Marketing for your insurance company is a full-circle proposition, and should include strategies for not just generating leads, but also managing those leads so that they eventually transform into paying clients. In both personal and property insurance, potential clients may begin shopping their policies months prior to an actual need.

Here are some tips on how to manage the leads coming into your insurance agency so that you can convert them into clients:

Implement a CRM system. A comprehensive insurance agency marketing program that embraces multiple marketing techniques – SEO, email marketing, blogs, social media, etc. – means leads come in from many different sources. If you don’t have an automated way to deal with them, they can slip through the cracks and all that hard work will go to waste. We use Salesforce, but Zoho has a great, cost-effective platform that you can grow with, adding features and settings when you need them. There’s also a slew of other CRM systems that can help you maximize your potential conversion rates. For a pretty thorough listing on CRM’s for your small business, read our recent article comparing CRM’s, here.

Whatever you’re using to track and nurture leads, make sure that there are systems in place that march a prospect along from interested party, into paying client.

Have a lead management strategy. Once a lead comes in, what happens to it? As I mentioned above, you need a system in place that nurtures the lead through the sales process and people who are accountable for that system. Do they receive an automated welcome email or phone call? Are they shown your client reviews and testimonials? All of these things play a factor at whether or not a lead feels comfortable enough to move forward with you, or moves on to the next search result.

Analyze your lead sources. You need to track what programs are bringing in the most leads so you can duplicate what works and eliminate what is not working. Are leads coming through organic search? Are they finding you through SelectQuote or from Social media outlets? You need to spend your time where you are most profitable, so you’ll need to know where your most qualified leads are coming from. If you’re looking for a great spreadsheet to help you with this, you can download a monthly marketing results spreadsheet and instructions here.

Segment and score your leads. Not every lead has the same value. Someone who is a past client is a better lead than someone shopping around. Someone who downloaded your free report is a better lead than a website visitor. Why? Because they have already proven that they at least have a need in your service. Start scoring your leads and separating them so that you know where to spend your time, and which leads to work on the most.

Circle back. There are always some leads that fall by the wayside in the sales process, but don’t automatically count them out. Circle back in a timely fashion and find out what prevented a sale from happening so you can overcome that. A lead may have put your firm in the back of their mind, but following up with old leads is a great way to grab new clients who may have just turned back to the search engines to find a firm for their needs.