Why You Shouldn't Buy Leads
It is a disappointing but unavoidable fact - there is no magic formula for B2B lead generation. A quality lead generation strategy requires a concerted and consistent effort to understand customers and provide them with the information they need and when and where they want it.
The B2B sales cycle also presents unique challenges. The process of converting a customer generally takes longer, with the average sales cycle lasting 4-6 months, although that can vary based on industry. It is also not uncommon for B2B sales teams to see conversion rates that dip under 10 percent. For example, the software industry sees an average of 7 percent of their leads convert into customers.
These challenges explain why as many as sixty-one percent of B2B marketers report that lead generation remains one of their more pressing concerns. Without a steady flow of leads into your sales funnel, it will be a challenge for the business to grow.
In light of this struggle for many organisations, it is understandable that many companies feel tempted to buy business leads. It feels as though it takes away a considerable part of their challenge and allows them to dive into the sales aspect and work to engage people.
You need to make sure you resist this temptation.
Buying business leads hurts your business in more ways than it could potentially help. Putting aside the enormous risk that the data you purchase could be low quality or unverified, consider the energy that you might spend trying to convert these fake business leads on top of the investment you make in the list itself. Both have tremendous potential when applied to a more legitimate means of lead generation.
Here are just a few of the reasons that buying leads can cause such problems for the organisations who do succumb to the temptation to take the seemingly easy way out.
It will create a false sense of meaningful activity
You want your sales team to have a full list of leads to explore and engage, but buying email lists will only create a false sense of meaningful activity.
When you generate a targeted email list through your marketing efforts, the names and contact information you collect comes from people who have shown interest in your business. They have identified a particular issue they need to resolve and have begun the process of investigating their options for addressing it. More importantly, they have expressed interest in receiving information from your organisation.
The leads you obtain from the purchased business email list will not have shown any interest in your organisation - they may not have even heard of you before. Your sales team will be forced to start from zero with a cold lead. You will need to convince prospects of your value without understanding what, or even whether, they want to hear from your organisation.
By their very nature, these business leads will provide a very low ROI for your organisation. Only about 1 percent of cold calls convert into appointments, and even fewer will end up as customers. Meanwhile, inbound leads cost 62 percent less than traditional marketing practices, paving the way for brands to improve their ROI and efficiency.
Your team will have to do significantly more work to get these leads to show an interest in your company. Convincing them to move through the buyer’s journey will take even more. The level of time and effort needed to convert the leads on these business mailing lists means they are unlikely to provide your organisation with a basis for robust growth.
Your account could be penalised when you buy an email address list
Take a look at your inbox right now. How many messages do you receive each day from various companies? Look at your junk mailbox. Examine the number of spam messages you receive and consider how you feel about the brands who have sent you these messages.
When unsolicited messages arrive, they are - at best - ignored. People already get so many messages from the organisations that they have purposefully given their email addresses to, that they feel very little desire to read the messages that they have not indicated an interest in.
When people receive unwanted emails, they can also easily let their email provider know that they do not want these messages and indicate that these emails are spam. This flagging makes it more difficult for your emails to reach people’s inboxes, as your communications are automatically caught and filtered into the junk folder.
Also, consumers can give feedback when unsubscribing, which can lead to your company being blacklisted and barred from using a service. High bounce rates can have the same result, which can be an issue if you purchase an out-of-date or poor-quality list full of unreachable inboxes.
Buying leads breaks basic data ethics
As companies collect an increasing amount of customer information, the ethics related to this data has become a hot topic. Customers are increasingly sensitive to how their information is used. When they give their information to a company, they want assurances that the company will protect it.
The email addresses of people potentially interested in your products and services are not yours to buy and sell. They are given to a particular company because they want to learn more about their products and services. These customers do not want these companies to trade on their information. Eight-eight percent of consumers report that they view transparency as the key to trust. Buying contact lists eliminates this transparency and thus erodes trust.
Improper use of the information given to you by these prospective customers will damage the relationship before it even has the chance to get started. This will hurt your ability to nurture these potential customers even further.
You want to set the stage for a relationship based on trust
The reputation a brand nurtures and the trust they build with the community of prospective customers impacts the overall customer experience long before anyone even enters their sales funnel. Remember the thoughts and considerations that customers have when they begin their buyer’s journey. They know they have a pain point, and they want to solve it. They want to find companies they feel will help them accomplish this goal. If they do not trust the organisation, they will not consider them a potential solution to their problem.
