The Insurance Buzz
The Insurance Buzz shares top tips for Insurance Agents on how to maximize their entrepreneurial journey. Sales training tips, mindset, and motivation and learn from some of the best in the industry and experts in the field as they share what they have done to be successful as an Insurance Agent.
The Insurance Buzz
479. Internet Leads Are Dying. Here's What Insurance Agencies Should Do Instead
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What's in this episode:
Most insurance agencies are building someone else's brand without realizing it. In this episode, Michael and Courtney Weaver sit down with marketing expert Jake Cash, head of Senryx, to break down why internet leads should not be the backbone of any agency's growth plan and why relying on a single lead source leaves an agency exposed the moment costs spike or the market shifts.
Jake explains how the top performing agencies diversify their lead generation across referrals, digital marketing, and traditional marketing, why owning your brand matters more than ever, and the framework Google uses to explain how many touchpoints it takes before a customer buys. Michael and Courtney add their own take on positioning, content, and why the agencies willing to get uncomfortable now are the ones who will not be dependent on carriers or vendors later.
[00:00] Why Michael says quit branding your carrier
[01:00] Meet Jake Cash and today's lead gen conversation
[02:00] Why Jake Cash wants internet leads to die
[03:00] The false confidence internet leads create
[04:00] What true marketing diversification looks like
[05:00] Why commoditized leads erase your differentiation
[06:00] Michael's rule: five lead sources at all times
[07:00] What the top 10% of agencies do differently
[09:00] The known, liked, and trusted core of marketing
[11:00] Finding your white space in a crowded market
[12:00] Credibility, opportunity, and the contrarian take
[14:00] The Google framework behind buyer attention
[16:00] Where agents should actually be spending time
[17:00] Shared, owned, and earned marketing explained
[19:00] Why in-person pitching beats social media DMs
[21:00] What is generating leads within 90 days right now
[22:00] The digital marketing table stakes agents skip
[24:00] Why diversifying yourself matters as much as marketing
[26:00] Lead magnets and the warm up before the ask
[27:00] Educational content built around life stage triggers
[29:00] The Sunday Smarts story that built instant credibility
[30:00] Why agents have to climb cringe mountain
[32:00] Short term versus long term marketing strategies
[34:00] Ideal customer, ideal location, ideal conversation
[35:00] The psychology behind Agency Coach AI's marketing data
[37:00] Stop renting your growth and start owning it
[38:00] The hidden risk in your marketing vendor contracts
Connect with Jake Cash
https://senryx.com/podcast (free marketing independence assessment)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakecash/
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I will die on this hill. This is not the first time I have talked about this, but literally, this is your business. Quit branding your carrier. They already have their own brand. They have it. Okay.
SPEAKER_00Can I get an amen, please?
SPEAKER_02And if you are not building your brand, if you think that you don't have a brand, you already have one.
SPEAKER_01In today's episode, it is all about lead gen strategies. And you get to hear from two experts in the business. On today's episode, we bring in and interview Jake Cash with Cinrix. And we're going to be discussing how to uh not be reliant on just one lead source, how to make sure that you are setting yourself up for both short-term and long-term success. What strategies right now are working, how to brand yourself and more Jake and Courtney. Absolutely nerd out in this episode. I am pumped. I took a ton of notes. You're going to as well. With that being said, let's start the show. Hey, welcome to the insurance buzz. We are your host, Michael and Courtney Weaver. And today we have a very special guest with us, head of Cinrix Group, Jake Cash, and we're going to be talking all things marketing today. Jake, what's going on, my man?
SPEAKER_03How's it going? Excited to be here. Thank you for uh the opportunity to have a great conversation.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, dude. We are we're pumped. So you don't know this, but Mark but Core is like the head of our marketing. So when she saw a podcast on marketing, she got super excited. I'm excited because you're from the insurance industry. You were with Geico for a long time. You've worked with hundreds of agencies across the country. And uh we found out pre-show that you wish internet leads would die, and I am not opposed to that.
SPEAKER_02So we're gonna start off talking about marketing in the insurance space, and we're just gonna kill internet leads right off the bat.
SPEAKER_03I brought my shovel so that we could start digging the girl.
SPEAKER_02All right, so let's start there. Let's start with why when I asked you this question, you're like internet leads. Let's talk a little bit about why should internet leads die from the marketing guru, Jake, Jake Cashing.
