 What's up, guys? There's a massive, massive shift in the insurance marketing industry. That means that in 2020, if you're not trying to play ball in the digital space, you're going to get left behind. I'm going to break down three key concepts that if you're not doing in 2020, you are setting yourself up to fail. All right, guys. It is December of 2019 and we have been through 2019's AEP, which shook up the industry for sure. It was a, it was a crazy AEP. I know a lot of my Medicare clients have had hundreds and hundreds of apps that they've put in. I know one office of seven people that had 2000, 2000 AEP Medicare apps go in just during AEP and there are seven people in that office. He's doing something. My other clients are doing something that if you're not doing, you're setting yourself up yourself up to fail. Okay. So we have a lot of clients across the country that do Medicare, final expense, various types of insurance. And there's really three things that I want to kind of break down for you today. One is I want to kind of share with you what we learned during this AEP. And there's a couple of key components. Okay. 2019's annual enrollment period was absolutely totally different than 2018's. There was hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars that went into digital marketing that did not go into digital marketing in 2018 even. What I mean is, as I'm talking to major carriers, they're giving us a hundred thousand dollar projects that are only, you know, being spent in one particular area of the country and that was one 12th of their budget. They spread that out between, you know, multiple different projects and multiple different, you know, organizations because the co-op dollars that were coming from the carrier that they just wanted them to do for digital. So we had this huge, you know, we had these huge projects that were coming across and that business just wasn't there in 2018. There was not carriers giving co-op dollars to IMOs to promote their products digitally. So we had to go through a massive shift of compliance and getting all these videos approved through Aetna and Humana and Mutual Omaha and all this other stuff. But I'm telling you guys, there's big money coming in the digital marketing space. Now what does that mean? That means it's all going to get more competitive. That means that in 2020, if you're not trying to play ball in the digital space, you're going to get left behind. There is lots of money. There is, you have got to know what's going on and you want to make sure that you're above, you know, above the service of what's happening. So, you know, I can tell you right now that the digital marketing space of the insurance marketing world is growing, growing, growing. And that brings you to my second point. I know a lot of you guys have made a lot of money and built a business on direct mail leads and I'm not ever going to say that direct mail is dead or bad or anything. But I can tell you for a fact, I hear every single week and every single month how the direct mail is impaling like you used to the quality of the lead isn't like you used to. They're not getting as much leads as they need an area. And most of the organizations that are living on direct mail are using some other form of supplemental lead source to get them in front of the people. So that supplemental lead source is typically one of two things, right? The first thing that they're going to do is digital marketing leads, you know, just internet leads, whatever that is. The second thing that a lot of people do is what's called live transfers from call centers. Now, a lot of some of these call centers are being built overseas, but any of the big IMOs and big clients that we work with are winding down their direct mail spins and winding up their live transfer telesales leads and winding up their digital leads to fill in the gaps as well. And this is absolutely a trend that you need to be a part of. There is no way around it. If you're living on direct mail only, you've got to figure out how to get outside of only direct mail and diversify your lead source. Now, that does mean that the marketing, the digital marketing world is very competitive. I sat down in the conference room of one of the largest insurance company that's privately held in the country. And I talked to their lead call center guy that had a killer AEP and I said, Hey, well, where do you get most of your leads? You know, he told me, he said, good domains. That's all he said. And I said, well, that was pretty cryptic. And he's like, well, I'm not going to give her a secret sauce. But I'm telling you right now, even large carriers who are typically sometimes behind the curve on innovation and adapting to new sort of strategies, that guy who runs the call center of the largest privately held insurance company in the world told me, you know, two words, good domains. I'm telling you guys, there is a massive shift coming. If you guys are not getting on board with this in 2020 towards the digital ways and trying to diversify your lead source, you've got to get on that board, right? So when it comes to tell us, tell sales or tell elites, one of the things that I found is that a lot of people are doing a lot of tell elites as well. One of the reasons that I feel like tell sales, live transfers, tell elites are working is because I feel like there is such a boom in digital marketing overall that's fueling some of these large call centers that they have huge databases of these age leads that they developed on themselves through digital. And they're really being able to work back past