Ask a brokerage what it needs and the answer is usually more quote requests. Look at the pipeline and the requests are already there, sitting unanswered or answered a day late. The Growth Bully, a Malta performance marketing agency, sees the same shape across regulated financial businesses: the acquisition problem is real, but it lives after the enquiry rather than before it.
Insurance is bought under two conditions that almost no other purchase shares. It is bought against a deadline, because a policy lapses or a vehicle needs cover on a fixed date, and it is bought comparatively, because the buyer has asked three providers at once. Both conditions reward the same behaviour, which is answering first and clearly.
What should a broker measure instead of quote requests?
Bound policies, premium retained at renewal, and the number of policies held per client. Quote volume is the easiest number to increase and the loosest link to income, because a broker is paid on cover placed and kept rather than on quotations issued. A rise in requests with a flat bind rate is a cost increase.
The two ratios worth reporting weekly are the share of requests that receive a quote at all, which is usually far below what the team assumes, and the share of issued quotes that bind. Most brokerages discover the first is the bigger leak.
Why do quote requests go cold?
Because the buyer has approached several brokers and bought from whoever came back first with something they understood. The enquiry is not lost to a better price. It is lost to a faster reply, and by the time the second quote arrives the buyer has already anchored on the first one and stopped comparing.
The other leak is silence in the middle. A request that needs more information from the client stalls the moment nobody chases it, and in a business where every enquiry carries a deadline, a stalled quote is a lost one. Where enquiries actually leak maps the rest of that path.
How fast does a broker need to respond?
Minutes, not hours, and the standard applies out of hours as well. Insurance enquiries cluster in the evening and at weekends, because that is when people deal with renewals, buy vehicles and discover that a policy has lapsed. An office hours only response model concedes a large share of the market by default.
The fix is mechanical rather than strategic. An immediate acknowledgement that confirms what happens next, a missed call that converts into a text conversation, and a defined chase sequence for anything incomplete. Speed to lead explains the mechanism, missed call textback covers the out of hours half, and LeadLock is how we build the whole loop.
How do you avoid competing purely on price?
By changing what the buyer is comparing. A quote sent as a number invites a comparison of numbers, and in that comparison the broker with the thinnest cover usually wins. A quote sent with the cover explained, the exclusions named and the claims process described is a different object and gets judged differently.
The things a broker can genuinely differentiate on are unglamorous and rarely marketed:
- Claims handling. Who the client calls, how fast it is acknowledged, who does the arguing with the insurer.
- Advice on cover. What the cheap policy does not include, stated before the client finds out.
- Continuity. A named person who knows the account rather than whoever answers.
- Renewal conduct. Reviewing cover ahead of renewal instead of quietly rolling it over.
None of that is visible in a price comparison, which is precisely why it belongs in the marketing rather than in the quote email alone.
What is the most under used asset in a brokerage?
The existing book. A brokerage sitting on years of client records typically has cover it has never cross sold, lapsed policies that were never chased and renewals handled as an administrative task rather than as a conversation. It is the cheapest new business available and it needs no advertising at all.
Working it is a data exercise first: segment by product held, by renewal month and by lapse date, then run a sequenced approach against each segment. Database reactivation covers the method and getting the CRM into a usable state is usually the prerequisite.
Which lines of business suit paid advertising?
The ones with real search demand and a policy value that can absorb a competitive cost per enquiry. Motor, home, travel and health behave like search markets, because the buyer knows the product and is shopping to a deadline. Commercial lines rarely do.
Commercial and specialist cover is a named account motion instead. The buyers are few, they renew annually with an incumbent, and they are reached through brokers of record, industry bodies and direct outreach timed to the renewal month rather than through search. That is closer to the Decision Maker Pipeline than to a lead campaign, and lead generation covers how the two run side by side.
What can an insurance broker say in its marketing?
Less than most industries, and the limits are worth knowing before a campaign is written rather than after it is rejected. Insurance is regulated, advertising is held to a fair, clear and not misleading standard, and platforms treat it as a restricted category with its own approval process.
In practice that rules out guaranteed savings, best price claims, cover implied without its conditions, and any figure quoted without the basis attached. It does not rule out being specific about service, and service is where the decision is actually made. Our note on financial services marketing and the insurance marketing page go further on both.
If your quote log is healthy and your bind rate is not, the campaign is not the problem. Show us your enquiry flow and we will tell you where the policies are leaking.