How You Can Use Your Business Contact List Information

I break tradition
Sometimes my tries
Are outside the lines, oh yeah yeah

Probably one of the best songs ever written, "Unwritten" boasts well-arranged lyrics and meaningful words. It encourages us to pursue the things that we want the most in life. I could not agree more that the song also teaches sales and marketing lessons. It tells you to keep on achieving your goals, by all possible means.

Only you can let it in 
No one else, no one else     

True enough, it is through your own actions that prospective clients will find your company. The million dollar question now is how? One of the best ways is by having an updated business contact list. With a contact database, your team is empowered to connect with targeted prospects without the need and large costs of meeting them face-to-face. For instance, a simple list of phone numbers leads you to thousands of business opportunities, some of which are sales-ready. Now, how are you going to use the information? What should you do to offer your solutions while the prospective customers are at the peak of their interest? Apart from email marketing, telemarketing and direct mail, here's a list of methods you can optimize.

1. Add connections in Linkedin. Due to the restrictions of Linkedin and its users, you cannot easily add friends in the social networking site. It requires you to give the email addresses of the pros you want to connect with. With an email list, this pesky problem can be easily solved. But, always follow their policies. Just so you know, you cannot add people you don't know if your only intention is to annoy them with business proposals. Still, the best way to win a customer is knowing and understanding their needs so you can offer the right solution for them.

2. Market Surveys. Do you want to know the preferences of your targeted clients? Would you like to study market behavior? Market survey will give you the information you want. You can use a mailing list, telemarketing list or an email directory to send materials directly to your target audience. This is a great relief from doing personal researches.

3. Sending newsletters and other updates. Nurture your leads through steadfast follow-ups, such as issuing regular newsletters. Lead nurturing allows them to be updated with your goods/services. So, when there is a need for your products, they will just keep in touch with you. 

4. Invitations for event marketing. Are you planning to conduct big events to pool your possible customers to one place?  Probably, a trade show? Make it easy for you to invite your guests when you have an up-to-date leads list. You can do so by sending them emails/direct mails or, simply call them. 

There are a lot of strategies you can do to attract more clients, as long as you've got a reliable b2b list. But of course, you have to build one. If not, you can buy from a trusted list vendor. 

Today is where your book begins

The rest is still unwritten

4 Helpful Tips for your Lead Generation Efforts

As a business, your marketing efforts mean a lot to helping boost your sales. The better planned your marketing strategy, the better the possible results from your campaign. After a successful run, you'll have generated a good amount of B2B leads and can pass them over to your sales team in order to start closing deals with your prospects. However, the folly lies in the process of you generating those leads. Why is this so? Well, it's because of what your sales team could possibly be doing during the course of the campaign. So, to follow are some tips and advice on what you should and what you should NOT be doing during the lead generation process.

Establish connections with your prospects – What many salespeople fail at doing is forgetting that their target prospects are people too. Sometimes you just can't help but keep your eye on the prize and not be able to look at your prospect as nothing more than cash bags. In your sales team's efforts to generate more income and profit for your firm, you must make sure that during the lead generation process that they are able to establish meaningful ties and relations with your B2B leads. This is the first step in generating B2B leads of good quality. If you can connect with your prospects and gain their trust, as well as establish your credibility, then you're on your way to finding good business leads and establishing valuable business contacts.

Understand their needs and work from there – In your lead generation efforts, you need to make sure that you understand the needs of your prospects. If you understand their problems, then you can provide them with one of the possible solutions you offer. And if they know that they can rely on you to help them with their current and critical issues, then surely enough they will not be hesitant to do business with you in the long run. The thing to remember here is that your prospects don't always want to talk to you, however, they do want the answer to their questions and will so far as to get them. So, with that in mind, understanding your prospects needs and working from there should prove to be part of a good lead generation campaign.

Patience is a virtue: Don't push for sales – The appropriate thing to do upon making initial contact with your prospects is to NOT try and make an immediate sales pitch. Why? Well, because if they realize that you're only calling to start shoving costs in their face then you most likely hear a beep on the other end of the line, especially if you're using B2B telemarketing to generate sales leads. Upon making first contact with any of your prospects, don't go for sales right off the bat. Make sure to introduce your company, establish your presence within your client's “inner-circle” and then nurture them as a sales-ready lead.

Don't hesitate to buy lists – During their campaigns, some like to believe that they have all that they need in order to have a good run. If you think you have all that it takes to have an excellent campaign without outside help, well you may be wrong at one point in your venture. Sometimes, you just can't help but hit a bump in the road and well, that's when the going gets tough. So when you run dry, don't hesitate to buy business lists from list providers. Rather than see your campaign plummet to the ground because of a pipeline that is dry, then keep it filled with business contacts by utilizing a business list.

These 4 tips should help you out in your lead generation efforts. What do you think are more things to do to achieve the best results in these types of campaigns?