SPEAKER_01What was the specific question you asked him, Courtney?
SPEAKER_02I said, if there was one thing in the insurance industry that you wish you could change or that would die, what would it be?
SPEAKER_01And Jake, you said Internet leads.
SPEAKER_03All right, dog, let's hear this. It's an it's an easy answer, too. I didn't really have to think about it. Um I think that internet leads give false confidence to insurance agencies. Because if you're really good at following up with leads and you know exactly how to work the system, that is definitely a way to grow an agency. I've seen lots of insurance agencies see lots of success with that. But you are essentially outsourcing the entire growth system of your agency to third parties. And for me, I'm not willing to outsource the entire growth of my business to a third party. Yes, I'm willing to work with third parties to help me, you know, do some of that, to do some of the execution, to help me with strategy. But at the end of the day, if I'm just relying on, you know, a third party that's at the whim of the marketplace and cost per leads can double overnight, or legislation can change the entire lead game overnight and all of a sudden they dry up, that is a uh that's a huge dependency that you know is kind of running in the background that you're probably not thinking about and overnight could just kill the kill the business almost.
SPEAKER_02So I I I want to go with what's the opposite of this. So we're talking about diversification, and and I as an owner, and I know that there are agents and producers that right now are looking at diversifying their skill sets, their money, their lead sources, their talent, all of that. So, what's the opposite of internet leads being the end-all be-all? What would you recommend instead?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I don't think that the internet itself is bad, and I don't think that leads themselves are bad, right? It's kind of the combination of where somebody is basically generating, you know, leads for you that are not generated specifically by your brand. And so that's the ultimate commodity business, essentially. There's no differentiation between you and the five or ten other people that were sold that same lead in some cases, right? And the only thing that makes you different is maybe you had the best follow-up and maybe you had the best price that same day. And so I would rather start from the front and talk about your positioning and your messaging and what makes you different than the insurance agency down the street that is going to attract your ideal client as opposed to you always having to chase the next lead for you know the least amount of cost and you know, following up and smiling and dialing on those leads constantly until uh until they tell you to F off and get out of my life and unsubscribe from every channel possible, right?
SPEAKER_01So yeah, and and Jake, what I and I'm I'm I'm gonna dig this conversation because what I see what I see a lot of our customers do that we work with is and and I am totally against it's not that I'm totally against internet leads, but what you're saying is true, and can internet leads be a portion of your business plan, yes. But the problem I see with most insurance agencies across the country is internet leads are their entire marketing source. Like if you look at where most of their business is written, 90 plus percent comes from internet leads, and that is scary as hell if I'm an if I'm a business owner. And that's why like my rule or our rule was always you have to have leads coming in from five different lead sources at all at all times. Like that was just the golden rule we did. And so I'd be curious like what you're seeing in the marketplace, working with agents, what you're recommending, what you're seeing works, not working, things of that nature.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I love that rule. Um, we have a similar kind of finding on our end where we studied you know the results of those 300-plus insurance agencies that I've worked with over the last decade and found that the top 10% of those agencies actually had a diversified mix of new business generation in roughly three different categories. So the first was um referrals, the second was digital marketing, and the third was traditional marketing, which I would categorize as anything that you can't necessarily attribute one-to-one. So it could be word of mouth, uh, it could be an ad you put in, you know, a niche publication, uh, could be an email marketing, you know, newsletter that you're putting out or a podcast that you're running, for example, that is kind of nurturing leads, um, and they finally get to you, but you don't know exactly the source of that lead, right? So I agree. I think diversification in your marketing is key to sustainable success. I think the agencies that we've worked with that we've seen rise the fastest typically rise from one thing that they have found a lot of success on that they're really good at, but a lot of times that doesn't last for whatever reason. And the best way to make sure it lasts is to capitalize while you have found that thing that less that has been working for you and start to invest in new channels so that you kind of have that, you know, um less vulnerability in the agency.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, I'm gonna jam so hard on this. I love this so much because it also from a marketing standpoint, even if you have one that's really working, it might be one that has a lagging result. So it might be something that takes a long time to nurture. So doubling down on that is phenomenal. I think if if you have something that works, absolutely double down on it. But you also have to fill the time frame for some of the other marketing sources that are happening.
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SPEAKER_02So let's get into positioning and messaging because I love that you're talking about generating your own leads with your brand. And I I will die on this hill. This is not the first time I have talked about this, but literally, this is your business. Quit branding your carriage. They already have their own brand. They have it. Okay.
