A paid-acquisition strategy organized around qualified leads, not form submissions.

Market context: the 2026 subsidy expiration and the resulting re-shop window.

The enhanced ACA subsidies expired at the close of 2025. Premiums increased, enrollment declined year-over-year, and a substantial share of previously settled households are now actively re-evaluating coverage. This represents the period of highest receptivity to advisor outreach, and the appropriate moment for the program to establish presence in front of those households.

Strategic summary: a disciplined paid program built on pre-qualified audiences.

This report sets out a disciplined acquisition program for medically-underwritten health insurance. The creative itself disqualifies unsuitable viewers prior to the click. Two Meta campaigns run in parallel but are structured separately to preserve clean attribution. Additional channels are introduced only once existing channels demonstrate payback.

Asset base: a 90-site owned network supporting a focused paid program.

The paid audiences define how the program targets. The 90-site network defines what is owned: the long-term organic-search surface, together with dedicated landing pages for each paid placement. The sites have been developed in-house and none are currently live or generating revenue.

Each site is characterized along three dimensions: Target audience (intended visitor), Qualifies (monetizable subset capable of conversion), and Targeted (the broader population reached by creative and targeting). Select a card to expand details.

Card descriptors identify the target demographic. Current build status (90-Domain-Network-Tracker.xlsx): SEO active 0/90 · domains connected 0/90 · APIs connected 0/90. The current state is reported without qualification.

Audience strategy: five defined segments, three prioritized for launch.

Each audience is defined by a life event that establishes suitability for a medically-underwritten plan, paired with an explicit exclusion set to prevent budget waste on unsuitable prospects. Audience sizes below reflect public estimates Public.

Creative methodology: the script performs the targeting that Meta restrictions prohibit.

Meta restricts age, ZIP, and interest targeting for health insurance advertisements. The structural response: each script explicitly identifies its intended viewer within the opening seconds, and viewers outside the profile self-deselect.

Channel strategy: six channels activated in parallel, each held to a single CPQL threshold.

All six channels are activated concurrently and scaled in parallel. Meta carries the largest initial weight because that is where existing performance data resides; however, each channel receives a meaningful budget allocation from the outset. The cost-per-lead ranges below reflect published industry benchmarks Public and serve as inputs to the model in the following section.

Geographic prioritization: 18 states ranked by shopping intensity.

Allocation methodology: states that have not expanded Medicaid, have elevated uninsured populations, and exhibit the fastest growth receive the highest month-one test budgets. The public figures below are approximate and will be reconciled against current KFF and CMS data prior to any client-facing version.

The tier assignments represent an initial Hypothesis: concentrate spend on Tier 1 initially, review Cost Per Qualified Lead and close rate on a weekly cadence, and reallocate toward whichever states the data supports. CPC ranges are approximate pending live Google Keyword Planner figures.

Competitive landscape: nine dominant participants, none designed around these audiences.

Three archetypes define the category: television-led brokers, quote aggregators, and lead exchanges. Leading firms concentrate disproportionately on Medicare and communicate in generalized terms; the aggregators carry reputational liabilities resulting from selling the same lead to multiple brokers. The resulting gaps form the basis of this strategy. A complete analysis — channel-by-channel breakdown, activity matrix, and detailed profiles — is available on the companion competitor analysis page →

Figures drawn from 10-K filings, public revenue disclosures, BBB, Trustpilot, and SimilarWeb / Semrush traffic estimates. Full per-channel breakdown and detailed profiles on the companion competitor analysis.

Actual traffic volume — daily and weekly

The figures requested previously. Verified rows reflect live SimilarWeb / Semrush estimates; "estimate" rows are triangulated from peer comparables and flagged for re-verification in SpyFu prior to any client meeting.

Budget and ROI model: assumptions structured for stress-testing.

