Facebook and Meta Ads for Insurance Brokers
We run Facebook and Meta ads for insurance brokers, and only for commercial. Employers, not consumers. If you sell Medicare, life, or auto, this isn’t the page for you, and neither are we.
What we do is book calls between your producers and owners, CFOs, and HR directors whose business just changed, timed to their renewal. The audience is a signal audience, named employers in your territory that just crossed 50 or 100 employees, hired a CFO or an HR director, opened in a new state, or bought a company, refreshed every day from public records. The lead form asks one question that matters: when does your renewal come up. Our team calls every form fill the same day, confirms the date, and books the producer at 120 days out. Nothing in the ad quotes, binds, or names a carrier. Ad spend goes on your card.
Why Facebook ads usually fail for commercial brokers
Most commercial agencies have tried Facebook once, usually because a marketing vendor sold them a package built for personal lines. It went wrong the same three ways it always does, plus one that’s specific to insurance.
The audience was a guess. “Business owners” and “HR managers” as Meta interests reach people who put those words on a profile, which is a small and strange slice of the actual decision makers at 200-person companies in your county. The CFO you want is on Facebook every night. There’s no interest that finds her.
The ad was about the agency. “Independent agency, all major carriers, free quote.” Every agency in the state has that ad, and a CFO with a broker of eight years has no reason to tap it.
Nobody worked the leads. The form fills came in, mixed with sole proprietors looking for a personal auto quote and people who wanted a job. Your CSR called the first ten between service calls, got voicemail, and stopped. The two real employers were fills fourteen and twenty.
And the one that’s specific to insurance: the ad said something it shouldn’t have. A rate, a carrier, a coverage promise. Somebody on your compliance side saw it a month later, and the campaign got pulled.
None of that is the channel. Owners and CFOs are on Facebook. It’s the audience, the creative, the follow-up, and the compliance review.
The only thing we do with Meta ads
We book B2B sales calls. For a brokerage that means every audience, every video, every form, and every dollar of spend exists to put an employer with a renewal coming up on your producer’s calendar at the right time, and the number at the top of your daily log is booked calls and renewal dates captured, not leads and not reach.
How we build the audience for a brokerage
A signal audience is a Meta custom audience made of named companies that just showed a public reason to buy, matched by contact and company domain, and rebuilt every day. For a commercial broker, the signals are headcount crossing 50, 100, or 250, a new CFO or controller or HR leader, a new location or state, an acquisition, and OSHA activity or a mod change. We track all five across your territory every day. In one territory that’s a few hundred employers a month, and that list becomes three audiences.
The signal list, uploaded as a customer list. The decision maker’s name and business email where we can get it, the company domain, and the company’s Facebook page. Business emails match worse on Meta than personal ones, so we add a geographic radius around your territory and the company’s page engagers, and the match rate lands somewhere useful.
The retargeting audience. Anyone from the signal audience who clicked, visited your site, or watched the first three seconds of a video. If you also run our email, anyone who opened it goes in here too. This is the audience that gives up renewal dates.
A lookalike from your book. Built from your agency management system, not from site visitors, so Meta models the employers that actually pay premium through you. This is the audience that finds the companies the signals missed.
How the renewal date gets captured
This is the part that makes Meta unusually good for a commercial broker, and almost nobody uses it.
The lead form has one question that matters: “When does your commercial insurance renew?” with a month picker and nothing else. A CFO who’s been thinking about her renewal since she saw the video about crossing 100 employees answers it in two taps. No other channel captures the renewal date this cheaply, and the renewal date is the only thing a producer actually needs.
Then our team calls. Same day, every fill. We confirm the month, ask whether it’s P&C or benefits or both, sort out the sole proprietors and the job seekers, and do one of two things. If the renewal is inside 120 days, we book the producer now. If it’s further out, it goes on the renewal-date list with a reminder to the producer at 120 days, and we report it separately as a nurture.
Here’s what that looks like. A 140-employee distribution company hires a new CFO in March. She’s in the signal audience by the next morning. Wednesday night she sees a 30-second video of your producer explaining what a new CFO usually finds at the first renewal. She taps, picks “November,” and puts the phone down. Thursday morning our team calls, confirms November, and books your producer for the second week of July. Your producer walks into that meeting with four months of runway and a reason to be there.
What the ads say, and what they can’t say
The creative follows the outbound email. It’s about the employer’s situation, and it stays inside the same three limits as everything else we send for a broker.
Your producer on camera for 30 to 45 seconds, about one signal. “If you just crossed 50 employees, here’s what changes on your benefits filing next year, and what most companies find out too late.” Or “If you just opened a second location in another state, here’s the question to ask your broker this week.” One signal per video. The company that crossed 50 sees the first. The company with the new location sees the second.