SPEAKER_00Can I get an amen, please?
SPEAKER_02And if you are not building your brand, if you think that you don't have a brand, you already have one. Even though you have not paid attention to it, it's there. Like there is something there. So let's jam on positioning and messaging. Let's even talk about like what is that? I'm an insurance agent, and I'm like, okay, I don't want to outsource my leads. I don't want to outsource such a high value task to an agency or to a quoting service or whatever that looks like. How would I even start? You brought up pro positioning and messaging. Let's start there.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, uh, there's so much to hit on there, and we're of like mind in a lot of it. So I love it, Courtney. Um I think that the key, the core of marketing is being known, liked, and trusted, essentially. Um, and you could even take liked out of there, honestly. You could just say it's known and trusted because someone doesn't have to like you to trust you. But uh, in order to be known and trusted, you have to generate enough momentum in whatever your audience is to get your message out there constantly, right? You want kind of a constant, constant rhythm of your messaging in front of your target audience. And it's impossible to do that if you are not niche down because insurance agencies don't have billions of dollars to spend like the geico's in state farms and all states of the world do, right? And so to your point, you shouldn't be building their brand, you should be building your own, and you should be going after a smaller niche that relates to you based on perhaps your background, for example, right? What do you know the most about and start niching down on that? You know, send trust signals, whether it's how many people you've helped save money over the years, whether it's how many five-star reviews you've had, those are things that are kind of the table stakes that you have to have on there because if you don't have anything that shows that you've helped other people, then they're just not going to trust you at all. And your messaging needs to be differentiated. So, what that means is look at your peers, look at who your competitors are and try to find an opportunity in there. What we used to call it at when I was at Geico was white space, essentially. Um, so we used to go into, I was in sports marketing for a while. We used to go into um games, you know, baseball, basketball, football games, and we would look around the stadium and we would find space that didn't have any advertisers. And then we would go and pitch those teams and say, hey, we'll pay you this many m this many dollars to essentially create a new type of advertising in your stadium that we would call white space. And that way we'd get a really good deal because we were basically helping them create a revenue stream long term. You want to do the same thing with your messaging where you look around and you find what other people are not talking about and you own that lane.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I love that. All right, so I'm gonna condense that because what you just said was a like a masterclass in the beginning, the top level of marketing. So establish credibility. So if if there is something that you can do, if there's reviews, if there's savings, if there's claims that you can make. Now I know this is where obviously we get into compliance and all of this stuff, but if you can establish credibility right off the top, do it. Like you people need to know that they can trust you. I love that you said that. The next space is looking for opportunity where your competitors are missing the mark. Like, where's the white space? Where's the gap? Where's the thing that I could like insert myself in this lane? Right. The other thing, the last thing, and this is probably the one I see people like because we all want to be liked. We all want to be like, oh yes. What's the thing that's not being said, or what's the thing that you feel very passionately about, good or bad, that is not being talked about? Like you have to, I and that's why in pre-show I asked you what needs to die. Like, what's the thing that's not an insurance? I always like to start with the the opposite of what everyone else is doing. Like, what do you love? What shouldn't you see? That's amazing. But what's the thing that you're like, why aren't people talking about this? Or why are people talking about this? This is absolute bullshit. Like, this is not how it goes. That's the thing. Anything that creates for me, it's like anything that will create an emotion in you will create an emotion in somebody else, usually. So, what's the thing that you're like, oh right, what did I miss there, Jake?
SPEAKER_03No, you recapped it better than I did. So thank you. I was I was drowning on there. I appreciate the summary.
