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

I can pretty much guarantee you will have heard a horror story of someone who had spent a bucket of cash on leads that were either not delivered or were such poor quality that they might as well not have been delivered.

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

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

Buy

You can find a lead generation business that can drive your leads, normally on a cost per lead basis. Bearing in mind the above there are a few things you can use to ensure you are not ripped off:

- Check out the lead generation company. Do they have referrals and testimonials? If yes, then track these people down on LinkedIn and reach out to them and ask about their experience. Speak to other agents or carriers about the company. Do they have any experiences, good or bad? Google them. Type their name and “scam” or “feedback” and see what pops up. This might take some time to do, but it is best to do this research before you have spent any money.
- Define the criteria of a lead. Do you want a particular type of lead? Test with a small number of very specific leads.
- Define the criteria for the payment for a lead. What is classed as a valid lead? You want to ensure you have it clearly stated that a lead needs to provide you with actual contact details you can use — a phone number and email at a minimum. But the number has to be a working number and the customer on the other end has to have requested a quote for their insurance.
- Find out how many times that lead is going to be sold. This can be a killer. You may assume you have bought that lead, but if you don't have it stipulated that you have bought that lead exclusively, it could be sold to two or three other agents at the same time. So if your phone or emails systems aren't quick (within five minutes of getting the lead) by the time you reach the customer, he could have signed up with someone else.

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

Build

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

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

Here are a few to think about:

- 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 several sources for your own lead generation, rather than simply relying on a single source. In this way, it will protect the volumes of leads coming into your business.

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

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

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

Special Reports /

Generating leads: Do you buy or build?

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