Lead generation are two words that can strike fear into theheart of most insurance business owners.

I can pretty much guarantee you will have heard a horror storyof someone who had spent a bucket of cash on leads that were eithernot delivered or were such poor quality that they might as well nothave been delivered.

That said, done right, lead generation is a great way to grow abusiness.

There are two main ways to attract leads — buy them or buildthem.

Buy

You can find a lead generation business that can drive yourleads, normally on a cost per lead basis. Bearing in mind the abovethere are a few things you can use to ensure you are not rippedoff:

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  • Check out the lead generation company. Dothey have referrals and testimonials? If yes, then track thesepeople down on LinkedIn and reach out to them and ask about theirexperience. Speak to other agents or carriers about thecompany. Do they have any experiences, good or bad? Google them.Type their name and “scam” or “feedback” and see what popsup. This might take some time to do, but it is best to do thisresearch before you have spent any money.
  • Define the criteria of a lead. Do you want aparticular type of lead? Test with a small number of very specificleads.
  • Define the criteria for the payment for alead. What is classed as a valid lead? You want to ensureyou have it clearly stated that a lead needs to provide you withactual contact details you can use — a phone number and email at aminimum. But the number has to be a working number and the customeron the other end has to have requested a quote for theirinsurance.
  • Find out how many times that lead is going to besold. This can be a killer. You may assume you have boughtthat lead, but if you don't have it stipulated that you have boughtthat lead exclusively, it could be sold to two or three otheragents at the same time. So if your phone or emails systems aren'tquick (within five minutes of getting the lead) by the time youreach the customer, he could have signed up with someone else.

If you take these steps, you will have more chance of a goodexperience with buying in your lead generation needs.

Build

The other way is to build your own lead generation sources, sothey funnel you leads.

There are a large number of online methods you can use to driveleads into your business.

Here are a few to think about:

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  • Google pay-per-click advertising.
  • Google SEO.
  • Display network advertising.
  • Facebook pay-per-click advertising.
  • Twitter advertising.
  • Affiliate marketing.
  • Email marketing.
  • Video marketing.
  • Content distribution.
  • Content marketing.
  • Blog marketing.
  • Cross-selling existing customers.
  • Referral programs.

In an ideal world, you would spread the risk by using severalsources for your own lead generation, rather than simply relying ona single source. In this way, it will protect the volumes of leadscoming into your business.

In fact, you could buy and build at the same time to really growyour business and support its activity by feeding it leads.

If you decide to go down this route, make sure you can track allof the activity and understand where each and every lead came fromand how much it cost you. Start small and build up.

Jason Hulott is director of Kent, England-based digitalmarketing company SpeedieConsulting.