As 4th Quarter approaches, and you consider how you can end the year with a flurry of new sales, now’s a good time to look at new ways (or revisit old ways) that have proven effective in generating Group Health leads.
Here are seven tips to help you in your future prospecting.
1: Create a referral program
Referrals can – and should – be an important part of your strategy to attract new business. If you’re serving your existing customers well, they can be your biggest cheerleaders. If you don’t have a current referral reward program, consider setting one up. It can be an amazingly effective way to motivate current customers to share the names and contact information of others who could benefit from your expertise. These leads can help you fill your pipeline all year long. Although a few years old, check out 7 Steps to Launch: How to Run Your First Referral Program from , which includes guidance on launching your own program and choosing an incentive.
2: Share leads with other professionals
You can also share leads with others in your professional network. For example, if you know a property and casualty insurance broker, you might be able to trade leads that don’t fit your respective niches. The same is true for brokers who specialize in Individual & Family Plan (IFP) sales. They may not write employee benefits and group coverage. Perhaps there’s an attorney, accountant, or banker with whom you can trade prospect or customer names and contact information.
3: Optimize your landing page for conversions
If you’re using a landing page builder program like MailChimp, Squarespace, HubSpot, Campaign Monitor, Sendinblue, or any of a variety of others (see related article here), it’s important you employ a strategy to create “must-click pages” that will your motivate your visitors to take action. It doesn’t matter whether your goal is an online lead, quote request, sharing general information, or something else.
If you are running ads on Facebook or Google, your landing page can be streamlined to include only a few items: a sign-up for future emails, event registration, the ability to download or upload, etc. A site focused on lead-generation may include a quote request form for prospects/customers and the ability to upload a group census. The most-popular landing page programs offer you the flexibility to customize a site to your target goals.
4: Sponsor a local group or get involved in your community
Sponsoring a local junior high, high school, college, or semi-professional sports team can help you connect locally with prospects and customers, promote your business, and get your name out (to further build your brand) at an often-modest cost. Similarly, you can sponsor a local charity event, raise your profile, and generate additional leads for your business.
Taking part in community groups, trade and business associations, and local events can also be a meaningful way to get your name out to prospects and potential business partners alike. A broker survey several years ago by the industry publication ThinkAdvisor found community involvement to be the second most-effective prospecting technique. (Referrals ranked #1; see above.)
5: Employ paid media
If you have the funds to invest in your lead-generation efforts, you might consider a direct mail campaign and/or the purchase of a lead mailing list. There are “general” lead firms and others that specialize in insurance broker leads. Word & Brown has been working with Broker Pop for several years to offer brokers multiple campaigns to promote the sale of health insurance and employee benefits. Visit the Broker Pop website to see the full range of products, including mailing lists built to your specific criteria.
You might also consider pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, where your ad is displayed with search engine results for terms like “employee benefits” or a related phrase. HubSpot offers a useful guide on PPC marketing. Forbes published an informative article earlier this year that discusses some of the most-popular PPC marketing platforms, including Google, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Yelp!
6: Host events
Whether your event is live and in-person or virtual, getting yourself in front of a group of business owners or benefits managers offers you the opportunity to connect with several (or even dozens or hundreds of) interested prospects at one time. Be sure when you’re developing your program that you include valuable information such as local provider networks and cost trends in your area. You don’t want your program to be just a sales pitch. You want to prove your value to your potential customers by demonstrating how you can help them find the right balance between the benefits their employees want and ways to control costs for their businesses. You might even record your program and make it available on-demand after your initial, live presentation. Do not overlook the opportunity to post it on your website or promote the recording in a future email or other promotional campaign.
7: Share your expertise
Beyond hosting an event where you demonstrate your knowledge of the market, there are other ways you can share your expertise, enhance your reputation, and build your community profile. You can speak before your local chamber of commerce or other groups. You can write a blog or contribute a column to another person’s or organization’s blog. You can write a guest commentary or a regular column for a community-based publication or regional business journal. Each can help you attract new leads.
A cautionary close: one mistake many brokers make is failing to follow up on every lead. That prospect who called your office for a quote may take priority over someone who sent you an inquiry via your website or a referral from a current client. Nevertheless, all three leads are important. You need to respond to each as soon as reasonably possible.
Reach out periodically to older, cold leads that may not have resulted in a sale in the past. They can often be warmed up. Be sure to develop a library of messages that can be used to respond to any sort of lead. LendingTree’s QuoteWizard has five suggested templates to consider.
Talk with your Word & Brown rep, too. We offer a wealth of materials to help you with your sales and marketing. If you’re not already doing business with us, contact our nearest office to get started.
