How Lead Lists (Don’t) Work part.1

As a significant part of the whole business machine that is your company, the marketing department runs on fuel. And this fuel is called leads. But in order for the department to do its job effectively, it needs not just any leads, but the quality ones. So, most marketers use one practice that might look like a good idea, but is actually less than favorable, called buying lead lists.

 

Why do businesses use lead lists?

Most marketers track online the businesses they want to target. However, this is valid only for the bigger enterprises that can be relatively easy found on the web. But small businesses are something else, since most of them can’t afford or don’t want to be traceable online so easy. And in order for the marketers to reach small businesses they acquire lead lists.

Small businesses are just starting to move online, by creating Facebook business pages or LinkedIn pages. But since the information changes constantly, it is very hard to collect it in the form of a lead lists. This is in part of the fact that lead lists are still not adapted to accommodate social media profiles. So, marketers that target small businesses have to buy lead lists or manually mine social networks for leads. It is safe to say that most of the time they choose the first way, which is both easier and ineffective.

How are lead lists acquired?

The general ways companies acquire lead lists are:

1. Buy lists – there are many vendors that sell lead lists segmented by region, demographics, industry, revenue etc. Basically, the buyer receives a list with contacts of the desired companies and the rights to handle the data in the way they find most useful. The list becomes a property of the buyer and is not updated further by the seller;

2. Rent lists – there are some differences between rented and purchased lead lists. The first and most obvious is that you gain access to the list for a limited time. The second difference is that companies that rent lead lists don’t do it as a primary way of accumulating revenue – collecting the data is just a secondary effect from their primary revenue source;

3. Subscription – a number of websites offer subscription to lead lists. The marketer subscribes to a lead list targeted by his own needs and changing constantly to display the most current leads possible. This costs a monthly or yearly fee. Also, the updates of the list can come from the subscribers who can generate their own lead lists for other to subscribe to.

In the second part of this article, we will see why buying lead lists can go wrong and what can you do to generate quality leads without buying lead lists.