a free 30-minute consultation with you and directing them to your appointment booking page. 

Entrepreneurs often struggle with the transition from the free presentation to the sales pitch because it can feel awkward.

We recommend using this script that you can modify according to your needs to better suit your offer:

“So now I’d like to offer you guys something that I’m really excited about. It’s something that I think is going to change tons of lives and businesses for the better. But I don’t want to do it without your permission. If you guys want to learn more about [PRODUCT/SERVICE] then just type “Yes” in the chat bar.”

If you don’t get any positive responses, follow up with this script:

“Okay. Well I don’t want to take up too much of your time. But I really think this is going to be a game-changer for you. Is it okay if I just spend 10 minutes showing you this offer I put together?”

If there’s still no interest from the audience, then thank them for attending your webinar and end the event. That’s super awkward but it’s also useful feedback. 

In all likelihood, your presentation wasn’t valuable enough, so you need to figure out how to improve it. Alternatively, you can ditch the whole thing altogether, go back to the drawing board, and come up with something better. 

We recommend doing webinars live because it allows you to get immediate audience feedback. Use that feedback to optimize your presentation for maximum conversions. 

This funnel can work really well for selling insurance consulting. Give away general information for free and then pitch your consulting services where you help people implement what they learned!

Build Your First Sales Funnel In Just Five Days!

Let’s keep it real:

Building a sales funnel from scratch can seem like a daunting task.

That’s why we created our 5 Day Lead Challenge where our co-founder Russel walks you through it step-by-step.

You will:

• Create your first lead magnet
• Build your first squeeze page funnel
• Set up a six-email welcome sequence

…and launch your funnel in just five days!

So don’t hesitate. Take action now. It can change your life!

Join Our 5 Day Lead Challenge Today!

P.S. This challenge is completely free!