3 Tips for Picking a List Provider and/or Business Database Provider

Picking a list provider is not something you should do on the fly just because you need a business list. When you're picking out a list provider, there are some things to consider with their performance. After all, they are the ones generating leads for the lists you want to buy, meaning that the quality of the list falls primarily under them and their methods of getting the leads. So if you are looking for the best business lists your money can buy, then you should pick a good provider.

Here are some things you can work with in picking a list provider:

• Lead Generation? Cold-Calling, Please!
  • One of the best routes of doing lead generation is through cold-calling. This, by far, gets the best results when looking for leads, even for telemarketers. One thing to know about list vendors is that some of them are actually telemarketing companies that specialize in lead generation and instead of doing B2B calls and other sales calls, they generate leads and create marketing lists. So if you're looking for some good B2B leads from a list provider, then make sure they generate leads the right way, one way which is through cold-calling.

• Information? Want it Updated!
  • A list provider needs to always have the information they have up-to-date. That being said, know when your chosen list provider schedules their database updates, or ask them how often they update their database. If you want high-quality lists then you'll really want a provider that updates their information often and keeps the leads you want fresh. If the leads aren't fresh, then it could affect the results you get when using lists you bought from them. So when picking a business database/list provider, always make sure they update regularly and keep their leads fresh.

• Data Integrity Guarantee? Make Sure it's “Guaranteed”!
  • When a provider says they have a data integrity guarantee, it means that they assure you that the data they hold is accurate, current, valid, and most of all, complete. If the provider you're scoping out says they have this guarantee, then make sure to see if they guarantee it down to even the most minute of details. Every single bit of information counts, and having it complete, accurate, valid and current can mean all the difference when you use such a list for your marketing campaigns. So, is your provider telling you that they have a data integrity guarantee? Well then, make sure they guarantee it!

Picking the right list provider, however, will not always ensure the success of your campaign. Although, picking the right one can help your campaign get the best results possible. If their lists are of high-quality, then you'll be buying lists with updated lists, complete and accurate data based on current events, and last but not the least, can help you generate more sales. Hopefully, these three tips help you out with picking the right business database and/or list provider to work with.

Get the Best Bite for Your Buck when Buying Leads!

Small companies and new businesses do not always have the budget they need for large-scale marketing activities. In light of this, they limit their spending to only the most important activities, some of these being lead generation and improving their marketing efforts. When it comes to their marketing issues, sure enough they can handle it. As for lead generation, well, therein lies the problem. Not every company has the capacity to do effective lead generation, and thus is why they rely upon B2B leads providers or other such companies.

When you buy leads, you can get them in lists, entire databases, and even individually. As your business grows, you'll find yourself having an increasing need for more B2B leads. That being said, you'll want to get the best leads your money can buy. Let's now talk about how you can buy B2B leads of quality and get the best bite for your buck!

• Buy qualified leads – When you're buying leads, buy nothing but qualified leads. Based on your own qualification criteria, you can purchase business lists containing the contact information of prospects that have already been qualified by a leads database/leads list provider. So, what should you be looking for in a qualified lead? Well, aside from using your own criteria as a basis, look for B2B leads that have been qualified through BANT (budget, authority, need, timeline). Ask your provider how they qualify their leads and build their lists to see if they meet your parameters as well.

• The price is NOT always right – You'll find dozens of providers flocking towards you in order to sell you their leads. Also, they'll be pitching you different prices and all sorts of offers. However, in choosing a B2B leads provider, you must keep in mind that the price of each individual lead, or the price per list and database does not always denote the quality of the leads being sold. You could buy a business list for cheap and still get good results out of it, and in opposition to it buy a much more pricey one but not even get a single warm reply from your business contacts on that list! So to speak, you can't base everything on prices.

• Quality or quantity? – It is quite obvious that we want to get both quantity and quality when we buy leads. However, that is not a luxury we can always hope to have. Even if leads providers say that they can provide both quality and quantity, we must not forget that they too are businesses and can encounter problems with their production rates. So, that being said, would you rather go for quality or quantity? The answer to this question is quite subjective. If you have a solid marketing strategy in play, then you can live with buying more and more leads and turn them into warm sales-ready prospects. But if your own marketing scheme doesn't seem to be able to reel in the fishes, then quality may be what you need in order to start closing deals with your prospects.

Getting your money's worth means getting results; you'll need to see a positive ROI before you can say that buying B2B leads has proven effective to your campaign. All you need to do is pick a reputable leads provider, work with them and consult with them, then plan your marketing approach to be able to utilize the leads you bought to the best possibility.

Three Tips for Email Marketing Campaigns – Improve your Click-Through Rates

One of the key metrics of email marketing is the click-through rate. Of course, if you have a high-click through rate, then it means that your prospects are actually taking time to read your emails. And the more prospects read your emails, then the more chances of you generating B2B leads from your email marketing efforts. So, if you're using a list of emails, or have a mailing list provider, here are some ways for you to spice up your tactics and achieve better click-through rates.

