Welcome Guest Bloggers: We talked about guest blogging on other sites and syndicating your content to other sites, but by welcoming guest bloggers, you invite professionals and experts to write for your site. If you have a website, you’ve probably already received the infamous guest - posting request, most likely from a foreign email address, so it’s important to set some guidelines of what type of quality and insight you expect in guest posts to help educate your audience.
These days, you have the best programmers in the world creating what are called Content Management Systems (CMS) that will build awesome looking websites for FREE. For example, this website is based on the WordPress platform. I did pay about $50 for a premium design, but other than that, I don’t have to know any computer code at all and either do you.
Cold calling works for sales professionals and for telemarketing specialists who are comfortable with placing a large volume of outbound phone calls. Free Internet leads are ideal for sales professionals and for business owners who frequently experience call reluctance. In most businesses, fresh leads are needed to build new relationships. However, for sales professionals who would prefer to work with inbound callers, free Internet leads will beat cold calling.
Your network marketing career can start at home. Talk to family, friends, and neighbors and offer them a chance to join your team. Even if they don't sign up to do what you're doing, they can help by sharing marketing materials at their office, doctor or dentist's office, posting notices in their building's common area, or even posting classified ads locally.
It's easy to find free professional business leads that are industry or trade specific. All you have to do is go online and start visiting trade association websites. There are literally thousands of associations out there—from associations that represent the chocolate industry to those that represent the jewelry industry to associations that represent the tourism business.
Stick Around with Magnetic Business Cards: [WARNING: THIS IS THE ONLY PAID IDEA ON THE LIST!] Not only should you have your number IN your client’s phone, but it should be ON their fridge, too. Spend a little extra money and order business cards that list the different types of insurance you offer, with a magnetic backing. This way, you will always be on their fridge, arm’s length away from where they conduct their most important business and decisions: the kitchen table. People drop, lose, crack, and drown their phones all the time—and throw away standard business cards frequently—so at least with this magnet sticking in plain sight, they can reprogram your number into their phone again.
New prospective users often ask me how easy it is for their affiliate to share their link. It’s “stupid simple.” Here’s how it works… When your affiliates sign up with you, they’ll automatically receive an email from you welcoming them to your affiliate program. This email will contain their unique referral link. It will also contain a “one-click” login link to their Affiliate Dashboard. The Affiliate Dashboard is where your affiliate can share their link via email and social media with a single click. For example, when they click the Facebook button, they’ll automatically be forwarded over to Facebook, with a new post pre-populated, and their affiliate link already embedded! They can add a personal note or recommendation if they’d like – or they can simply click “Post” to get the message up on their Wall immediately. This “convenience factor” is huge. Affiliates are able to share their link early and often with their friends and colleagues. It really couldn’t be any easier. The Affiliate Dashboard is also where they can grab marketing materials like banner ads for their website or blog. The banners will already have their affiliate link embedded. So, your affiliate can simply copy the HTML and paste it to their site – or they can have their web developer do this for them.
Set Up Retargeting: This is an advanced strategy that includes planting a tracking code on a page of content that places cookies in the visitor’s browser, which enables custom ads to be shown to your visitors while they’re on other sites, prompting and reminding them to act on your message or offer. While setting up retargeting is free, there is a cost associated every time someone clicks the ad.
If you’ve ever looked at your site analytics and yelled “what do you want from me?” you’re not alone. That’s why Inspectlet lets you analyze user activity via eye-tracking heat maps, screen capture, and user interaction analytics. You’ll be able to watch how users interact with your site and figure out where they may get confused. And then get to work fixing those areas.
Why? Brands don’t want their products and online reputation to be seen as spammy and low-quality. To empower social media junkies, most networks are instead allowing publishers to create “promoted social media posts”. These are posts that are created on social media sites, like Facebook. They are not posted on a private wall, or spammed across comment sections.
Hello Network Marketer, Tired of old, worn out, over-priced network marketing leads that cost you hard-earned money… but leave you without new distributors? Tired of friends and family avoiding your calls? If you’re like most distributors I know, time and money are valuable to you. You can’t waste it on cheap, worn out recycled leads. Nor do you want to chase your friends and family. Otherwise, you’ll become a charter member of the NFL Club… No Friends Left!
This is the first program of its kind within the insurance industry, let alone the lead generation industry. We aren’t asking for your contracts or expecting you to ink a deal with the devil. We’re just hoping that through this free lead program, we can reward engaged agents with valuable trade - offs like free quoting subscriptions, free SEO packages, a new website, or free leads – just for interacting with us and sharing your insights. In turn, by sharing your insights with us, you’ll look more like a thought leader who’s engaged in industry, and your insights can help educate other agents to make the industry even stronger, so it’s a win - win - win. Be sure to stay tuned for more details about partnering with us to earn perks like free leads.
