Auto insurance provides customers with financial protection against physical damage to the vehicle. It makes every vehicle owner a prospect by default. Also, federal laws require drivers to carry liability insurance so that they can cover the cost of damage to people or property in the instances of accidents. Every state in America requires all drivers to carry an active car insurance policy.
Therefore, auto insurance is always on demand. In this article, we will discuss the 25 best ways to generate auto insurance leads.
Partnerships
Collaborating with stakeholders from the automobile business is one of the most promising ways to find auto insurance leads. You can also indulge in digital collaborations. Here are the strategies.
#1 Partner with auto-dealers and servicing centers
Buying a new car or a bike has traditionally been an offline process. Even with online auto dealers and aggregators now an important part of the ecosystem, a key part of the buying cycle is still offline. People visit the dealers, test drive, negotiate, and then arrive at a buying decision even though they have already done a lot of research online. Even though car buyers spend 59% of their time researching online, 61.4% of buyers prefer to buy from a dealership.
After a customer decides to buy a car or a bike, then comes the insurance discussion. Buyers know that its mandatory, but they want to get the best coverage. At this moment, the dealer is the main influencer.
You can collaborate with the dealer so that he suggests your insurance services to the customer. In return, you can offer a certain commission to the dealer, which you would have offered to your agents anyway.
The leads found at this stage are highly qualified because they are on the final stage of buying the vehicle.
#2 Partner with e-commerce marketplaces
B2B2C marketing is a relatively new strategy. Apart from their websites and digital marketplaces, Auto Insurers have started looking to lure the audiences of many different businesses.
For example, in 2019, in India, Acko, a leading InsurTech partnered with Amazon to sell car and bike insurance on its platform. You can imagine the customer reach these marketplaces have.
Auto insurance lead generation through referral network
A referral network is a group of professional colleagues, business, or websites that can help in promoting your business in their network. In terms of auto insurance business, referrals like insurance news websites, insurance marketplaces, etc. can help you find exclusive leads.
#3 Third-party websites
For this, you need to identify the popular websites that can promote your business. For example, when you search for best car insurance companies, you’ll probably land upon one of the sites like cnet.com, bankrate.com, simpledollar.com, to name some.
You can partner with such digital sites, to showcase your services. The following is a screenshot from cnet.com that lists auto insurance services on one of its pages.
#4 Insurance marketplaces
People who want to buy car insurance, compare price and policy benefits on insurance marketplaces. Some of the popular marketplaces or brokers for auto insurance in USA include BuyAutoInsurance, Nationwide, Insurance.com, Compare.com, and many more. Similarly, you can find the popular marketplaces in your country or region.
Listing yourself on these sites will help you find inbound leads.
Events
Participating in automobile events can also help you find leads. People who attend such shows intend to buy a car or a bike in a near future. So, they form great prospects. Moreover, you can network with participating companies and explore partnership opportunities at such events.
#5 Participate in local auto shows
There can be a variety of auto shows in different categories like vintage, luxury, motorbikes, commercial, etc. Based on your products and offerings, you can shortlist such events. You can use sites like 10times.com to find the schedule of these events.
An important point to note here is – if you’re a company who wants to send your field sales team to find potential customers, you can use mobile CRM app to speed up lead capture into your system. Otherwise, it could take a lot of effort to manually enter lead records later.
#6 Communicate with driving schools
People who have enrolled in driving lessons are warm prospects. You can communicate your offering to trainers, who, in turn, can influence learners to buy your car insurance policies.
You can also give a virtual business card to the driving school tutors so that potential customers do not find any difficulty in locating you.
Create inbound lead source
Inbound leads are the most inexpensive ones. Prospective customers who reach out to you for your services on their own are inbound leads. Creating a source that generates car insurance leads throughout the year takes time and effort. It is also a great way to generate free auto insurance leads. The following are some of the strategies that leading car insurers heed.
#7 Website plugins
Plugins like quote generators, premium calculators, and more are the most popular add-ons to the insurance websites. They directly answer the customer query, and at the same time, help you find prospective customers. For this, all you need to do is – ask your website developer to prepare a piece of code as per your business logic.
Look at the following example. In this, Allstate auto insurance provides quotes without requiring too much customer information.
#8 eBooks
Offering eBooks in exchange for the customer’s email id or phone number is another way to find prospects. In terms of the insurance industry, you can create eBooks such as car maintenance tips, Handbook for Insured, etc.
But how will it benefit you?
Well, the answer is simple. One, you will get to know people who own a vehicle. Two, by providing some useful information, you can gain their trust. After you have their email id or contact number, you can nurture them through emails and calls.
For example, Crosley Law, a law firm in the UK, offers insights on rules and regulations that can benefit the customers. Insurance firms can also adopt the idea.