leads. They don't have to buy age leads from anybody because they're developing their own and they're working through these these leads constantly and they're able to because of the advent of digital marketing, you know, you're able to do a marketing campaign with 48 states. If you want to drive all those leads, that cost per lead could be as low as two, three dollars, whatever that ends up being, get into your system, dial it. And then what what's happening is, is on the tell sale side, they're typically opening with openers that are taking those leads and just, you know, working through those leads, getting through the qualifying questions, the health questions, are you wheelchair bound, you have cancer, you know, Alzheimer's, all the big ones are in nursing home, age qualify, health qualify and bank account qualify. And once they check the main boxes, they're then transferred over to the closers. So what I see most big, large, tell sales operations doing successfully is not just dropping leads into closers laps, but dropping leads into openers laps and what they call like marketers or whatever, qualifying that kicking over the closer. On the field sale side, what I see is the same thing, essentially except with appointment centers. So a lot of times the high, high volume guys that I see that are doing big time volume, you know, $15,000 a week of premium, you know, whatever that number ends up being, they all have one thing in common, and that's they have an appointment center that the person drives the leads into, the appointment center qualifies the leads, sets the appointment, and then they're also implementing other digital marketing tactics that allow that user to then auto book an appointment as well. And so that person that's the actual closer that has the talent of the understanding the products and can work with the person in the home or whatever that looks like is actually not doing the dialing and setting the leads. It's more so the appointment center that's doing that for them. So those three things are really, really crucial in 2020. If you're not, if you're telesales and you're not working with openers and live transfers, you're not doing what the Kings are doing. If you are in field sales and you're trying to dial your own leads to save money on an appointment center, you're not doing what the big producers are doing. If you're trying to work your own direct mail leads, you are not absolutely not doing what the big dogs are doing, even the small dogs have kind of moved past that a little bit. Now, every time I talk about direct mail, I try not to be negative about direct mail. It's still a viable marketing method. There's still people that live and eat and breathe off that and I'm not ever going to say that that shouldn't be the case. But they are all supplementing their direct mail with some sort of other system, whether it's telemarketing leads or digital as well. But those are the three Kings. You know, you got direct mail. I have a client that has, that's a 40 million dollar a year organization. And what they do is they actually have a field sales force and an actual telemarketing source as well. In fact, several clients that I work with, the major insurance carrier that I worked with, that I sat down with this week is the same thing. They got field sales and tele sales. And I'm telling you guys right now, they're all using either live transfers, digital leads or direct mail leads. And for the first time in 2019, direct mail is like a clear loser when it comes to teleleads or digital for sure. So whenever you look at the actual premium booked with digital direct mail and teleleads, teleleads are very high up there. Digital leads are very high up there and direct mail is lagging and continuing to lag every single month. Direct mail is losing market share. So I don't want to scare anybody. That's actually a good thing for your budget because direct mail is expensive and you don't need to pay, especially if you're going to doorknock. If you're doorknocking, digital leads are perfect because these people are opting in, you can get a lead card that looks exactly like what a direct mail is and you can buy leads, digital leads today and get leads in two days from now. Digitally with direct mail, you're three weeks down, there's not a lot of flexibility, there's no guarantees. It's very much a risk. But those are some key, key components and shifts that I saw in 2019 that if you're not on board with 2020, you're going to get left behind. So I hope you guys found some value in this content today. We spend millions of dollars of marketing insurance only, typically it's lead development, search engine optimization, website development, getting people in front of people because we all know that if you can't get in front of people as insurance agents, you will never sell, you'll never become one of the producers that you want to be. So thank you for joining us for this little video. I hope you found some value in this and this is more of like a big picture video. But I'm telling you, we spend millions of dollars of marketing budget just in the insurance industry and those are three things that I see absolutely taking you into the future for sure. If you enjoyed that video, then check on this video right here. It's five insurance marketing tips that are working right now. It's guaranteed to help you be a better insurance marketer. What I want to do is break down five important tips. The reason I picked these five is because no matter how large or small, how new or old, most people that I talked to are missing one of these five tips typically.