Buying Lead Lists for Small Business Marketing - Pros, Cons & Key Considerations
Small businesses are usually unable to implement far-reaching marketing strategies. Without the resources of big marketing departments, generating the leads necessary for growth can be extremely hard and slow. However, the leads have to come from somewhere not only to grow a small business but also just to simply stay in business. Thus, firms turn to buying leads in order to make do with the resources they have.
Here is what you should know before buying data on the lead lists to boost your sales.
Small businesses need data | Image Source: Wikimedia
The Pros of Buying Leads if You Are a Small Business
Small businesses have many reasons to resort to buying lead lists, some of which have already been alluded to. Here are the main pros of buying leads.
1. It is the Cheaper Option
As mentioned, the main drive for small businesses to buy lead lists is budget. It is estimated that customer acquisition costs have increased by 60% percent in the last 5 years and no one can tell how much it might increase in the near future.
This makes even big firms and industry leaders look for more cost-effective ways to generate leads. For small businesses, reducing costs is a matter of survival, making it the main drive to buy lead lists.
2. The Leads Can Be Very Valuable
If you are buying from a trustworthy source, the lead list will include more than just contact details. You might get data sets with up-to-date information on:
- Who to contact
- What is their position
- Indicators of why they might be interested in your products.
3. It Is the Fastest Option for Small Businesses
Building a lead generation funnel takes time, especially when resources are very limited. Buying a lead list enables your sales team to go straight to contacting potential customers instead of waiting around. Thus, more of your resources are put to effective use.
Take a look at the video below to discover how to use AI to increase sales and efficiency.
There are several tools you can use to increase efficiency, including AI.
The Cons of Buying Leads if You Are a Small Business
Although buying e-mail lists might seem like the best or sometimes even the only option for small businesses, there are also cons to be considered.
1. Bad Providers
Be careful who you are buying from. If the data on the lists were acquired illegally and you start contacting people that do not want to be contacted, it may result in all kinds of trouble. This concern might be remedied by buying data from trusted providers only.
2. Questionable Quality
The cheap lead lists will often not be of the best quality. The less you pay, the less you get. Thus, you might receive a lead list with only names and contact details for cold calling. Afterwards, it is a lottery of whether you will find a good fit for your product at the right time.
3. Not Unique to You
The former concern is amplified by the fact that lead list providers are selling the same lists to multiple buyers. Otherwise, they would simply not be able to sustain their business. Thus, whenever you are contacting someone on the list you have bought, be wary of the fact that someone might have already beat you to their business.
4. Outdated Information
There are other ways in which the data you are following might no longer be relevant, such as:
- The contact person may have changed jobs
- The business might have changed their priorities
- The company may have moved or restructured to no longer fit your target audience.
Thus, you might get a lead list that has once been accurate and useful but no longer is.
There are, however, ways to mitigate such risks, which we will get into now.
The primary source of contact must still be there | Image Source: Pixabay
Buying Data for Lead Generation Safely
There are several factors to consider before buying data for lead generation and doing it in a safe way. Here are some of them.
1. Subscribe to Services
The way to solve the data irrelevancy problem is by subscribing to a service instead of buying particular lists. This way, you would periodically get updated lead lists that have recently been checked by the provider.
This service is, of course, more expensive than just buying a list, which takes away from one of the main benefits of purchasing leads. However, buying data is still cheaper than hiring or scaling a marketing department. Additionally, such service providers are generally more trustworthy than random websites selling leads you might encounter.
Watch the video below to discover how B2B data can help transform your business.
Subscribe to services and reap the benefits.
2. Do Your Customer Research
Another of the best practices associated with buying leads is knowing very well what you are after. If you have done your homework by analyzing your current customer base and have a good idea of who your best buyers are, you will know what to look for in a lead list.
Then you can brief your data providers with general information about the expected demographics or firmographics of your leads.
3. Evaluate and Reevaluate Your Provider
Knowing your customers gives you a standard by which to measure the provider’s capabilities and allows getting qualified leads instead of a list of random contacts. After receiving and using a lead list, analyze your results and evaluate how much potential the product really had. If it did not meet your standards, there might be a better provider out there.
At the end of the day, the more you can trust the data provider, the best you can leverage the benefits and mitigate the disadvantages of buying lead lists.
Doing Your Best With What You Got
Finally, how beneficial buying data turns out, in the end, depends also on what you do next. If you are cold-contacting people on the list, it is important not to start with offers outright. That would, at best, be ignored or, at worst, reported as a scam or breach of privacy.
Thus, when contacting someone on the list, inform them that you are not sure if they are a good fit for your product and suggest finding out more about each other. This will get them interested and keep you out of trouble and it might prove to be the start of a quality business relationship.
Businesses grow on information | Image Source: ZoomInfo