A screenshot of a real reply. A CFO writing back “our renewal’s in October, can we talk in July?” with the name blurred. On Meta this beats designed creative every time we’ve tried it for brokers, because it looks like a person and not an agency ad.
A case study card. One number, one company, one sentence. When a broker client lets us use their name, that card goes here. Until then, the three in the proof strip are the format.
What the ads can’t say: a rate, a carrier, a coverage promise, or anything that describes policy terms. They name the change, say a review before renewal would show whether the current program still fits, and ask for the date. Your compliance reviewer sees every ad before it runs, same as the email templates and the call script. Anything past that line is for your licensed producer, on the call.
We run both the lead form and a landing page with the calendar on it, and we test which captures more renewal dates in your territory. A form fill isn’t the result. Our team calls every fill the same day, confirms the date, and books the producer. What we report is the booked call and the date.
How we measure it
We report reach, clicks, and cost per click because they’re the only way to tell whether the audience is being served at all. They’re not the result.
The result is cost per renewal date captured, cost per booked call, and cost per held call, measured off your producer’s calendar and not off the pixel. Every day you get spend, form fills, renewal dates confirmed by our team, calls booked now, nurtures logged with a reminder, and, if you run our email too, dates captured by email from employers that also saw the ads.
A broker test needs six to eight weeks and somewhere around $2,000 to $5,000 a month in spend to produce a number worth judging. A single-territory audience is small and cheap to reach. The renewal-date list is what makes months seven through twelve better than months one through six, so the first two months look thin on booked calls and rich on dates. That’s normal and it’s the point.
How it runs
Week one we set up or audit your ad account and pixel, agree on your lines, territory, and employee range, build the three audiences from the signal list and your book, get your compliance reviewer’s sign-off on every ad and the call script, and script the first video.
Week two we shoot or collect the creative. One video per signal you want to run, two screenshot ads, and a case study card. The lead form goes up with the renewal-month question. Ads are live by the end of the week.
Weeks three to eight the audiences and creatives rotate against each other. Every form fill gets a call from our team the same day. Every morning we look at yesterday’s renewal dates and booked calls against the target. If we hit it, spend goes up. If we missed it, it’s one of four things: the audience, the spend, the creative and offer, or the follow-up. We find which, fix it, and that’s what runs today. You can follow it in the log.
The ad account stays in your name, and the renewal-date list is yours from day one.
What it costs
The management fee is priced per program, based on spend and how many audiences and creatives are in rotation. For a single-territory agency that’s usually a small number of each. We’ll give you the number on the fit call.
Ad spend is billed to your card by Meta. We don’t hold spend, there’s no markup, and you can see every dollar in your own ad account.
You don’t need to run our email to run this. The signal audience comes from our monitoring, not from your inbox. If you do run both, the retargeting audience fills faster and the same CFO hears from you twice in a week.
Results
Those are software, logistics, and restaurant clients. We'll put a brokerage number here the first time a broker client lets us use their name.
Book a 15-minute fit call
Tell us your lines, your territory, and which producers would be taking the calls. We'll tell you whether the channel fits, what the fee would be at your spend, and, if it shouldn't be us, who to call instead.
Other ways we work with Insurance Brokers
,
if you haven't picked a channel and want the qualification line and the renewal-date report first.
,
if you want the same employer list emailed as well as advertised to.
,
if you want email plus LinkedIn and calling with our team on the phones.
Facebook Ads for other industries
Questions people ask us
Do you do personal lines, Medicare, or life?
No. Commercial P&C and employee benefits, sold to employers. If your book is personal lines, we’ll say so on the fit call and point you somewhere that does it well.
Are CFOs and owners really on Facebook?
Every night, on their phone, same as everyone else. They don’t go there to shop for a broker. But when a 30-second video about what changes when a company crosses 100 employees shows up between their friends’ posts, and it’s the week after their company crossed 100 employees, they tap.
What does the lead form ask?
When your commercial insurance renews, with a month picker. There are no other fields. Our team calls the same day to confirm the month and sort P&C from benefits. A CFO answers a one-question form. She doesn’t answer a six-question one.
What can the ad say?
The change, what it affects, and that a review before renewal would show whether the current program fits. It can’t quote, name a carrier, promise a rate, or describe terms. Your compliance reviewer sees every ad before it runs, and anything past that line is for your licensed producer on the call.
How much should we spend?
Somewhere around $2,000 to $5,000 a month for a single territory. The audience is small and cheap to reach. Expect the first two months to look thin on booked calls and rich on renewal dates, because most of the dates will be more than 120 days out.
Do we need to run your email to run the ads?
No. The signal audience comes from our monitoring, so the ads stand on their own. If you add email, the same CFO hears from you twice in a week and the retargeting audience fills faster. That helps. It isn’t required.