I’m sure most of us have this question in our mind about procuring database from Different vendors. I asked fellow people in my network about Database Marketing.
To be honest I’ve received mixed responses from the people from different industries.
In the Initial stages i have lost money every time, because neither I had any mentor nor any source for Knowledge. So I thought of sharing my experience here. You are one of the lucky ones!
Now let’s start.
The first thing I want to tell you is that buying generic leads is too risky.
Common sense, Right?
If the leads are not you target audience, then what’s the use of reaching them? It is just a waste of money and your precious time.
You can’t target a whole area or population and reach them out to find the interested ones. You should target only the interested ones and reach them out, that’s how it works, and that’s how it should be.
Let me give you a simple example.
“Imagine you are running an online advertisement for your Men’s Boot shop. What is the use of showing the ads to children and women? The product is not of their Interest. If you are showing the ad to everyone, then it will come under traditional marketing.”
If you can’t pre-qualify your leads with your own ad, then you should be buying database.
I will lay out several problems with buying leads in the rest of this article and some suggestions on how to turn that around and do something about it.
In other words, this is not a negative article. I want to give solutions here, not gripe.
Challenges Faced While Buying Database from Vendors
Buying database is a serious thing. You should be careful while purchasing database and consider some factors while purchasing it. Always go with the Best Database Provider which is in the market, so that you will get the best quality database. Below I have mentioned the factors or challenges face while purchasing database from vendors.
1. Purchasing Generic Data
I can say here whether purchasing generic emails and direct dials is always a risk for any business
First, let’s go with these generic email leads that are being sold everywhere these days. This is probably the worst strategy of all.
If someone receives an email and has no idea who you are, you can almost forget selling to that person.
One honest marketer has said that he had 10,000 generic emails, and he send out the cold emails to those email ids and in return he gets 3 customers on board, that is just a conversion of 0.03%.
Of all those people, he had gotten a measly three people to join his main program. This method doesn’t work.
He might have spent 1000s of rupees for the database and in return he got just ignorance and spamming. His money and time is a waste as well as his domain will get spammed.
We have people who buy direct dials numbers. These are typically more expensive, but some people can make money with these leads.
The
key here is to know yourself; can you call people on the phone, establish
rapport, and get them to join your program? This is where self-knowledge is
paramount.
In this case, you must know your own abilities.
If you are great at calling up people and closing sales on the phone, then these phone leads may very well be good for you.
If you don’t have the confidence in both yourself and your program, you are risking your money big time.
Fortunately, there are ways to get quality leads.
2. Poor Quality
The other challenge which people usually face is Poor quality database. Poor Quality database means out dated data and invalid data. This will hinder people reaching their target audience.
a) Data Decay
It has been very serious issue, the business faces while procuring the data from the vendors, because if the data is not up to date, business can face issue with the response rate while doing campaign.
I have read that data which you’re buying it should not more than one year old data, because people might changes their addresses, emails and direct dials with span of one year which might affect the business. The survey shows that in a year more than 70% of data will go outdated due to change Emails and directs dials and as well as the business type. And In case you’re into B2B this can be serious issue you can face while dealing with your clients, you cannot be to get connect with them.
b) Unfiltered Invalid Data
While buying the data from vendors it is really necessary to have idea about the data type, means the kind of data you need like buying data according to industry, filtering play vital role for maintaining data quality. There are many data providers in the market who are just selling the unfiltered data, but you need to make sure to that all emails will be verified with email verifier so you wouldn’t see the higher bounce ratio plus all the direct dials numbers should go with HLR lookup, this makes you understand that data quality.
What are the Things to Look for When Buying Database?
Before we head it up, First, we can all agree that leads are necessary to run a business, whether a Fortune 500 company or a home-based operation.
Even doctors and lawyers advertise these days, but there is a huge upswing in both profits and word of mouth with these types of businesses.
It’s not the same with a small business, especially network marketing.
Friends and family members often spread the word passively about products and services they like, but the simple truth is that most businesses either don’t have mass appeal, quality products, or reasonable prices.
If what you are promoting doesn’t have all three or doesn’t dominate one of those areas, you are threading on dangerous ground when you pay for advertising or buy leads.
So, if you want to stop this risky, shortcut mentality, then all you have to do is create a system where you get your quality leads for free or at cheap rates. This is the golden road to net profits.
Lead Generation Strategy
There isn’t any magic here, but I will jot down some of the key points you can use in your lead generation strategy.
If you set up a free lead generation strategy, it is possible to not only pre-qualify your leads, but also get their phone numbers at the same time.
If you can do this, then your only expense would be the time spent and economical amount.
Buying the Industry specific database, if you’re into B2B Business and if you’re looking for Customer Database, there is other way around. You all know we are a digital generation.
So when you procure the database from the vendors, specify the audience like digital wallet customer database, HNI database etc., so it is easier for you to reach the right audience.
After purchasing the database from the vendors, don’t just follow vague method of sending only cold emails and doing cold calls to brief about your product, again it is consider as spam.
So instead you can use these data in your advertisement campaign to show the ads to them and to lookalike audience.
You can use both method for lead generation through online marketing and data procurement so it should be balanced.
Again in offline method, you have to know yourself. If you don’t have the confidence or you get frustrated when you can’t close sales on the phone, you might not want to call people up.
One possible solution would be to pay someone a flat commission for calling up your leads and closing the sale.
Usually you can take the help of the call center services where you can hire them on contract basis to do the job for your, again this also can depend on number of calls made over number of leads generated to seal the deal.
Conclusion
I Hope that now you have understood better about database buying concept,
advantage and disadvantage about database purchase.
Since we all know purchasing database can be useless and worthy at the same time, it all depends on whether the purchased data has gone through quality check and how you are using them in your marketing tactics.
Hope I was able to provide you all an overview of the most common question in your mind.
If you still have any kind of doubts or queries then please do comment below in the article. I will definitely help you through it.
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Author Bio:
Fehmeez is fueled by his passion, maverick with a mind of his own; he comes up with novel ways to provide the best possible outcome.
An enthusiastic Person, with highly motivated and leadership skills having a Master’s in business administration in Marketing and International Business.
His Hunger, to learn new things and methodologies makes him unique, currently working as Digital Marketing Analyst for KAP Enterprises and does Content writing for Best Database Provider Company Blog.