If this idea sounds good, then you must also think of ways to automate the next processes. For instance, will you manually update all the lead information, or you would like to invest in a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution to organize, track, and update the lead status. Consider insurance software like LeadSquared CRM to streamline your lead-gen and sales operations.
Influencer campaigns
Influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing. Here, influencers, that is, the subject matter experts and celebrities, endorse a product or brand and influence the people in their network to make a purchase.
#9 Partner with influencers
It is crucial to identify influencers in your product category. While celebrities fit in almost all types of brand endorsements, you can also reach out to thought leaders and experts on a particular subject to promote your insurance policies and generate leads.
For example, Adam Lyons, CEO & founder of TheZebra.com, helps users understand car insurance. People trust influencers and follow their lead. Hence, influencer marketing is also becoming a popular source of finding qualified leads.
If finding an influencer looks challenging, then you can also include customer testimonials on your product page to influence the visitor’s buying decision. Nowadays, the combination of people (influencers) who have a know-how of this subject and customer testimonials work wonders for lead generation.
Find auto insurance leads from agencies
If you want to speed-up your sales, then buying auto insurance leads from agencies is also an option. However, you must know good auto insurance lead providers, else you’ll end up calling prospects who will never convert. To avoid this, ask for samples and read reviews of the agencies.
#10 Buy leads from agencies
Depending on your preferences, you can buy exclusive or shared leads from agencies. Exclusive leads are higher in cost than shared leads because they are sold only once (to one provider). That is why they are best for individual agents as they have higher chances of conversions. On the other hand, shared leads are the ones that lead agencies share with many individuals/insurance firms. So, you will need call-centers or in-house sales teams to nurture them.
#11 Transfer leads
Transfer leads are the most impactful lead types available. These are the leads that are prequalified by agencies. Also known as warm leads, they have higher chances of conversions. In the auto insurance sector, agents have been able to close over 50% of auto transfer leads.
Advertisements
Advertisements are a timeless means of lead generation. There are so many places where you can advertise. Moreover, the rising digital interactions have brought forth new opportunities for advertising on online channels. The following are the tried and tested methods of advertising for lead generation.
#12 Advertise in gas stations
There are over 121,000 gas stations in the US. Almost every driver visits a gas station at least once a week. And if you see, these visitors are very likely to renew/switch to a different insurance provider – the one who provides better rates and benefits.
So, you can advertise your services through flyers, posters, or even leave your business card at the cash counter. You can also communicate with the cash-counter staff to distribute your business information.
#13 Advertise on car stickers
People who own a car have a bull’s eye on the aesthetics of other cars on the road. Therefore, you can also consider advertising on car panels. People in cross-roads, signals, and jams do notice the information on the car. The best practices for advertising on the car are:
- Use minimum words to describe your service
- Highlight the benefits of your car insurance policy
- Use your logo
- Include website address/phone number in the content. (Earlier, people skipped this step because nobody carries a pen/paper while driving. But now, people can take a picture, if something on the way interests them)
#14 Advertise on newspapers
Advertising in newspapers is a timeless and effective way of creating awareness about your offerings. With the rise of digital newspapers, you can also advertise to their digital subscribers. However, to make the most of your advertisement in a newspaper, follow these best practices:
- Create a catchy, compelling headline. Remember, there are so many other news and adverts to distract a reader. So, your advert needs to stand out.
- Highlight the direct benefits of your insurance policy.
- Provide a definitive call to action. In the case of print ads, mention your phone number or website address, where they can find complete information. If you’re advertising digitally, then do not forget to hyperlink the CTA (for example, learn more, buy now, etc.) to your product page.
- Do not overload information. It is because the newspapers are already text-heavy, and something more graphical with minimum text can help you draw readers’ attention.
The following ad from ETINSURE shows all the above features.
#15 Advertise on social media
Google and Facebook hold the largest share of the US digital ad spend (Google:38.6% and Facebook: 19.9%). Therefore, these are the best platforms to advertise your offerings.
Social media may include Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and many other social channels that might be popular in your region. So, identify the popular media among your target audience and create ads based on location, age, gender, and other attributes that define your audience persona.
Creating ads on these media is very simple. You can do it yourself, or your marketing/digital media team can easily manage it. You can also advertise your services on Facebook Marketplace.
#16 Advertise on Google, Bing
Google Ads is the most popular digital advertising medium. You can target people based on their browsing history, location, age, gender, affinity, in-market preferences (what they are searching for), and more. Plus, there are a variety of formats for advertising your offering. For instance, search ads, display ads, and YouTube Ads are some of the popular ones.
Please note, search ads are the ads that show up in your search engine (such as Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo) when someone searches for related queries such as car insurance or buy car insurance. Display ads are the image or text-based ads that appear on other websites based on the visitor’s in-market affinity. That is, a visitor might have shown interest in similar products in the recent past.
