How to avoid fake leads in insurance advertising?

I keep seeing people talk about fake leads lately, and honestly I thought it was just me at first. When I started running insurance ads, I expected some bad leads here and there. But what I got felt extreme. Wrong phone numbers, people who never asked for a quote, and some who sounded confused about how I even got their details. It made me question whether insurance advertising is even worth it sometimes.

The biggest pain point for me was time. Calling ten people and realizing maybe two were real gets frustrating fast. It is not just about money spent on ads, but the hours wasted following up on leads that go nowhere. I also noticed the pattern was not random. Certain campaigns or sources brought more junk than others, which made me dig a bit deeper instead of blaming everything on bad luck.

I tried a few things on my own. First, I tightened my forms. I stopped asking for too many details and focused only on what actually mattered. That helped a little. Then I started paying attention to lead behavior. If someone filled the form in two seconds, chances were high it was fake or low intent. I also noticed that super cheap traffic usually came with more problems. When I chased the lowest cost, quality dropped hard.

One thing that really changed my mindset was realizing fake leads are not always fake people. Sometimes they are just badly targeted. People click without understanding what they signed up for. Once I adjusted my messaging to be more clear and less broad, the number of confused calls went down. Not perfect, but better.

I also spent some time reading how others handle this, especially around filtering and traffic sources. This page on my notes on insurance advertising leads helped me think differently about where leads come from and why quality matters more than volume. After that, I stopped expecting magic fixes and focused on small improvements instead.

From my experience, avoiding fake leads is more about control than tricks. Watch your data, question cheap wins, and be honest about what your ads promise. You might still get bad leads, but at least they will not feel like the majority anymore.