Agents might find lead vendors giving away free life insurance leads for agents, discounts, or matching deposit bonuses for signing up with their system. You usually see this with internet lead providers. Unfortunately, the quality of internet leads can be questionable because they may be shared leads, which means they’re resold to multiple agents (sometimes to multiple agencies) at once, driving up competition and causing agents to spend more than just money on these leads. Or, these leads may come from questionable lead generation strategies that entice or reward prospects for submitting a quote form when no interest originally existed—known as “pitching wood” in Boiler Room terms.
Start Using Pics in Tweets: Pictures say a thousand words, and those thousand words can ensnare more people’s attention and entice them to your blog faster than anything you can write within 140 characters. Pictures directly appeal to emotions, the activating catalysts in the consumer thought process, whereas words have to bypass the rational area of the brain to be processed.
Create an Elevator Pitch: Agents must be prepared to talk to prospects that they meet at networking events or encounter throughout the day. The best way to do this is by forming an elevator speech, a short introduction that not only informs others of what you do but prompts a discussion about any possible needs they may have. A great article on how to construct one can be found on LifeHealthPro.
Pursue Local Passions: Volunteering your time, money, or expertise inevitably puts you in contact with others who share the same passions, which can be a reason to introduce yourself and educate someone on what you do and how you can help them. Compared to a cold contact, it’s easier to build trust and have an honest dialogue with someone when you already have the common ground of shared passions.
Host Educational Workshops: This is perhaps the best way to demonstrate expertise, inspire referrals, and gain business at the same time. The best outlets for educational workshops can be senior centers, libraries, schools, hospitals, churches or job sites. Make sure you plan 2 - 3 weeks in advance so word - of - mouth can get out; you don’t want to be educating an empty room. Some places will even help promote your event, which can be a very effective lead generation idea if you can present to multiple people at once for free.
Hello Network Marketer, Tired of old, worn out, over-priced network marketing leads that cost you hard-earned money… but leave you without new distributors? Tired of friends and family avoiding your calls? If you’re like most distributors I know, time and money are valuable to you. You can’t waste it on cheap, worn out recycled leads. Nor do you want to chase your friends and family. Otherwise, you’ll become a charter member of the NFL Club… No Friends Left!
Decide what business or trade it is that you want to gather leads from and then type into your search engine box the words "industry (by name) association member business directory." Of course, you want to make sure that you remove the quotes from around the entire phrase. Also, you can try adding to this phrase a state or city if you wish to only find associations in a particular area. Your search terms will then look something like this:
Interlink Your Webpages: If you have pages on your website and blog referencing similar topics, they should be interlinking between each other to not only reference pertinent information, but to also let the search engines know what is valuable content that’s link - worthy on your site. The more internal links to a page you have on your site, the better it will rank. Traditionally, that means linking to a quote page or some other type of conversion page on your site.
Write for the Newspaper: Identify your local or service area publications and offer to write about insurance topics whenever their editorial calendars have an opening. In your introduction, illustrate what makes you an expert with authority to write about specific subjects, and include writing samples from your blog, if possible. The editors might not take you up on your offer right away, but at least you’re positioning yourself to be an excellent resource on this topic, and down the road they can refer you to a reporter or writer looking for sources.
Pitching the Press Release: If you issue a press release, it’s not enough for a few random outlets outside of your market to pick up your news. You should also try securing coverage in relevant niche or local outlets that you identify as media targets. Brooke Bates from Bantamedia recommends emailing your news to these targets individually in 400 words or less, linking to the press release and pinpointing the reasons why your news is relevant to their particular audience, even including possible story angles that show editors you’ve done your research.
Your ultimate goal as an affiliate marketer should be to outsource all the work while you collect a paycheck each month. My website DogFoodInsider.com is 100% outsourced at this point. There is always someone willing to work for you. From writers on Constant-Content.com to programmers on Elance.com to odd jobs on Fiverr.com – the sources you can use for outsourcing is nearly limitless.
Go Door Knocking: It can be trying to trudge up and down streets, knocking on doors to see if people are interested in reviewing insurance options or taking care of their planning. But for those who are persistent and don’t mind the exercise, this can be a non - competitive, low - cost way to prospect for leads. You don’t even have to do this exclusively; you can mix it up with other prospecting practices and hit up the houses close to the other leads you’re meeting with. The biggest piece of advice is this: Don’t sell at the door; sell yourself getting into the house. The easiest way is by asking them, “Where can we sit down?” while looking inside over their shoulder, after promising beforehand that you only need a few minutes of their time. Once you get inside, you can focus on selling.
