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Consumer behavior and shopping habits continue to evolve within the Medicare marketplace. Today, marketers need to understand how to navigate these new paradigms to ensure continued success.

Check out the following four tips to reinforce your lead generation and sales strategies for AEP and beyond:

1.Understand the Digital Divide
A tremendous shift has taken place over the last several years in the AEP lead generation marketplace. What was previously dominated by direct mail and one-to-one, agent-to-customer relationships have largely shifted to a digital marketplace. The major impact of this shift? Lead aggregators are bidding aggressively on search terms, which in turn is driving up costs year over year.

2.Know Thy Customer
While customers are shopping more, the amount of switching lags the increase in shopping behavior. This speaks to the power of brand and the importance of meaningful customer relationships. To avoid being negatively impacted by switching, agencies must spend time before AEP (between October 1 and October 15) going after new customers and nurturing their existing customer base. One idea? Know your customers’ ANOC changes before they do, and have a proactive plan to help them make changes, if warranted.

3.Strike While the Iron’s Hot
Search engine marketing (SEM)-sourced leads begin to lose value seconds after they’re generated. In order to maximize the value of a digital lead from SEM, agents must be prepared to contact their lead no more than 15 minutes after the lead is generated. That will, for some agencies, require new technologies and sales behaviors to make the most of leads from this source.

4.Not All Digital Leads are Created Equal
While intent-based ads (such as SEM via Google) age quickly, other types of advertising such as interest-based ads on Facebook can have a longer shelf life. These particular ads have been shown – in the experience of our team team – to perform better when contact is made more than one hour after a lead has been received.