The 5 Step Guide to Nurturing Leads - Introductory Course

THE SCIENCE BEHIND WORKING ONLINE LEADS

Brought to you by Bob Klee, Founder of Hometown Quotes.

INTRODUCTION

1. What is a SEM lead?
2. Best practices for working online leads
3. Opportunities for future growth from your existing customers 

In this course you will learn

Final thoughts

Class 1

First, I’d like to welcome you to the Hometown Quotes family. We are excited to be partnering together and look forward to helping you grow your book of business. 

When I established Hometown Quotes in 2003 my vision was to build its foundations on the keystones of honesty and trusted quality. We still stand by these virtues today.  With our CEO, Jon Kelly, who co-founded eCoverage, the first venture-backed online insurance carrier, 15 years ago and our team of insurance, technology and marketing experts, we have been able to develop leadership and technology that has morphed into a symbiotic relationship that continuously allows us to offer our agents high-performance insurance leads and world class customer service.

Fortunately, you have now joined the family and most likely already know this. In the first of 5 classes contained within this introductory course, I will discuss the science of working online leads. Consider this your primer for the 5 Step Guide to Nurturing Leads. In the following classes, your instructors will go in-depth many of the topics discussed in this class.

Together we will begin this journey by understanding what it takes to work an online lead, how online leads may differ from traditional ones and how our real time delivery system will benefit your future endeavors. 

So let's get started!

The SEO (Search Engine Optimization) vs. SEM (Search Engine Marketing) showdown has long been waging online when it comes down to which search marketing strategy works best to help you capture and secure leads for your business. 

Consider the following:

1. What is a SEM lead?  

With that in mind we need to ask: “Can you generate enough leads organically solely via search engine optimization?”, or “Do you need the strength of paid search engine marketing for the knockout?”. 

As you will learn more in class 4 “Set your office up for success with leads” brought to you by our Chief Sales Officer, leads are the fuel that powers a business. Every lead, no matter what source it comes from, needs nurturing to be a completed sale. This is why we prefer, or should I say TRUST, SEM leads. The power of PPC (pay-per-click), display, social and more allows us to deliver: high intent, fresh, productive and qualified leads in real time - in under 3 minutes!

Let’s face it, in today’s world if you have a question you are most likely to head to Google for the answer. Why? Because Google helps users solve problems by serving up the best results to match their queries - and those are the leads we want to capture and deliver to you.

2. Best practices for working online leads  

This may be the most crucial and expansive topic we will cover. That is why you will see this topic and variations of it pop up in almost every class in this course. However today we will learn to walk before we run.

3. Opportunities for future growth from your existing customers.

Once you have sold a lead does that mean “Game Over!”? Quite the contrary. The hard part is done, you sold them. Now you need to focus on how to keep that account and continue to grow it.

Now that you have completed the first class, or primer, of the 5 Step Guide to Nurturing Leads you are well on your way to achieving success and real growth. We hope this class has been beneficial for you and stay tuned for next week's class “The “truth” about insurance leads” where our President, Todd Chapple will discuss what it is we actually do.

© 2018 Copyright ThisorThatMedia, Inc. | All Rights Reserved.

74% of consumers shopping for insurance search online.

and

65% of businesses say generating traffic and leads are their biggest marketing challenge.

74% of companies say converting leads into customers is their top priority

Seems obvious right? But how we do this is where it gets complex. This is not a “if you build it they will come” scenario. You can’t just put up a website, build a landing page with a lead generating form, post a few ads on Facebook and LinkedIn and expect to get sales instantly. You need to work for it, and hard.

This boils down to building a solid actionable lead nurturing strategy. In fact, Patrick Ruddy, our CSO, will guide you through the steps required to build a system like this in class 4. And, our marketing team will follow up on execution of this plan in class 5. In this class however I want to stress the importance of a multi-channel lead nurturing strategy. 

And here are a few reasons why:

  • 74% of companies say converting leads into customers is their top priority. The truth is that every lead you acquire doesn’t convert, at some point in the future, is gobbling up your marketing spend and this makes lead nurturing a top priority for the vast majority of companies.
  • Nurtured leads produce, on average, 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads.
  • Companies that excel at lead nurturing have 9% more sales reps making quota.
  • Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. 

The key is setting intelligent goals and backing it up with a tested system that continuously grows your bottom line. This system should take into consideration best practices for phone and email nurturing - hence multi-channel.

81% of brands have early-stage lead nurturing tactics in place, only 29% of brands nurture their existing customers beyond the initial purchases. 

Existing customers are more likely to buy again than new leads — after all, you’ve put in a lot of time, effort and money to get them this far, so maximize your return from every customer. 

Key factors to account for are:

  • Referrals

and

  • Cross selling and upselling 

These will be thoroughly discussed in class 4. 

SEE CLASS 2

Check out the next class!