SPEAKER_02No, you you you did a great job. I um I I love this though, because marketing really is about separating yourself. So let's dive in, let's let's go the next level. So we went to credibility, looking for opportunity, the contrarian or the what's not being said. So somebody's taking all of that and they're brainstorming. You and I are sitting across from each other. I'm saying, hey, I'd like to generate my own leads. I come up with all of those. I I start like having this sesh. We're going. Vibes are high. I'm like, I'm marketing, I'm gonna take over the world, I'm gonna make $44 billion this year. This is what's happening. Okay. What's the next thing that you and I are working through after we're going through our messaging and our positioning?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, now you have to grab attention, right? Because it's not enough to just have your messaging figured out. You have to get it in front of the people that you want to serve. And the best way to do that is to find out where they're spending their time. And so uh Google actually did this study a while back, and there was this uh kind of framework that came up out of it that was called the 7-Eleven4 framework. I don't know if you all have heard about this. I'm getting a little bit into uh marketing geekery a little bit here, so I'll try to I'll try to take a step back and summarize it to some degree. Um, but essentially Google has more data than pretty much any company in the world, right? And so they looked at all the buying behavior that happens across Google. And they basically looked at how many touch points it took a consumer to have with a brand before they purchased from that brand, how much time it took from them to basically start that process to actually completing it. And the the result was this framework of 714. So it was, I believe, seven different touch points with a brand over the course of 11 different hours and then four different places. And so uh essentially what that led to, and it is backed up in a lot of the data that I've seen running marketing campaigns, is you want to have diversified marketing that hits people on the internet, that hits people in person, that hits people in many different places so that they can start tying you back into their head. And when it comes time to shop, they shop you instead of your competitor.
SPEAKER_01Okay. This is crazy, not because it's insurance, but I just saw an influencer posting that she came up with this shit the other day. This is incredible. So, Jay, thank you so much. Because I was like, man, those stats are really good. Like, how did she figure this out? Oh, you got it from Google, my man. Let's go. Okay, anyways, back on to insurance talk, but my mind was blown over here because I'm like, dude, these are literally the same test she just gave the other day. Okay, this is awesome. So seven touches, that's hilarious, eleven hours, four places.
SPEAKER_02All right, so I I I I would agree.
SPEAKER_01Um how are we doing this?
SPEAKER_02That's what I was gonna ask. So I'm an insurance agent and I'm I can have a okay, there's like a million different things, right? I can start a podcast, I can start an email newsletter, which I'm a huge proponent of. If you are wanting to have something that you own versus you rent, get off social media. That's a whole nother topic for a whole different day. Um there I can run ads on Meta, I can run ads now on ChatGPT, like I can, I can literally wear a sandwich box thing and say, buy insurance for me. Like I there's a lot of different things I could do. I could go viral on TikTok or whatever. What's what are you seeing working for insurance agents? Where's the place that they should be hanging out to reach their customers?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, great question. And I do want to, I made a mistake, it was seven hours of content, eleven touch points. I flipped those two around. So you had me double guessing myself when you said an influencer was uh was stealing this. I didn't I didn't want to be the next influencer that stole it. So um not that I'm an influencer by any means, but uh but yeah, as far as um how to do it, right? So we like to look, you mentioned uh this term a little bit earlier about owned content. So um we like to look across kind of the shared, owned, and earned uh kind of spectrum, right? So um shared could be you know content on social media, for example, owned could be a podcast, it could be uh a newsletter, um, it could be owning an event that you put on and you invite people to, for example. Um, and then you are the you know uh most trusted person and you're kind of the uh the influencer at the event, for example, which increases um people's perception of you that are at the event. Um and so there's there's a lot of different ways to do it, to be honest. And what we like to do when we're working with insurance agencies is we like to get to know that specific agency. What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? What resources do you have available? Is it do you have time? Um, do you have money? Most insurance agencies don't have either, but which which are you willing to figure out how to have, right? And then build a strategy based on that. Because if you're not someone that's gonna go engage in the comments on social media, don't try to copy the strategy that someone that's pushing social media at you is is peddling, right? Um but if you are willing to be in person and you really like shaking hands and kissing babies, like a lot of insurance agency owners I know do, then do more things in person. Um, right? So it's it's about not just copying what's working for everybody else, but figuring out a strategy that's meant for you and your strengths and your weaknesses.
SPEAKER_01Praise be. This is good. I'm letting you guys just kind of jam out. I know, I wait for you. And I'm just over here in the choir, just like, hallelujah! Praise Jesus.
