Introduction

I wanted to run an experiment to see if agents can profitably sell life insurance online using Quote & Apply. We’ll pay $2,000 for web traffic and will share the resulting clicks, leads, applications, and placed policies, as well as the revenue, costs, and profit.

Lead Source

We’ll be using Consumers Advocate as the lead source for this test. You can buy web traffic from a number of companies though. I personally like Consumers Advocate because the user’s path to our website is clear. A prospect Google searches “best life insurance” and sees Consumers Advocate as a top paid search result. The user is directed to a guide showing recommended agencies/companies to buy life insurance from. Our websites will be on the list competing with the likes of AIG Direct, Health IQ, Haven Life, and Policy Genius.

Websites

I set up two websites to test different products.

1. ltc-rider.com is on Consumers Advocate’s Best Long Term Care Companies Guide and focuses on John Hancock’s Protection UL with Long Term Care. At $10 per click, we’ll be the number one recommendation and will receive 100 clicks for $1,000. We limited the state to only California so our ad runs for a longer time. We expect an agent to get involved on these sales, a longer sales cycle, and a higher average premium.

2. instantaccidentaldeath.com is on Consumers Advocate’s 10 Best Life Insurance Companies page. Since life insurance is more competitive than long term care insurance, we’ll be the number 8 ad on their recommended guide. Also at $10 per click, we’ll receive 100 clicks for $1,000. Since the average case size is so low with Accidental Death, we won’t be assigning an agent to leads and expect interested buyers to buy the coverage online (👍 for guaranteed issue and 100% placement ratio).

Set up

• Purchased two domains: ltc-rider.com and instantaccidentaldeath.com from GoDaddy.com for $24.
• Switched the DNS from GoDaddy to Cloudflare’s free plan for speed improvements for $0.
• Used Heroku to host the website for $7/month.
• Implemented GitHub for version control for $0.
• Bought a theme called Advent from wrapbootstrap.com for $18 and changed the text and images.
• Used Tailor Brands to generate logos for $9.99/logo.
• Added Quote & Apply to each website. I limited the product categories to Life with Long Term Care and Accidental Death respectively. Quote & Apply is free when using BackNine Insurance as the general agency.
• Implemented Google Analytics for reporting on each website.
• The total cost for both websites was $61.98 + $7/month.

Results

Stay tuned for Part 2 where I’ll fill in the empty cells and share the results.