Your first interaction with the customer, therefore, will be your chance to cast yourself as a worthy organisation deserving of their consideration. You will need to start building that vital relationship of trust.
If you buy a mailing list, you have already undermined your chance to build this positive relationship. You will plant a toxic seed in the minds of your prospective customers. They will see you as a brand which engages in dishonest practices to cut corners and find potential customers. This is not the impression you want to create with these customers.
Your goal to secure customers throughout the sales funnel should be to create a positive customer experience from the first time they interact with your organisation. Make sure your relationships begin on a positive note and encourage people to trust what you have to say.
You will create a negative customer experience
Over the past two decades, marketing has changed considerably. In the past, people waited for companies to reach out to them. They reviewed catalogues they received in the mail and opened the door to salespeople. Companies had the chance to frame the conversation and convince customers that they needed their product or service. Now, however, that conversation has changed in many ways.
Customers now dominate a large portion of the early conversation. They identify their pain points and then go searching for solutions. Instead of waiting for brands to reach out to them, they go searching for companies that can help them.
These modern consumers have become so accustomed to controlling the early portion of this conversation, that they have grown resistant to being interrupted as they go about their daily lives. They don’t respond to banner ads anymore. In 1994, when the first banner ad was posted, it had a 44 percent click-through rate. Today, the average banner click-through rate is less than 0.1 percent. Customers want the independence to engage with companies on their terms.
When you reach out to customers who have not done anything to indicate that they might be interested in your business personally, you immediately put yourself in the category of interruptive and irrelevant brands. They didn’t give you their contact information; they didn’t ask for your help.
The goal of marketing today is to start a conversation with the right people, not to broadcast your message as loudly as possible to the broadest possible audience. You want to show your prospects how you can help them and personally guide them to purchase.
How do I succeed with lead generation if I don’t buy an email list?
Just because you do not buy leads, that does not mean you cannot take active steps to build your leads. Remember that there is no magic formula for seeing success. Instead, you want to focus on strategies that work for your organisation. As you build your efforts to produce leads, you will see which strategies work best for you and what makes your audience respond.
Invest in helping people see you as they move about online.
Inbound marketing strategies will be your key to bringing in genuine leads that will produce success for your organisation. They will help get your brand and offerings out in front of customers who will be the most likely to have an interest in making a purchase.
SEO
Search engine marketing will help you identify the keywords and phrases that your customer is using. When you know what your customers search for online, you can generate content that answers their questions and needs, attracting potential customers to your website.
Once you’ve attracted their attention, you have the opportunity to educate and nurture them, motivating them to buy as they move into the middle and end stages of the buyer’s journey.
Paid online advertising
Paid advertising requires more financial investment, but can help you get your brand in front of the eyes of potential customers. With PPC, you will target people who either search for relevant terms on the SERPs or who fit the demographics of your target audience, such as on social media.
With PPC, you can target keywords that you struggle to rank for organically. It might be a particularly competitive keyword, for example, that other brands in your industry already dominate. To prevent customers from overlooking your business, you can use PPC to help them see your organisation on these critical searches.
Landing pages
As you bring your customers to your site through SEO and PPC, you have the chance to convert them into quantifiable leads through your landing pages. A landing page, or lead capture page, is a highly-targeted and optimised page on your site. It is designed to spark a visitor’s interest and allow you to collect their information, opening the door for you to contact them with nurturing content that encourages them to progress through the buyer’s journey. This is the strategy that will create your quality targeted email list.
Do not neglect the importance of data
As you build your inbound marketing strategy, do not overlook the importance of tracking your progress each step of the way. Data will let you know how customers engage with your site, what interests them, and what brings them closer to conversion. This will help you best understand where to invest your time and budget, producing the best organic lead generation results.
Use data to see how many new and returning visitors you receive, and the rate of customers converting on your landing pages. See how many of those leads continue to engage with your brand through email, social media or by returning to your site. You want to track these prospective customers through each stage of the buyer’s journey.
Lead generation presents companies with an understandable struggle. It can be a tremendous challenge to create a strategy that brings in fresh potential customers for the sales team to engage. Resorting to buying lists of leads that have been generated by other companies, however, is not the solution. Investing your time and money in the superior inbound lead generation strategies will produce far better results and help your business see growth as you continue to improve your marketing strategies.