Become Versed in Digital Marketing: It’s imperative to keep up with digital marketing trends going forward if you want to survive in the insurance industry as it evolves alongside technology and consumer buying behaviors. If you don’t stay in the loop (perhaps by reading our blog), then you risk falling victim to the latest algorithm changes, or falling behind in opportunities to maximize your brand’s online lead generation opportunity.
Twitter: As with Facebook, you can search Twitter for phrases people would use if they were talking about insurance, like “Medicare plan,” “Medicare season,” “Obamacare,” or “premiums.” The idea is to catch someone griping on social media about an experience they had or a bill they received, and then come to their rescue and open a dialogue to see if they need any recommendations.
Write for the Newspaper: Identify your local or service area publications and offer to write about insurance topics whenever their editorial calendars have an opening. In your introduction, illustrate what makes you an expert with authority to write about specific subjects, and include writing samples from your blog, if possible. The editors might not take you up on your offer right away, but at least you’re positioning yourself to be an excellent resource on this topic, and down the road they can refer you to a reporter or writer looking for sources.
It’s quite free! No credit card required! You can set up your Social profiles with this tool in a few minutes! It not only generates leads, but you can also create and manage unlimited projects as well. It leverages to share files and discuss ideas with your parties within this tool. They assure you a simple registration process, transparent and free of cost. You have a chance to upgrade the lead generation software tools anytime as your company grows.
Twitter: As with Facebook, you can search Twitter for phrases people would use if they were talking about insurance, like “Medicare plan,” “Medicare season,” “Obamacare,” or “premiums.” The idea is to catch someone griping on social media about an experience they had or a bill they received, and then come to their rescue and open a dialogue to see if they need any recommendations.
Utilize ICE or Beneficiary Contacts: Most applications have an alternative person to contact in case of emergencies (“ICE”), in addition to a beneficiary. Simply ask the client if it’s OK that you notify these contacts and offer to answer any questions they may have. While you are notifying these people, it only takes a minute to ask about their own coverages.
"In early September 2011, a homeowner was shot in the back during a burglary and robbery. The suspect ended up being an escaped convict who was drifting from state to state. We located the suspect in early October using LeadsOnline. Within a couple of days, the suspect was captured in Minnesota. He is now back in Indiana awaiting trial for attempted murder as well as other charges."
Host Educational Workshops: This is perhaps the best way to demonstrate expertise, inspire referrals, and gain business at the same time. The best outlets for educational workshops can be senior centers, libraries, schools, hospitals, churches or job sites. Make sure you plan 2 - 3 weeks in advance so word - of - mouth can get out; you don’t want to be educating an empty room. Some places will even help promote your event, which can be a very effective lead generation idea if you can present to multiple people at once for free.
Write a Whitepaper: A well - written whitepaper can instill trust and credibility by educating consumers about a given issue or challenge related to insurance, while positioning yourself or your services as a solution. More polished than the typical blog post, whitepapers present your expertise backed by facts, statistics, graphs and solid research to give consumers an in - depth, downloadable piece of content, usually 6 - 10 pages in length, to guide their buying decision.
Make your Newsletter Shareable: MailChimp and other email providers usually offer an option to make your email newsletters shareable, so don’t overlook this opportunity. You never know when your newsletter is going to be a resource that someone wants to forward to a friend, family member, or co - worker. Be sure all newsletters are shareable, unless there’s an exclusive offer intended for your list of subscribers only.
Create Infographics: Many agents find this daunting, but there are plenty of free infographic sites that you can join to access to easy - to - use templates. Search for “create infographics for free” and you’ll find a plethora of sites offering you access to over 100 infographic templates for free. Adding infographics can help you rank in the search engines and draw site visitors with visual content, which will lead to more quote forms being filled out.
Think of it this way – if you were about to open a restaurant, wouldn’t you do some research before quitting your day job and investing hundreds of thousands of dollars into it? Of course you would! You would research the best location, the best type of food to serve, how much you’ll have to pay employees, where you’ll source ingredients from, what type of tables and furniture to use, the best ovens and equipment for the kitchen, and all sorts of stuff. If you just “wing it” and open a restaurant without doing any research first, you’ll most likely fail. While affiliate marketing can be started part-time and without much capital, the same holds true. If you don’t research and plan, you will fail.
The kinds of leads that you are likely to get for free are ones that have been gathered in a scatterspray way – they could be poorly targeted, or in some cases even people who have not opted in at all. If you contact leads like this, then you will be putting your brand at risk, because you could end up in trouble with your web hosting provider, or the law, for unsolicited marketing. Alternatively, you could end up contacting people who might otherwise have converted, but who come to view your brand as a spammer because of the way the initial contact was made.
