Plan Advisors

Helping you choose the right health plan

How Facebook Ads Can Help You Grow Your Business

medicare

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You may find yourself in the place where you’ve exhausted all of your ideas on how to grow your Book of Business. If all of your ideas only involve printed materials and in-person networking, you may be missing a major opportunity to grow your reach. There are a lot of social media platforms out there that will help you market your business, but if there’s one you should focus on, it’s Facebook.

Facebook Ads are an excellent way to get your name out there and to track engagement with all the analytics you want to see. Here are a few ways that Facebook Ads can help grow your business and a brief explanation of how to set them up.

Robust Analytics

The metrics that Facebook Ads supply can function like a reliable family car or a souped-up sports car. If you just want to see how many people are clicking on your ad and going to your site, you can do that. However, you can also see things like ad impressions, relevance score, geographical location, result rate, frequency, and many more pinpointed statistics to help you see the success of your ad. So even if all of those analytics sound overwhelming, don’t worry. It is completely up to you what metrics you utilize and which ones you ignore.

Target Your Audience

As a Medicare or ACA agent, you have a specific demographic you’re seeking to target with any ads you post. Facebook Ads allow you to target an audience based on age range. This is a huge advantage as it prevents you from spending time filtering when looking through potential leads.

Find New Leads

As of February 2022, Facebook has almost three billion active users. Yes, you read that right. Three billion active users! Posting ads through Facebook is a fantastic way to generate new leads and build trust with beneficiaries, new and old. If you can gear your content toward your preferred audience, Facebook Ads can present a huge opportunity to reach people outside your normal spheres of influence.

A Quick How-to Guide

  1. Create a page for your business
  2. Go to the Ads Center
  3. Create a new ad
  4. Here is where you select all of the information you want to share, select your budget, choose your audience, and attach any relevant media
  5. Once you hit “promote now,” your ad will go through an approval process, then be posted!

It’s a fairly simple process that, once accomplished, can be repeated anytime you wish! 

As always, with any of these tools, Plan Advisors is here to support you with any questions you may have! Our team can help you set up ads and track how they’re performing. We want to be the best FMO for you and your needs as a broker. That’s why, along with helping you use outside tools like Facebook Ads, we also have tools like Medicare Center, our Broker Portal, and other enrollment tools! We are here to serve you as you grow your Book of Business.

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As a Medicare agent, you have a vast amount of knowledge at your disposal. However, one thing that knowledge can’t do is change the rules of Medicare and magically provide you with more business from those who are under 65. So how can you continue to grow your business outside the boundaries of your Medicare sales?

Well, let us answer your question with another question: Have you ever considered selling ACA plans?

1.  Commissions

In the past, Affordable Care Act (ACA) commissions were a complicated topic. Many carriers were actively lowering the amounts agents could make from selling ACA plans. However, this is no longer the case. ACA plan commissions can provide a substantial income because agents typically get money for each member for each month. This can create a healthy income stream if you’re insuring households with multiple members on top of your usual Medicare sales. 

In addition, the ACA Open Enrollment Period (OEP) overlaps with Medicare’s Annual Enrollment Period (AEP). If that sounds like too much multitasking to you, don’t worry! OEP continues over a month after AEP has ended, allowing you to move from one to the other seamlessly. This can be helpful for some agents who can extend their busy season by one more month and, as a result, increase their sales. 

2.  Larger Client Pool

As a Medicare agent, you’ve probably worked with a client who had family members under 65. This can sometimes feel like a missed opportunity because you’ve worked closely with your client and have grown a positive relationship that would lead to a shared trust among the entire family. However, being a licensed ACA agent allows you to sell to family members who aren’t yet 65. This can have a massive impact on your book of business if, for every one client you’re serving, another is being added. 

In 2021, the eligibility qualifications were lowered, allowing more people to get ACA plans. These premiums will be available through 2025, giving you plenty of time to get your foot in the door. The ARPA also created a special enrollment period that allows some low-income individuals to add marketplace plans outside of the open enrollment period.

3. Free Certification

You may be worried about having to pay another certification fee on top of your Medicare certifications. Don’t worry! Federally Facilitated Marketplace (FFM) Certification is free! The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) are the ones who facilitate this free certification that puts you on the path to selling ACA plans. Click here for more information on obtaining your FFM certification! 

4. From ACA to Medicare

Massive numbers of people will be aging into Medicare over the next decade. Selling ACA can give you a significant head start on growing relationships with potential clients. You may sell an ACA plan to a client who, three years later, turns 65 and purchases a Medicare plan from you. This is one of the biggest reasons to add ACA into your arsenal as an agent.

