Why Were Internet Leads Good in the Past?

[Mick_Keyou]

Why are they horrible now? If good leads were generated years ago why can't yhat be replicated?

 

[Josh]

First, good internet leads do still exist.

That said, you have affiliates and aggregators that have been working for over a decade on perfecting the science of maximizing their revenue. There are also more and more folks willing to flat out lie, cheat, steal, to get the traffic moving. When I was at LeadsCon last month a lot of the exhibitors and presentations worked with increasing the quality of leads and algorithms for carving out bogus results along with validating the data. The more sophisticated scammers get, the more difficult it is to detect what is what.

 

[djs]

The single biggest reason internet leads are 'tough' nowadays is there is more of a demand for them than there is a supply of them. All of the rest of the problems stem from that basic issue.

Once you realize this, you can do things to help out. Find a bit of a niche market. Find a territory that is underserved. Work and rework your leads. Make sure you have a process and a followup process in place.

Lets take an example. Netquote will tell me that on average their leads are sold 2.3 times (or whatever the current number is), with a max of 8 sales. In my area, there is a wait list to get Netquote leads, so they are actually being sold the max times. This alone will make it tough to turn a profit on the leads.

So, I took my own advice and went elsewhere and just asked what do they not sell very well. Out of this was born my dented driver program, basically drivers that had suspended licenses, DUI's (multiple was good), or other issues where most people filtered out the lead. I did leave age filters in.

This gave me drivers that were probably really looking for insurance, less chance they were being generated for revenue purposes and once I talked to them, a good chance of selling them insurance at a decent premium and the retention was actually really good, since they didn't have a choice.

This lasted for a while, then several other agents started doing the same thing (should have kept my mouth shut) and then the garbage started rolling in since now there was a demand. I went to the next niche.

Try new things. Stretch your comfort zone a bit. Don't go after what everyone else is going after, you'll pick that up along the way. I picked up a lot of good households because I could get the 1 problem taken care of.

Dan

 

[aswanson@UE]

Take a look at trying out generators as opposed to aggregators. Have you tried HomeTown or UE?

 

[Justin Bilyj]

I think they were good back then because not everyone knew or used them. Not everyone knew how to take an app over the phone or the process for it.

 

[InsuranceJerk]

Like Josh said, affiliate generated traffic is the biggest problem. The arrangement is inherently ripe for abuse.

 

[BrandonLTC]

Yeah it overall greatly depends on how they're being used or who is doing it. My company's internet lead conversion is better now than ever because of in depth analytics and tracking.

I cut and slice the data every way possible and continually trim the fat. The leads that aren't selling get cut off and the ones that are get maximized.

But overall a company that just straight up sells leads won't do that, they're just trying to maximize everything.

 

[Bob Klee]

The single biggest reason internet leads are 'tough' nowadays is there is more of a demand for them than there is a supply of them. All of the rest of the problems stem from that basic issue.

Once you realize this, you can do things to help out. Find a bit of a niche market. Find a territory that is underserved. Work and rework your leads. Make sure you have a process and a followup process in place.

Lets take an example. Netquote will tell me that on average their leads are sold 2.3 times (or whatever the current number is), with a max of 8 sales. In my area, there is a wait list to get Netquote leads, so they are actually being sold the max times. This alone will make it tough to turn a profit on the leads.

So, I took my own advice and went elsewhere and just asked what do they not sell very well. Out of this was born my dented driver program, basically drivers that had suspended licenses, DUI's (multiple was good), or other issues where most people filtered out the lead. I did leave age filters in.

This gave me drivers that were probably really looking for insurance, less chance they were being generated for revenue purposes and once I talked to them, a good chance of selling them insurance at a decent premium and the retention was actually really good, since they didn't have a choice.

This lasted for a while, then several other agents started doing the same thing (should have kept my mouth shut) and then the garbage started rolling in since now there was a demand. I went to the next niche.

Try new things. Stretch your comfort zone a bit. Don't go after what everyone else is going after, you'll pick that up along the way. I picked up a lot of good households because I could get the 1 problem taken care of.

Dan

Dan,
Great analysis! I would agree 100% with what you've said here. There is more demand by both the carriers & agents for good leads. Thus more fraud came to the space too:(

Also, as LGilmore & others have said. Don't give up on a lead! Make sure to add to at least a drip email campaign & consider if you have the staff, a drip call and/or postcard campaign too! This process works.

 

[Guest]

I am currently using agency IQ for drip emails. Who else has a good service for a reasonable price?

 

[Artash]

Because everybody nowadays has shifted to sales and marketing position, especially ''social media marketing consultant'' is very fancy thing these days - hence everybody wants to sell, get leads, have multiple landing pages, and so on but there are not enough consumers!