Select a channel and budget, then adjust each assumption upward or downward. Cost-per-lead ranges reflect published industry benchmarks Public; funnel-conversion rates represent initial estimates Hypothesis. The principal output is Cost Per Qualified Lead, followed by cost per consultation and cost per close — the same four metrics referenced in the lead workflow. Each result is expressed as a low-to-high range rather than a single point estimate, in keeping with the evidentiary standard of this report.

Monthly equals daily multiplied by 30.4 · funnel-step ranges reflect ±35% sensitivity · this is a planning model, not a forecast guarantee. A subsequent revision will incorporate lifetime value versus acquisition cost, payback period, and firm monthly scenarios once a validated Cost Per Qualified Lead is available as an anchor.

Organic projection: a transparent range across approximately 100 sites.

Paid traffic delivers velocity but is rented. Organic traffic builds more slowly (typically 6–12 months) but is owned and compounds over time. The defensible sizing approach is to multiply a realistic per-site figure for a mature property across the 90-site portfolio. The full range is presented below, rather than a single optimistic headline. None of this projection is currently realized; it remains a projection until the SEO program (currently 0 of 90 sites) is executed.

Derived from Google Keyword Planner long-tail volumes combined with assumptions regarding ranking performance at maturity. Hypothesis Until Tested — over time, the lowest-cost lead channel available, but contributing zero in month one. Realizing the projection requires the SEO program: schema, page speed, internal linking, and a consistent content cadence across the network.

Optimization method: a structured test-measure-improve cycle. Scaling decisions are evidence-based; creative is not retired on short-term noise.

Lead workflow: every lead instrumented from click to outcome, with outcomes informing subsequent creative cycles.

This is the mechanism that converts raw cost per lead into actionable insight. Four metrics are tracked in sequence: cost per lead (paid per form submission) → Cost Per Qualified Lead (restricted to prospects capable of purchase) → cost per consultation (prospects who completed a call) → cost per close (prospects who purchased). Apex CRM serves as the system of record; the form-to-CRM integration ships concurrently with launch.

A short, instrumented Meta test produced a directional signal that beats category benchmarks on the metrics that creative controls.

Phase 1 was a paused-by-design pilot — approximately five weeks of live spend across a small number of ad sets. The intent was diagnostic rather than scaled: validate that creative could earn attention in-feed, and that cost per lead would sit inside the published industry range. It was not run long enough to escape Meta's learning phase, so the figures below should be read as direction, not as steady-state performance.

Targets are anchored to published industry ranges, not internal optimism. Each step of the funnel is tied to an external benchmark.

The plan operates against a single transparent funnel model. Conversion rates are taken at the mid-point of vendor- and platform-published ranges; channel-level CPL and CPQL targets are bounded by third-party benchmarks (WordStream, LocaliQ, LeadSync, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, Wallaroo).

Translation: for every 100 raw leads, the model expects 45 qualified → 20 booked → 11 attended → approximately 1.7 enrollments.

Per-channel cost targets

Targets are expressed as ranges, not points. CPL is the cost of a raw form submission; CPQL is the cost after pre-qualification. Each range is bounded by third-party benchmarks for the channel in the regulated health-insurance vertical.

Blended program CPQL target: $40–$80, dependent on channel mix.

Three forecast tiers across two rollout plans, each modelled channel-by-channel.

The same program is evaluated under three forecast tiers — Conservative (high end of the published CPL band, low end of conversion ranges), Neutral (mid-points throughout), and Positive (low end of CPL band, high end of conversion ranges) — and across two rollout plans: a parallel launch that opens all six channels simultaneously and a sequential rollout that layers channels in waves. Each plan has its own calculator below. Adjust the total monthly budget and forecast tier; the model redistributes spend across the channel template and recomputes every funnel step.

Media cost per enrolled sits near the working LTV assumption. That is structural to the category, not a function of program design.

Across the Conservative, Neutral, and Positive forecasts modelled above, media-only cost per enrolled clusters around the working LTV assumption of $1,500. This is the prevailing economics of regulated, medically-underwritten health insurance: every advertiser in the category faces the same arithmetic. The relevant question is which levers move it.