The current hard market has presented a number of challenges for property and casualty insurance agents. As carriers have raised rates across the country, agents have found that they are no longer competitive with consumers in the same markets that they used to be. Meanwhile, many of the consumers who were home to answer phone calls during the early stages of the pandemic have returned to their pre-pandemic obligations and activities outside the home.
The upshot? Agents now have fewer consumers they can successfully sell their policies, and the ones they can bind are less likely to respond to their outreach. As you might suspect, this has made it harder for agents to acquire the new customers they need to maintain and grow their businesses.
In order to thrive in this tougher environment, many agents are using MediaAlpha for Agents to purchase high-quality leads, target the right shoppers, and collaborate with our industry-best customer support team. Here are three ways agents are using our platform to conquer the hard market:
1. Insurance agents are using browse-and-buy to find the exact right consumers during the hard market
As carriers have raised rates to trim their loss ratios, agents have struggled to offer competitive policies to many of the consumers they previously would have had an opportunity to bind. As independent agent William Orr told us in a recent article, “Any substandard markets are just so unprofitable right now that carriers are willing to lose business to try to get profitable again. Some are raising rates very high, and others are pulling out of these markets entirely.”
MediaAlpha for Agents’ browse-and-buy feature helps you overcome this obstacle by providing a continuously updated feed of recently generated leads that you can select individually. When you click on a lead, you’re able to see the consumer’s location, vehicle ownership history, driving and coverage record, and more—all before you decide whether to purchase the lead. This way, you can connect with the exact shoppers you’re able to quote competitively, without wasting budget on the shoppers you can’t offer a good deal.
2. Insurance agents are diving into a large volume of high-quality leads
Another challenge of the current hard market is that shoppers just aren’t picking up the phone as much as they were earlier in the pandemic. This means that agents have sometimes found themselves having to buy more leads to achieve the same number of sales they enjoyed prior to the hard market.
We’re helping agents respond by offering access to a growing pool of high-quality leads from our owned-and-operated insurance shopping websites and trusted publisher partners. We only sell leads from highly reputable publishers, and we take care to individually vet each publisher partner for quality. Once a publisher is part of our lead marketplace, we continuously monitor each website’s return rates in order to ensure our agents are getting the quality they expect.
3. Agents are working collaboratively with their client success managers to achieve peak performance
Our agent clients are working hand-in-hand with their client success managers to acquire new customers as efficiently as possible. This team of highly responsive experts helps our agents identify new opportunities for growing their businesses, from bidding on new consumer groups to implementing the best practices for working their leads.
For instance, if you initially have trouble connecting with shoppers on the first call, you can get coaching on how to employ a diligent outreach strategy that enables you to generate new sales from leads you’ve purchased days, weeks, or months in the past.
As independent agent Eric Hardiman put it, “I’ve never received attention like I have from MediaAlpha’s client success team. They want me to be successful and that partnership is really important.”
Want more help acquiring new customers during the hard market? Check out our Agent’s Guide to Online Leads.
With the industry’s best lead quality, top customer support team, and most advanced lead-buying tools, we’re doing everything we can to help property and casualty insurance agents thrive during the hard market.
If you’re looking for more insight into how you can continue growing your business during the hard market, our Agent’s Guide to Online Leads provides a range of best practices for buying the right leads and maximizing your conversion rates with the best lead-working tactics.
Otherwise, you can always set up a meeting with your client success manager to discuss your performance and potential ways to improve. And if you’re not yet a MediaAlpha for Agents client, you can set up time to learn more about what we offer on our website.