SPEAKER_02Amen. Let's go. Okay, so I I want to take this strategy though, because this is something that I actually see uh not translate as well. So on social media, I think collectively there's been enough information around like the hook, the meet, and the call to action, right? Like your first three seconds, we have to keep attention, we actually have to deliver value, and then there's a call to action. Okay, so we we understand that when we get on camera, this is what we're doing. Where I see a disconnect is when we get in person, we're not following the same storyline of this is what I do, and this is how you work with me. So if you can talk a little bit about the the person who's like, Yeah, I'd love to like not shake the babies and kiss the hands, but you know, do the thing. Um, how do I actually do you have like conversations around this is how you pitch in person? Are you working with them on that, or are you coming up with strategies for something outside of digital marketing?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, great question. Um, short short answer is yes, if that's the strategy that we come up with, is that you need to be doing more networking events or putting on your own events, for example, then we'll walk through the details on that. Um, and to your point, for whatever reason, I I actually see it the opposite way where I think people are better at it in person a lot of times because it's like a more natural human conversation. And then when it you know kind of transfers into the DMs on social media, it's just like pitch slapping nonstop, right? Like, hey, here's how here's how I can help your insurance agency grow, or here's how I can help your marketing agency grow, whatever it might be. Um, and so I I found that people are actually a little bit better at it in person, and the only thing that they're probably not doing in person is they're not making the ask enough because they feel awkward making the ask. Um, whereas it's the opposite on social, that's all they're doing is making the ask. And so it's about finding that balance point between the two, usually.
SPEAKER_01Go ahead. Well, I was just gonna what I was gonna say is actually getting into like what's working. So if you wanna okay, so I'd be curious, like with who you're working with right now across the industry, because I know you work with both captive and indies, so um, but at the end of the day, an insurance agency is an insurance agency. Um, I believe that through and through, you said something earlier, like, and both of you have said this, like creating your own brand, which we've been proponents of since we started Agency back in 2014. We've been literally screaming from the top of the mountains because, especially at the at the point in time we we live in right now. I mean, uh a carrier could change a rule that you don't like, you go team up with somebody else. Well, if you haven't built a brand, that's a really dangerous position to be in. And so my question for you would be is so I know I know it can marketing can be very in like agency specific based off of like what they want to do, what their strengths are, and things of that nature. But I would be curious across the board, what are you seeing work the best at right now from hey, go do this and you will generate leads within the next ninety days?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think it's It's hard to answer in one easy response. But what I would say is um there there still is a gap when it comes to digital marketing. I think that people think because AI is like the hot new thing right now, and AI can obviously do a lot and it's amazing, that they're almost skipping the kind of table stakes when it comes to digital marketing to some degree. And they're trying to hop on the next thing by using AI to scrape the internet and do a ton of cold outreach, for example, as opposed to um doing the more psychological play, which might be running some ads on the internet that people are noticing out of the corner of their eye. And then when it comes time to search, they go onto Google, they search for their insurance agency, and you also have an ad there that you're capturing their attention with before they start um, you know, working with one of your competitors. So I would say it's it's kind of a mix uh of what's working. I do think that there's a lot of hype around like AI search and Chat GBT ads and things like that. I think that anyone who claims they're an expert in those two things right now um is false because it's been around for like just a couple months, and I don't think there are any experts out there at this point. Yeah, yeah. So um that would be my one piece of advice is that if anybody is saying this is the only way to grow your insurance agency, then they're doing that for a reason because that plays into their narrative and they want you to run that specific um tactic, right?
SPEAKER_02So well, and I think to your point, and I think this has kind of been like the through line of the whole conversation, is when you can find out whatever your differentiator is, what are the things that you're really passionate about? What are the things that upset you that you don't agree with, that you think more people should be talking about? I I think you'll really find, at least for us, it didn't matter what business we started, that those were kind of all the same thing. Like if you follow me at all, you know that I love getting on an airplane and I'm traveling the world. Well, my business is built off of freedom. So I that's something that you know that. You know that Michael is very much a proponent of transformational selling versus transactional selling. Like he's very much about be a master at your craft. So I think no matter what we're talking about diversifying your marketing source, but I'm also talking about, and I think Jake, you're on the same page with me here. We're talking about diversifying you as a human being to where if you want to make a pivot, even if it's adjacent to insurance or out of insurance completely, if you understand, this is where I always we have this conversation all the time. If you can understand how to convert eyeballs into dollars, you will never have to worry about anything ever again. If you can say, how do I convert attention to revenue, then you can start any business that you want to. And I think that when you're talking about positioning and you're talking about messaging, it's easy to kind of skip over that and go, but how do I do it? Like, tell me exactly like how much money do I need to put in ads? Where do I need to go? And it's like that's the thing where I would imagine, Jake, you're spending probably most of your time is really trying to pull out who are you and what is your brand.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. And I would say that one of the things I notice the most is a lack of patience when it comes to growing your agency as well. And a lot of people want to do whatever is gonna make the agency grow as soon as possible. And a lot of times that's a different answer than what's going to lead to the most growth a year, two years, or three years from now. And I understand you have to pay the bills, you got to do a bit of both, right? You have to be realistic from that standpoint. But um, a lot of times all we're doing is either pitch slapping online by saying, hey, get a free quote, or talk to me now, call me here, email me here, DM me here. Instead of you know leading with value and education and getting someone into your sphere and then converting them long time long term because you have their attention and they trust you and you're not constantly pitching them.