Plan Advisors is here to provide all the support you need for your Medicare and ACA endeavors. We can show you the perfect plans that fit your existing portfolio. With the ability to sell two types of plans, you’ll see your book of business grow as your busy season extends.

So don’t wait! Reach out to us today and we’ll help you get on the right track towards selling ACA plans!

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It was only a few weeks ago that we introduced you to Jake Martinez, an up-and-coming broker out of Washington state. We started thinking maybe it’s time to tell the story of his Medicare sales mentor, Gordon “Gordy” Hill. Let’s face it; who couldn’t use another success story for motivation?

A Well-Oiled Machine

Some people are just built for this line of work. They are great communicators, they are disciplined, and they have a system. This is a concise and accurate way to describe Gordy Hill, a top-notch individual producer and agency leader out of the greater Seattle area. “Persistence is the whole thing. Being able to knuckle down and make the calls and treat it like a real job. Same routine every day. I don’t really deviate that much,” he says.

They say if it ain’t broke, then don’t fix it. Gordy’s system is tried and true. But that’s not to say that tweaks can’t be made. To prove it, ask yourself how many brokers you know that have seen a 30% jump in production since the start of the covid pandemic? Gordy has. But the increase didn’t come by way of wholesale changes to his methodology. The pandemic actually allowed him to become more efficient.

How did he accomplish this? With the complications of running in-home appointments over the past two years, call centers seem to be taking the lead in Medicare product sales. So, Gordy decided to adapt his marketing model to focus on over-the-phone enrollments.

“Once covid hit, I shifted to selling completely over the phone and haven’t looked back. Business has gotten even better since that point in time,” he says. “I’ve cut out all the dead time. Driving to appointments, getting porched; all that stuff is gone.”

The Mentor’s Mentor

Having grown up on a farm, Gordy is quite familiar with hard work. But having a grandfather who was an influential real estate broker in the Seattle area gave him a taste of the business world. Watching his grandfather thrive in a sales related field gave Gordy the motivation to seek a similar profession. After graduating college with a degree in Business Finance, he landed a sales manager-in-training position with an insurance company.

“Sales was always something I wanted to get into,” he says. “I’d never done sales until I got out of college. So, it’s something that just kind of worked out.”

Hit the Ground Running

Gordy excelled to a manager role in just two years, making him one of the youngest in the company. But he soon realized that top producing managers were not compensated that much differently from middle of the pack managers. This didn’t sit well with him. So, he decided to trust in himself and took a commission only position with an insurance agency.

While there were many products in Gordy’s arsenal, he found his stride in selling Medicare plans. “Medicare was a way to get your foot in the door. But it became something that I liked doing…there was a lot of opportunity,” he said. “When I started doing Medicare, I would run 15 to 20 appointments per week.”

Much of Gordy’s business was derived from direct mail campaigns. He also possessed the wisdom to build strong relationships with local broker managers of Medicare plan sponsors. These relationships led to additional carrier marketing opportunities.

Have System. Will Train.

Gordy reached a level of success that allowed for his wife to stay home full time and take care of their infant child. He also has a home office so that he can stay close to his family. With a steady flow of leads and a tried-and-true sales program, Gordy is ready to grow his team and transition into more of an agency leader role.

He already has eight producers that have joined the team, but Gordy aspires to mentor even more hungry brokers. “I like training people. It’s something that I enjoy,” he said. “I legitimately have something to offer. I have leads. I know how to work the leads. I can show agents how to build their books.”

Just like he did with Jake, we are sure it won’t be long before Gordy has an army of successful Medicare Sales Specialists. “Jake was my guinea pig. I wanted to see if I could teach someone how to do this over the phone without ever going into the house…he clicked pretty quickly,” he said. No doubt there will be many more to follow.

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As agents we must always stay on top of all the changes in our industry. We are the experts; we never want to make guesses or assumptions that can destroy our own credibility. Making a simple mistake regarding selecting the wrong enrollment period or SEP creates pending applications and even worse jeopardizes the enrollment of the prospect.

[Read more…] about How do I determine the correct enrollment period or SEP, if any, after enrolling in Part B?

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CMS has announced a change in Medicare ID cards that will begin to take effect in April 2018. The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) of 2015 requires CMS to remove Social Security Numbers from all Medicare cards by April 2019. A new Medicare Beneficiary Identifier (MBI) will replace the SSN-based Health Insurance Claim Number (HICN) on the new Medicare cards for Medicare transactions, such as, billing eligibility status and claim status. The MBI will be confidential and should be protected as Personally Identifiable Information. The biggest reason CMS is implementing this change is to fight medical identity theft for people with Medicare.  It will better protect private health care and financial information as well as federal health care benefit and service payments. 

[Read more…] about New Medicare ID Cards