Insurance agents have two sources of leads when it comes to Internet lead generation. An agent can buy leads from an Internet lead generation company, or they can build a lead generation web site and create their own leads.

Buying Leads

It’s important to buy leads from a company that has experience generating Internet insurance leads. New Internet lead generation companies have a tendency to rely upon questionable marketing tactics, and this can affect the quality of your leads.

Internet insurance leads can range from $5-$30 each, depending on what kind of lead it is (life insurance, annuity, auto, etc.), and whether it’s an exclusive lead or not. An agent should verify if the leads are exclusive because some lead generation companies sell the same leads to multiple agents.

Also, legitimate Internet lead generation companies will credit you back for bad leads. You should be able to call into the lead generation company and speak with a service representative on the phone in case you need to discuss a bad lead so that you can get credited for it.

Building a Lead Generation Web Site

There is a good opportunity for agents to build a quality lead generation web site of their own. An agent can create a web site in their local market and build pages based upon what people are typing into the search engines. For example, if an agent lives in California, he/she can research keywords like ‘insurance’, and ‘California’, as well as specific towns or counties in his/her area (‘keywords’ is a term used to describe what people are typing into the search engines). So if an agent discovers that people are searching for ‘California insurance broker’, and ‘San Francisco insurance agents’, he/she can create one page for each of these keyword phrases.

As an agent digs deeper into their keyword research, they may uncover quite a few keywords and keyword phrases. But one page is not going to do it. You need a combination of dozens of pages because each page will get a few searches per month, and this can add up. Plus the more pages you build, the better chance you have of getting ranked in the search engines. Web sites with multiple pages of content are called ‘content’ based web sites.

The key to success in building a successful content based web site is to focus on quality content first. The reason that content is important is because you don’t want your web site to look like you’re trying to sell something. You want to build pages that relay good quality information in order to build trust with your prospect.

The second mechanism that is needed is an ‘opt-in’ lead generation system. For example, offer a free quality newsletter, and/or a free course that your prospect can subscribe to via an autoresponder (an autoresponder is a simple web based marketing tool that automatically sends information to people who ‘opt-in’ for your information). This way, you capture names and e-mail addresses (as well as mailing addresses) for your Internet direct marketing and direct mail efforts. But if you do not have quality content and you ask for someone’s e-mail address or mailing address to sign up for your newsletter or auto responder, you may not get good results.

Fortunately, the time you spend building this web site can pay off because big commissions can arise from just one lead, paying for the time and money you have invested.

An alternative to the content based web site is a ‘landing page’ web site. A landing page is basically a one-page web site and its main goal is to get the prospect to subscribe to a free report, mini-course, or newsletter. Instead of relying on your content to build credibility and trust, you will have to rely upon your copywriting ability to get your prospect to give up their contact information on your landing page.

A landing page web site usually does not get good placement in the search engines, so in order to generate Internet insurance leads, an agent will have to rely on ‘pay per click’ advertising (where you pay for traffic to your web site), and other advertising mediums.

An insurance agent can build a significant clientele buying leads from reputable insurance lead generation companies and building a quality web site. All it takes is a little bit of due diligence and patience.

Copyright 2006 Brian Maroevich

Brian Maroevich is an Internet marketing entrepreneur and has written courses on lead generation and marketing for insurance agents, financial planners, and small businesses. You can read Brian’s articles for free at http://www.insurance-leads-advisor.com

Brian Maroevich