SPEAKER_02Okay. So you just brought up a question there for me. So you are you doing like a lead magnet? Are you doing like a soft entry form before we get to the ask? Is that what you're suggesting there?
SPEAKER_03A bit of both, honestly. We I would recommend both. Yeah. Some some direct call to action if you have the right triggers in place for your uh strategies to know that someone's in the marketplace to buy right now, you want to have that direct call to action. Uh, but you want to have separate campaigns that are also more like warm lead gen campaigns for for long term.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so can we can we nerd on that for just a second? What are you seeing working on before we go to the call to action of like book a quote, contact me, all of that? What's the warm-up for that that you're seeing work really well?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and so it depends on your target audience, obviously, but having some sort of educational material, and it doesn't necessarily have to be insurance education because that's not very sexy, as we all know, right? So let's say, let's say you're niched down to a local geographical area. You could do the realtor play. I don't know if you've noticed this, but a lot of realtors and mortgage brokers are really good at creating content about the local area and not necessarily about real estate, for example. You could create content that's gonna hit on different life stages. Let's say you're in personal lines and you know that some of the life triggers that show that someone's gonna need new insurance would be um having a new baby, moving homes, buying a new car. You could start creating educational content around the best places to live in Denver, Colorado. I'm in Colorado. Uh, the best places to get married in Colorado. Uh here's the most family-friendly cars per JD Power study in 2025, and run educational content that is going to reach people at these different life stages, insinuating that they're going to be buying insurance soon. And then on the back end, you follow up with, again, more educational information, but perhaps with maybe more of an insurance lien at that point to show exactly what you help out with.
SPEAKER_02Oh my gosh. So then you would re-target and you would say, Hey, so you're interested in these areas. These are the 10 things to avoid if you move to this area. These are the four things that you should be asking your home inspector when they go through all of that. That kind of stuff?
SPEAKER_03Exactly. Yep. And it's it's tough because it's a long play, you know, and not a lot of people want to buy into the long play. Uh so a lot of times we do get people that are like, I love it. I'm talking to a lot of people, I'm having a lot of good conversations, but it's not turning into new business yet in the first couple months. And then sometimes they'll hit us up six months, nine months later, and it's like, wow, I can't keep up. Like everyone just all of a sudden started coming to me. So gosh.
SPEAKER_02See, I love this. For me, uh, content. I just look at like Hermosi and I'm like, he spends all of his time for the most part making content. Like that is his thing is marketing. So it's like, as insurance professionals, we don't have to do it all day long, but I think we have a real opportunity to talk about it. It's probably the thing nobody else is talking about. So at least we'll get some attention.
