Digital marketing for life insurance sales is not always easy. A highly competitive vertical, it can cost a considerable sum to generate qualified leads. This leaves most insurance agents buying leads directly from brokers that may or may not be selling them to several other agents. You can win the insurance marketing game, but it has to be done the right way. Learn some tips and tricks for life insurance lead generation in this article.
What Platforms Work Best For Life Insurance Lead Generation?
While there are several opinions on what platforms work best for generating life insurance leads, there are some factors that will play into what platform you should use. You’ll need to consider cost, the sales cycle, and what type of life insurance you’re trying to sell.
When it comes to cost, your cost per lead when it comes to term or whole life insurance will be approximately the same whether you decide to generate leads via social media or PPC ads. PPC ads for life insurance can be more expensive in some markets, but for the most part, expect to spend about $30-$45 per lead. This is still significantly cheaper than buying leads from a broker, which can run up to $100 per lead. The issue that arises from purchasing from a broker is a lack of exclusivity. By generating your own leads, you guarantee that the leads belong to you, and you alone. If you are selling final expense insurance, like Benefit Choice Direct, you might see a wide variance in cost on different platforms. While final expense lead generation on Facebook can yield leads for as low as $20 per lead, PPC ads for final expense insurance can produce higher cost leads, in the vicinity of $35-$45.
The difference in the platforms is most stark when you view the sales cycle. The time from lead to purchase can be much longer with Facebook leads. This can be attributed to the interruption style of marketing that Facebook ads are based on. Google Ads work on a permission basis, which usually leads to a higher intent lead, and most likely someone that is closer to purchasing a policy. This is true of both lead generation for term life insurance and whole life policies. Burial insurance lead generation can be exempt from this general rule, as the purchase cycle tends to be shorter anyway.
Interruption vs. Permission Marketing
Above, we discussed interruption and permission marketing. The concepts were first introduced in Seth Godin’s book “Permission Marketing”. Most advertising had been based on interrupting the consumer. From door-to-door sales, TV and radio ads, and even the early internet banner ads, the goal was to interrupt the consumer at any given time to sell them a product or service
This type of marketing, while effective, was difficult to track, So advertisers created the “permission marketing” system. This is where the consumer gives permission, tacit or express, to market to them directly. This can be in the form of signing up for newsletters, entering contests, or even Googling. By searching for a product or service, consumers have given advertisers permission to market to them.
Because of this, PPC marketing through Google or Bing can be a more effective tool than Facebook ads. Facebook ads are a more targeted version of a TV commercial or newspaper advertisement.
How To Run Facebook Ads For Life Insurance
If you have decided to run Facebook Ads to generate leads for life insurance, you can use Facebook’s powerful advertising data to your advantage. You are able to target audiences based on age, but also based on their job title, income, parental status, and other factors.
In addition to this, you can also write several versions of your ad copy to see what works best. Facebook Ads Manager has the ability to track multiple variations of your ads to help you perfect your life insurance lead generation efforts.
Best practices would have you create 5 different variants, and allow the Facebook algorithm to run the best combination of ad copy, creative, targeting and headline. This will ensure your ads have the most impact.
The use of lookalike audiences is also a powerful tool Facebook offers for life insurance lead generation. Using a data source (such as your website or Facebook page), you can target consumers that are near matches for your customers or visitors. This can be done down to a 1% variance, almost guaranteeing you will be mining gold.
You can use your Facebook Pixel to retarget those that have interacted with your ads and also visited your website. This is another tool that is helping to generate leads for life insurance sales.
How To Run PPC Ads For Life Insurance Lead Generation
Google PPC ads can be a bit more complex when it comes to targeting. In addition to the usual demographic targeting that is available on almost all platforms, Google provides advertisers with data based on search queries. You can use in-market audiences to target consumers that have been searching for life insurance, or have visited websites related to life insurance.
This is a powerful targeting tool. In addition, you can create custom audiences based on specific searches or websites visited. The use of this tool will help in fine tuning your targeting. Google Ads also provides the use of YouTube, which is a less expensive way of advertising via video.
Keyword research is important when it comes to putting together effective PPC campaigns. You’ll want to use negative keywords to control for searches that are not relevant to your business. If you are selling final expense insurance only, you will want to control even more tightly, as you will have wasted clicks for those that are searching for term life or whole life insurance policies.
Be sure to link your Google Analytics account to your Google Ads account to feed website data directly to your ads. This will help you run dynamic remarketing campaigns and control for placements that matter to you.