BankRate.com Just Bought InsWeb

[Bob Klee]

More consolidation in the Insurance Lead Space

BankRate.com = NetQuote = InsureMe = InsWeb

Somehow I don't think this is good for the agent....Less choice & more control over the space. Wonder how this will change things?

Thoughts?

 

[Sales71]

Ur next Bob. U should be happy to get off this lousy net leads biz.

 

[somarco]

I could be wrong, but I don't think the web is going away any time soon.

But I also don't believe the majority of people will put up with the lack of customer service in the online community.

Amazon probably does a better job than most, but if you have ever tried to find a way to get information on something other than FAQ you know what I mean. Companies go out of their way to build a wall between them and personal service.

I have a client that wanted to complete an online Medigap app over the weekend. The app is relatively simple but getting to the start of the app is a maze . . . even with explicit instructions (provided by his agent).

After several minutes of trying to get to the beginning, he called me but got voice mail. Then he called Blue in what he termed a "mind numbing" experience that wasted another 20 minutes of telephone prompts, hold time, etc and he still wasn't satisfied with the answer.

I retrieved the voice mail about 30 minutes after he left it, called and got him on the right path. It took about 2 minutes to provide an answer and get him on track.

 

[YouGotMyMoney]

More consolidation in the Insurance Lead Space

BankRate.com = NetQuote = InsureMe = InsWeb

Somehow I don't think this is good for the agent....Less choice & more control over the space. Wonder how this will change things?

Thoughts?

so for health agents, this means producer pipeline will be owned by bankrate.

prob a good move for netquote/insureme to slip in their crappy leads through producer pipeline.

whats does this mean for affiliates, tougher to resell leads concurrently if theres only 4 main health vendors : Allweb, PZ, Bankrate, htq instead of 7 companies, so there could be an argument made that this would help with quality-maybe.

 

[Bob Klee]

Ur next Bob. U should be happy to get off this lousy net leads biz.

I don't know if this will surprise you or not...but we've been approached every year, sometimes weekly/monthly. Almost happened once....but not on the table any more. I have no desire to answer to someone else...the maverick agent in me perhaps?

I guess it might be a good time now to announce that I've bought my business partner out a couple months ago so that I can focus HometownQuotes.com on our original purpose: By Agents, For Agents. I didn't see a reason to make a big fuss or announcement about it but I think this post is the right time to come out with the info.

I've told a few of you & I thank you for respecting my wishes not to post or make a big deal about it. Many of you that aren't familiar with HometownQuotes.com probably didn't know I existed. I had never posted here or elsewhere, but stayed behind the scenes.

Hometown started with an idea in my office while I was teaching/mentoring 3 other brand new agents in my office back in 2003. "Deer in the headlights" as all of us were when we started. But something clicked with these three & me so I offered to continue past the normal 2 weeks that Allstate asked of mentoring agents. Best decision I've ever made. This friendship sparked an idea to build a lead web site as many of you have for yourselves. We were just pissed with being treated as a number by the lead gen companies..

So, Long story, but above my garage with 1 then 2 employees + my kids helping evolved to something much greater than we ever imagined.

We've helped thousands of agents grow their agencies since then & I'm proud of what we've done. But we can't live in the past & we must & have changed. Our focus is firmly on helping agents like those on this Forum to grow their agencies.

Call or email me if you need help. I'll do my best to help you succeed.

I'm proud to be a licensed agent & working with folks on this forum. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to engage with you all here.

 

[axel foley]

Wow! I would love to correspond with you sometime. I currently own an agency in Ohio and had previously done well with internet leads until this year(I'm estimating at least a 5% reduction in closing ratio each year).

Started scratch with a partner (no other employees) about 3 1/2 years ago and just cleared 1 mil P&C(not a ton but we're proud of it) with a strong regional carrier(worked with a captive prior). Internet leads were instrumental to our growth...until now!

If it wouldn't be too much trouble please let me know when would be a good time to get a hold of you.

 

[ksigmtsu]

Consolodation in internet and large market cap like that tends to make a company weaker, not stronger.

It is easy for a small company to switch strategies, they don't have TONS of money tied up in payroll of execs and management.

A single guy with a computer can generate leads much cheaper than a whole sales staff, seo staff, management staff, etc can, and getting bigger increases the cost of management, which in turn increases the cost you must sell at, which increases the cost of advertising, etc, and it's nearly impossible to "corner" the internet.

 

[axel foley]

"A single guy with a computer can generate leads much cheaper"

Would you care to expound a bit on this...I'm not being smart just curious

 

[ksigmtsu]

"A single guy with a computer can generate leads much cheaper"

Would you care to expound a bit on this...I'm not being smart just curious

Costs of me generating leads out of my house:

Keyword research on fiverr = 5 dollars per sheet if I didn't have software licensed to do it

Domain name = 8.99 with privacy from expertsrs.com

Blog hosting = 5$ a month for a good shared host

Blog posting = free

Landing page on front of blog after traffic starts generating from the weak keywords I targeted = 100$

At this point, I've spent 113.99, I might generate 50-200 leads a year for that 113.99, at a cost of around 1$ per lead plus time spent. On a weak keyword.

Cost for a vendor to generate leads:

Staff for keyword research, 3 man team, $150,000 per year
Cost of sales staff to sell leads 3 person team, $150,000 per year
Cost of page building - 100$ minimum per landing page
Cost of hosting = 5$ a month
Cost of phones to take inbound outbound calls = 300$ per month
Cost of management salary to manage 6 employees - $90,000
Cost of PPC ads to generate leads = $4-6 dollars per click
Cost of server administrator to keep equipment running = $100,000
Cost of office space to run operations and equipment, electric, etc =
$50,000
Cost of advertising = 1000 a month

That puts us to over half a million dollars. Now, if I'm selling these leads for 8$, with a minimum 2 sold to make 2 dollar profit, I need to generate and sell 500000 records in a year to break even. If I sell each lead 4 times, that means I only have to generate or buy 140,000 leads before I can start to see a profit.

Now, remember, the 1 guy can buy the same ppc, point it at a landing page, monitor it, and give himself the same lead that the vendor was selling, minus the half a million dollars in overhead, for the initial 118 dollars plus 4-6 dollars per click.

The bigger the lead vendor is, the more overhead you add to cost and the more records have to be generated and sold to break even. Why do you think larger vendors start generating pure garbage?

The majority of agents are too lazy to verify that the lead was garbage and turn it in for refund.

The true cost of generation of a lead is in a 1 time purchase of a good landing page, time to AB test it, and the cost of the PPC * 3 or time to organically generate search engine position.

Most vendors cut the overhead of the "lead generation" staff out, keep the delivery systems and system manager, pay affiliates to generate leads, and hire more sales staff to boost volume of output to get over the break even point hump.

Very few vendors generate even 20% of their own leads.

 

[axel foley]

Thank you so much for taking the time to post that reply. You answered my question. How long did it take you to become proficient in generating your own leads?
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Bob...thanks for the pm( I don't have enough posts to pm yet) and thanks for reaching out. I will certainly be in touch.