How effective can Facebook advertising really be for life insurance agents?
While paid advertising on Facebook is considered by many one of the most immediate ways to generate leads, it’s not without its own set of concerns
How well does it work? What kind of engagement do you get? Many agents are somewhat skeptical about buying ads on a social media sites.
If the ROI isn’t there, why bother?
The good news is that anyone can use Facebook ads effectively with the right strategy, but it does take time and a knowledge on how to setup your campaign the right way.
Here’s a quick rundown of some of the best practices life insurance agents can use to generate leads from Facebook.
The Pros and Cons of Using Facebook Ads for Leads
Facebook ads can be incredibly effective for the right audience.
According to MarketingProfs, 56% of B2C marketers indicate that Facebook ads have helped them generate more revenue for their business.
There are some definite pros to advertising on Facebook:
- CPC is relatively cheap, depending on your industry (On average, our clients have paid no more than $0.61 per click)
- Campaigns are easy to track
- Immediate influx of traffic
- Complete control over your daily budget and maximum CPC
- Instant return on investment (You can easily define CPC and see results)
- More targeting options, including, towns, regions, age, likes/interests, income bracket and other demographics
- Easier to set up than Google AdWords
- The ability to reach people early on in the buying process, before they are aware of their need, while capturing those who are conscious of the need in a subtle way
- You can use images and videos to capture the interest of your target market, helping you to sell your products and services
But that doesn’t mean that Facebook is the perfect platform. Some of the downsides include:
- If set up and managed incorrectly, it can be costly
- Depending on your target market, the majority of the large potential audience can be irrelevant
- There is no option to target your ads at certain times within the day or week
- Reaching people too early in the buying cycle could potentially reduce your goal conversion rate
But this shouldn’t dissuade you from using Facebook.
Facebook is built to give you results if you already have a sales funnel, which you should already have with your website.
Facebook is built to give you results if you already have a sales funnel Click To Tweet
Life insurance agents can see great ROI from a Facebook ad campaign if the ads are setup properly and targeted to the right audience.
What to Know About Creating Converting Facebook Ads
The nice thing about Facebook ads is that they can be laser-targeted to certain demographics.
But the key is that you need to have those niche demographics in your mind when you’re creating those ads if you want to see real ROI.
One thing to keep in mind when creating your ads is that Facebook prioritizes its advertising based on relevancy.
The more positive feedback (or interest) or response people give to your content, the higher your score is (1-10, 10 being the highest).
This means that to ensure the content in your ads is highly relevant to your audience, you need to define your audience (and then define a value proposition for that specific niche).
You can do this by using Facebook’s Custom Audiences feature to further segment your lists, and then offering specific lead magnets to capture their attention.
Custom Audiences allow you to upload your current contact list using a CSV customer file, which you can easily get from your CRM.
You can create highly targeted ads to audiences that already know who you are, which can increase your chances of conversions.
This will help you create a targeted sales funnel that reaches only the people you want it to reach.
Here’s an example of an ad with a highly targeted audience (entrepreneurs and marketers):
The value proposition is catchy and the offer (for a free webinar) is instantly attractive.
The more you can narrow down your audience and your offer, the higher the odds will be that your audience will click your ad and go back to your website to convert.
Niche ads — burial life insurance in the $15 range work well — are really the key to success.
The reality is that you’re probably going to have to spend some time researching your audience and creating relevant content to promote on Facebook if you want to see ROI.
Agents tend to fail the first time around because they don’t know how to do this properly.
It’s important to do your homework when creating ads — take a course, hire and expert or find someone who has done it before and ask them for advice
How to Set Up Your Facebook Ads for Better ROI
Before you start optimizing your ads, it’s important to understand where your ads will appear on the site. As they say, location is everything.
There are three different ad placements:
It’s important to note that image size and text length will vary depending on the location. Desktop news feed ads will have the most space (and can be expandable to contain more text).
But they’re also the most expensive and have the highest competition.
You can choose to place your ad in one, two or all three locations, depending on your goals and budget.
Just be sure to use the general guidelines for each ad placement (below).
Keep in mind that Facebook has 1.74 billion mobile monthly users.
Right column ads are cheaper, but they only appear on desktop devices, so if you choose to place ads there, your ads might not appear to some of your audience.
When it comes to creating the ads themselves, use images.
Studies show that Facebook ads with images get 2.3 times more engagement than text-only ads.
You want to offer a specific value proposition within your ads, too.
It is important to have a lead magnet, such as a downloadable resource, ebook, quiz or something that gives them something of value more than just a way to contact you.
If you’re not sure what types of content to create for your ads, you can find some ideas here.
Putting together unique content for your audience is a great way to improve engagement, improve your click-through rates and instantly increase your conversions for your Facebook ads.
Final Thoughts
Facebook ads a great way for life insurance agents to generate leads.
For the best results, use Facebook’s Custom Audiences to target leads who are already a part of your sales funnel, and target those ads to content they would find relevant.
Create a lead magnet that will pull them back to your site.
You can also create ads for brand awareness and to raise your traffic, just be sure to target that content in a way that will improve engagement for someone that doesn’t know you.
And be sure to choose ads that display where you want them most (mobile).