Outbound lead generation
#17 Cold calling
Even though the adoption of digital and self-serve portals is on the rise, prospecting through cold calling is not dead. People still seek a human connection when making a purchase decision for intangible products like insurance.
Read more about insurance sales scripts for successful prospecting via cold calling.
#18 Opt-in emails
The best benefit of emails is the scope and scale at which they operate. You can send thousands of emails in a day. Especially if you have launched a new insurance product or have a lucrative offer, then you can broadcast via emails.
Now, how to build your list? You can offer e-books or other valuable information to collect email ids. If you give your website visitors something worthy, then they won’t hesitate to give you their email ids. In the process, you can get their opt-in permissions and send them these offers later.
If you’re thinking about buying a mailing list, then that’s not a good idea. It is because it violates the rules of consent under GDPR (the recipients may have opted-in for emails from a different business, but you are still unknown to them).
Emails are worth it, also because they directly disrupt the recipients’ day. However, make sure you don’t spam their inbox by sending multiple emails daily or weekly. Be wise while sending emails as it also creates a brand perception in the minds of recipients.
#19 Word of mouth
You can also generate auto insurance leads through referrals and brand advocates. However, people don’t often endorse your brand/products/services publicly. For this, reward them with discounts on premium, policy extension, or something that can benefit them directly.
Word of mouth publicity is one of the best ways to get connected with prospective buyers.
Leverage online channels
Online channels (other than ads and social media) are also proving highly beneficial for lead generation. Here are some innovative ideas for using online channels for finding auto insurance leads.
#20 Write blog articles and invest in SEO
There are almost 4.66 billion active internet users globally (as of October 2020). While you can engage with them in several ways, informative blog articles and search engine optimization (SEO) can also help a lot in letting them find you.
People resort to Google or Bing when they want to find a piece of information. You can provide that information and build trust and authority in your line of business. For example, people looking for car insurance need details such as coverage, claims, etc.
However, the catch is – the web world is full of content, so you need to optimize them to let search engines identify your content and present it to people. Now, this is where search engine optimization comes into the picture. By following basic guidelines, you can rank your articles in Google and Bing, and other search engines and let a wide range of audiences find you.
Look at how Progressive Insurance leverages content for organic search traffic.
#21 Create GoogleMyBusiness account
Google My Business is a great place to start gaining traction from local customers. You can create a profile on Google My Business within a few minutes and showcase your offerings.
Features like listing on Google Maps and an option to call the business directly from the phone makes it more credible to potential borrowers. Besides that, you can also collect reviews from customers to build online credibility.
#22 Get user feedback and reviews
You can also publish customer reviews on your website. According to BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey, 82% of people read reviews for local businesses. Plus, the purchase likelihood for a product with five reviews is 270% greater than a product with zero reviews.
It indicates that getting a review can help people trust your business. There is another indirect benefit of it. By understanding the feedback, you can address the concerns, improve products, and more to build a sustainable business.
In terms of lead generation, including a contact form or chatbot can help people reach out to you when they are highly influenced to buy your insurance policy.
#23 Search for leads through social listening (Quora, Reddit)
There are some popular discussion forums and Q/A portals that you can utilize for prospecting. For instance, people ask questions like – Is XYZ a good choice for car insurance, or what are your experiences with XYZ insurance firm, in Quora and Reddit.
You can find such queries and message them about your product or services. An important point to note here is – you can find many old discussions as well. You can keep them on your list for cold calling or cold emailing. But look out for recent queries such as week-old queries to find some qualified leads who are actively looking to buy.
#24 Create videos
Video ads are also gaining popularity among internet users. You can create short video ads and publish them on news sites, YouTube, and even broadcast them on TV. Although, Google reports that YouTube advertisement is 84% more likely to receive the viewer’s attention than TV ads. While creating videos, do not forget to give a clear call to action – to encourage viewers to call you or explore more about your policies.
#25 Encourage people to ask questions
Another great idea to engage with the customer is by answering their questions. You can either create a FAQs page or a forum where people can put their queries, and your representative can answer them correctly.
It will also help you build a reputation among existing and potential customers.
You can also download the pdf to share with friends or refer to it later.
Final Thoughts
I hope you found an answer to “how to generate auto insurance leads”. By customizing these ideas as per your goals and requirements, you will surely see a boost in the number of auto insurance leads every month.
Further, if you want to streamline your lead generation and sales processes, you must give LeadSquared Insurance CRM a shot. It is the best software for insurance professionals as it helps you capture leads from various sources and sell more policies from all the distribution channels that you use – STP (digital sales), call center, bancassurance, agencies, brokers, or field sales.