SPEAKER_01You can make it, you can make it interesting. It's like our Sunday smarts that we did for like three months, where every Sunday we'd go and we'd just I would do a video on Sunday around something to do with an insurance policy, whether it was a homeowner's insurance policy and what to look out for, what to ask your insurance agent. Hey, okay, I'm sure retirement is something you want to do one day. Here are some basic things you need to be doing to set yourself up for success. So while I wasn't doing a call to action in those, and we didn't know shit back then. I mean, it was 2016 when we were doing these. We were just like, we need to be doing this. This is good for the customer, it's good to get online. But it esta it what it did, it established automatic credibility. Like I became the go-to financial person in the community we lived in. I mean, I didn't own any rental properties, but people would still come to me and be like, Michael, I'm thinking about buying a rental property, man. Like, what do you think? I'm like, well, show me the numbers. Let's do this. That's awesome. So it's it's just that little, and that was a three-month thing that I we did every Sunday, and then we did Weaver. Like I just think that people have what I look marketing, and I'm not I'm not the marketing guru you are here, but I think the one thing from a digital marketing standpoint is if you're going to do this, you're going to have to put yourself out there, you're gonna have to get uncomfortable, you're gonna have to take a stand on something, you're gonna have to let people know your thoughts, your opinions, what to look out for. And the good thing is, is while insurance is unsexy, it's really easy to stand out because no one else is doing it. And so that's where I see a huge ability, like a really great opportunity, even in today's even in today's marketplace, it's like just show up, start going live on camera, like start putting some videos out there, not trying to sell anyone anything because people hate being sold to, but people love being educated. People love when someone in a profession tells them what to look out for. Hey, here's the questions you should be asking your insurance agent, or hey, the next time you go to buy a call, like whatever it is, like just start from an educational standpoint, not trying to sell anybody on anything, because that's more than likely what's holding you back in the first place, is you think you're gonna become you're gonna come across Celsi. Just go from it as an educational perspective and just see what happens and just see the credibility that you build, is would be my tip.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I lead with value, right? Yeah, and you gotta climb cringe mountain. I don't know how many times it's like, yeah, just climb it. It's not big. I'm telling you, nobody's on it. Like climate.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and and you're hitting on something that's look, short-term versus long-term strategies. And here's the one thing I will say is you do have to have both. You have to have short-term strategies that will pay you or give you give your team leads automatically. This is the internet lead claim. This is like literally internet leads, should be a short-term, like, how do I get leads in front of my people as fast as possible so they can get on the conversations? But then you've got to be thinking outside the box as well. Like, cold calling is more of an immediate strategy as well. It's like hit, let's pound the phone, smile and dial, cold text messages, but referral relations or referral, like what I what I call like a COI, like a center of influence partnership with a mortgage broker, real estate agent, car dealership. Okay, those are more long-term strategies. Uh, apartment complex. How about direct mail? While direct mail sucked for me, I and we lost 10 grand on it in our first year of trying it. I hear a lot of agents today that they've kept these campaigns going for years and years and years, and now it pays dividends. That's a that's a strategy. Your SEO, that's gonna be a longer-term strategy. Like the digital marketing you're talking about, that's gonna be more of a longer-term strategy. And I can tell you, with my experience, if you're a business owner listening to this right now, you are going to be underpaid for a significant amount of time. But if you stay true to the path, you stay true to the process, you're willing to continue to invest in your business, sharpen your skills, invest in marketing strategies like Jake and Courtney are talking about, eventually you will be overpaid for your skill set in your business. But you are going to go through a stage in your life where you are underpaid for the value that you're providing people, and you just have to be okay with that.
SPEAKER_03Agreed. I think it's all these diversified marketing tactics, I think it's kind of similar to compound interest to your point, right? It's like you're not really feeling the momentum much, and then all of a sudden, after years of doing it, it's like boom, something just clicks, and it's like, wow, I can't even keep up, right? I have too much people, too many people that are reaching out to me, and you know, uh it'll it changes the problem. It's a such a big deal.
SPEAKER_01Look at all this money. Oh my gosh, I don't know what I'm gonna do.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Then you have a hiring problem, you don't have a leads problem. Yeah, you're talking now, you're talking scaling growth versus trying to pay the bills. So, Jake, I would be curious. You get to pick, I'm gonna let you answer this however you want to. What is one thing that all insurance agents should stop in their marketing? And or what is one thing that they should start in their marketing?
SPEAKER_03That's a good one. Um I gotta think about that for a second, if you don't mind.
SPEAKER_02Take all the time you need, I'll sing us a song in the interim.
