Internet Tire Kickers

[Aaron_4SIGHT]

First, it's so easy to dig up a bunch of places to request a quote from on Google, it's no surprise Internet leads are full of tire kickers. In just a few minutes, I can find 10 sites to get insurance quotes from. There's very little commitment on the part of the prospect, which encourages them to go price shopping.

Now, add to the mix the fact that lead generators usually get paid per lead. Their incentive is to get as many leads through their door as possible because more leads = more money for them.

This leads agents with three choices:

1. Try to play the volume game, responding to as many internet leads as possible as fast as possible.
2. Create your own leads.
3. Track down the lead providers with the best leads through expensive trial and error.

The standard rule for lead generation online is to make it as easy as possible for a prospect to request a quote. While that makes for good usability, I have a feeling it makes for bad leads and tire kickers.

For those of you focusing on Internet leads, what do you think are things you (or a lead generator) can do on a website to improve the quality of each lead? Do you think providing more educational content improves the lead? Making your request-a-quote more complicated so the prospect has to work a little bit?

Thanks,

Aaron

 

[somarco]

Some of the best leads I get come from 4freequotes.

The lead information is quite detailed. They have a lot of filters including currently insured.

I don't get much volume from them but the quality is among the best.

If all I wanted was volume there are places like NetQuote, Prospect Zone, Vimo that can flood my mailbox with junk.

 

[The Rabbi]

I'd like to see a little truth in advertising on the web sites. There's more hype on the Internet than any car dealer could come up with. They out and out lie about how leads are generated, selling us incentive leads or leads from people who only want email and will not talk on the phone. I'm being sold leads for Medicaid. Why?

 

[Aaron_4SIGHT]

The lead information is quite detailed. They have a lot of filters including currently insured.

Yeah, that fits my theory. If the prospect has invested some time in requesting the lead, they're more committed and less likely to be a tire-kicker out price shopping. But a company that gets paid per lead is going to want the simplest, shortest form possible.

 

[djs]

The problem is, we all want 10 high quality leads a day, preferably exclusively, and for $8 each.

There just aren't that many to be had. With new lead companies popping up all over the place, they are competing for a very finite market of true shoppers. They either try to get everyone to make a request, with no commitment to buy, or they go broke.

As an agent, you either get leads of committed buyers (even if they don't buy from you, but are seriously shopping), or you go broke buying leads.

There is a very, very, very small happy middle ground, with agents getting pushed off one side (going broke or elsewhere), and lead companies falling off the otherside.

I have a love/hate relationship with internet leads. They are easy, no real marketing involved, but the return on them can be terrible if you look at them as the easy way to sell. It takes a lot of work to work internet leads correctly.

I agree with the 4freequotes comment. I like the very, very few leads I get from them. I wish I could get more, but not at the cost of quality.

Dan

 

[TXINSURANCE]

At the end of the 4freequotes form they send the consumer to not ONE, not TWO, but THREE lead companies AND Ehealth.

 

[motoxxx]

The lead generation game is big business and those companies can charge a lot of money for a crap lead. I think I have used all of them and now I use none of them.

 

[CHUMPS FROM OXFORD]

I used to use none of them...then I changed to all of them...and now I'm down to a selected few.

 

[somarco]

I used to use none of them...then I changed to all of them...and now I'm down to a selected few.

So . . . you voted for the vendors before you voted against the vendors.

Somehow this sounds familiar.

 

[Aaron_4SIGHT]

I spent some time checking out 4freequotes this morning to see if I could find things that they do differently from other sites like insureme. They don't seem to be overly slick or fancy and they make it very clear that the prospect is going to get quotes from multiple agents. The one thing I think they do well is they provide a few simple paragraphs about the type of insurance you're getting a quote on - not a lot of info, but enough to make you feel like you understand what you're asking for (Insureme, in contrast, provides no info once you've started the quote process). Their form is broken up but they keep it simple and un-personal (I'd think this would bring lower quality leads).

The way I see it, a lead generation site has three options to contol the quality of their leads: where they get the traffic to their site (google, affiliates, tv ads, etc.), how they convert the traffic into a lead (quote form, co-registration, give-aways), and how well they qualify a lead (matching against demographic data, screening, etc.).

I wonder where 4freequotes gets their traffic and what they do to qualify their leads.