SPEAKER_01That's a great question. While Jake is thinking, I'm gonna add something else that I wanted to talk about earlier that he hit on, and I'm just buying you some time, Jake. I appreciate that. He's talking, so he said something earlier in the conversation. I don't want to just go. I don't want people to just skip over. So the importance of understanding who your ideal customer is. When you market to when you market to everyone, you market to no one. So I don't want to just skip past that fact of understanding who do you actually want to work with, and then understanding where do those individuals hang out. So I I talk about this in my book, quote three as well. Like ideal customer, ideal location, then I say ideal conversation. Like then how do they want to be talked to? And if you can figure these three things out, it's gonna help a lot because then you can niche down your marketing to like, for example, if I if I'm gonna talk about an ideal customer, well, an ideal customer when we were insurance agents was someone that was married, had more than a $300,000 mortgage, brought in more than $150,000 a year, had at least one, but what we were looking for was two plus kids, had multiple cars, and then had a recreational vehicle. That was like an ideal customer that we wanted to attract. And ideal, and ideally, to go even more forward on that, they were of ages of like 28 to like 42. Like that's who we wanted to talk to because we knew if we could get in front of them, we were going to write number one, a big household. Number two, we were gonna help them out with life insurance, and number three, and really what I was passionate about at the time was investments. I was gonna help them set up more than likely a Roth IRA, maybe they had some old jobs we could do, an old, like a rollover an orphan 401k that wasn't doing anything for them anymore. And so that's who we were trying to position ourselves around from that standpoint. But then I had another, but then we had other ideal customers. Okay, so then our next ideal customer was like your 55 to 65-year-old person, somebody that's getting ready. So you have a lot of assets, no more kids in the house, house is almost paid off, you're getting ready to retire, you have a little bit of money in your 401k, or maybe a lot of money. So, like you can have different ideal customers, but then you have to understand how to market and attract those ideal customers and where those people are hanging out.
SPEAKER_02My marketing heart is so happy right now. Like, I am nerding out that you're even having this conversation so much because I'm gonna take it a step further. Where I like to go is it even deeper in the psychology of that. So you have those two different ideal customers. I so we do this a lot with agency coach AI. I want to hear the words that the customer is saying to me. I want to feel like where is their friction? Where the where do the objections start to pop up in the conversation? And then where did they go? Oh, I got it. Like, where was the light bulb moment? I like to analyze all of that because when I can say the words in my marketing message that it is like I have incepted their brain. I use the same words that they do, I know what keeps them up at night, I know the problems that they're going through. I can already speak to that. If I have those two, maybe it's three for you, or maybe it's four, or whatever it is. You have to get as specific as possible to be able to say this is what keeps them up at night, and this is the problem that that I can solve with this product. If you can nail that down, then it's just a psychology play of really now you're going attention, and how do I attract at that point of that game? So babe, crushed it. Yeah. I love it.
SPEAKER_01So, Jake, it was either do or do not do.
SPEAKER_02Start or stop. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um, I would stop renting your growth and start owning it. And I think that's a phrase that gets tossed around from time to time. We've talked a little bit today about specifically like rent, I see internet leads as renting growth. Um, for example, you know, I think there's other things that you could think about in this category as well. Like, let's say you have a website and you're working with a vendor on the site. Do you actually own the site if you stop working with that vendor? Or are they sunsetting the website at that point and potentially selling the domain to someone else? Um, there's a lot of vendors out there in the marketing space that uh have some tricky language in their uh agreements that I would be on the lookout for in the insurance space. Um, so that would be another thing is to think about not just, hey, I'm renting internet leads, but also like what are the causes in my marketing agreements with the vendors I'm looking, I'm working with, and what happens if I decide that results aren't there and I want to leave? Is everything that they built for you owned by them or by you?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Oh, I think that's so good. All right, Jig, I I could literally have like a daily stand-up with you conversation where we're just like, all right, PC and Westworkin, where do we where are we focused? But if somebody wanted to connect with you, they wanted to work with you, they they really wanted to dial in, owning their marketing, owning generating leads, how would they connect with you, follow along, or work with you?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I appreciate it. Um so you can check out our website. It's sinrix.com slash podcast. That's S-E-N-R-Y-X.com slash podcast. We have a free marketing independence assessment that takes about two minutes to fill out and basically scores you on how dependent you are on leads, on a key producer, on your carrier, for example, and points out the vulnerabilities in the long-term growth of your agency. And most people are surprised by what they find when they take it. Um I'm also on LinkedIn. You can look me up there. Uh it's Jake Cash C-A-S-H, just like the money.
SPEAKER_02God, I wish I had the money gun. Dang it. I know, where's my money gun when I I oh I I have my light up tambourine, but I do not have my money gun up here. Oh my gosh. Jake, this has been an incredible conversation. Thank you so much for jamming on marketing, for sharing your time with us, for sharing your attention with us, for all of you turning in, tuning in. Uh, time and attention are definitely by far our most valuable and important assets. Thank you so much for spending some of that with us. MDEB, you have anything else?
SPEAKER_01Hootie hoo, baby. Let's go. Go make it happen. Jake, cash, money, cash in the house. Let's go. Appreciate you guys checking out. Other than that, take care and uh we appreciate and love you all.
SPEAKER_03Thanks, everyone.