Quality of content – We can say that click-through rates and the quality of your marketing emails are directly proportional. Of course, your prospects will know how to tell whether the email you sent is something you've kept in stock, or if it is something genuine and appeals to their best interests. However, you can't spend too many of your business hours just formulating new emails to each and every single prospect on your email list, rather, you should focus on generating content that is relevant and captures the interests of your prospects in your target industry. If you're targeting IT companies, then tweak your content to attract them to your company. When your targeting specific industries, then make sure the quality of your content is relevant to your prospect and appeals to their interests. This will surely increase the click-through rate of your emails.

Link placements – When putting links in your marketing emails, then don't just place them all around the place. Keep in mind the top-middle-bottom principle when adding links to your emails. Also, you shouldn't clutter your email with too many links and place them in parts of your message where visibility is low. That is why as a rule of thumb, keep in mind the top-middle-bottom principle to ensure that your email looks professional and that the quality of your content is not compromised by excessive links and such. If your content is of good quality, then your click-through rates should go up and the likelihood of your prospects clicking on your placed links should increase as well.

HTML coding compatibility – When making marketing emails, always check your HTML coding. Some email platforms do not read and render HTML codes as well as others so your prospects will see a jumbled up email instead of what you intended to send them. If this happens, they would most probably skip your email and not even consider getting back to it at a later time. So when sending out marketing emails, check the compatibility of your HTML codes with what email platforms are available. You can consult your mailing list provider about these concerns.

Aside from these tips, also make sure to have a reliable list provider on your side. After all, the mailing lists you use are only as good as the people who generate them are. So if you want better results from your email marketing campaign, then make use of these tips. Also, don't forget to have a good mailing list in your hands.

Buying Lists from a List Provider – What you could be Getting Into

Maybe you've already considered using telemarketing as part of your marketing strategy in order to make more sales. You've maybe even already considered using direct mail and email marketing to produce even more results. To tell you the truth, these approaches do indeed get you the desired results. However, they can only ever be as effective when you use good leads and lists, or have an extensive business database filled with high-quality business contacts. That is why when wanting to launch a telemarketing campaign, or a mailing campaign, procuring a telemarketing list and mailing list is something that should be on the top of your to do list. That being said, you may need the help of a list provider.

So, just what are the benefits to working with a list provider? Well, for one, you can get customized lists which can help your cause and fuel your campaign. Here is what you could be getting:

• When buying telemarketing lists – Buying a telemarketing list is something you may want to consider as part of your preparations for launching a telemarketing campaign. Some people believe in generating their own leads through the implementation of their telemarketing campaign, but some of these people are sorely mistaken if they think that that alone will be enough to help them with closing sales and give them a steady incoming flow of leads. When you buy a telemarketing list from a list provider, you can expect these lists to be of good quality. Also, these lists were created with privacy-compliance in mind, meaning that you don't have to worry when using them as the list has already been “cleansed” and you won't be making contact with anybody who doesn't want to be contacted by a telemarketer, or any prospect that could be on the DNC list.

• When buying mailing lists – Buying a mailing list is good for any direct mail and email marketing campaign. By buying one, you can get a list of email addresses of even c-level executives! Also, these lists are created and done all the while adhering to privacy-compliance, something that makes sure that you only have access to business contacts that have already opted-in as part of the mailing list. Business contacts that opt-in are usually good to have especially since they most probably opted-in because they are looking for a better provider, or are in the market and looking for one. So if you're planning a mailing campaign, consider buying a mailing list to get the best results with your campaign.

• When buying from a list provider – Nothing is entirely wrong with buying business lists, telemarketing lists and mailing lists from a list provider. However, when working with one, you should always work with one that knows how to do effective lead generation. After all, lead generation through cold-calling is the best way to produce optimal results, something which applies even to the creation of these lists. So when picking a provider, it s best to work with one that specializes in and employs expert lead generators to create their lists for them.

If you're still planning to go through with a telemarketing campaign or even a direct mail and/or email campaign, then buying lists are sure to help a lot for your company.

2 Tips for Better Direct Mailing Campaign Results

Email marketing yields a good amount of B2B leads. A large percentage of marketers agree to this, and even statistics show that it is more effective at generating revenue and finding new B2B leads. That being said, it looks like direct mail is about to be left in the dust as it is expensive and inefficient. However, some marketers are seeing a revival in direct mail and other still use it for marketing purposes. If you’re using direct mail, then here are some tips for your campaign.

• Proper targeting for better results – When using direct mail for marketing and generating B2B leads, it is important to know which industry you want to focus on. You can’t just randomly send mail to every business contact listed on your direct mailing list, no, you have to be precise and accurate just like a sniper with a single shot left in his rifle. Although you have a lot of chances to do so, metaphorically speaking, your single shot should matter and get results. So when you’re using direct mail to generate leads, get yourself a direct mailing list that is targeted to the industry you want to focus on. If you’re targeting C-level executives, then get a mailing list of C-level executives. Accuracy matters in direct mail as you will have to really be visible in the correct mailbox, and not just to everyone else.

• Relevant content for high chances of success – A large percentage of direct mail remains unopened, and there’s no telling just how much of it has been tossed out the window or into the trash by prospects who don’t want to even bother with such mails after getting past the first few lines. That being said, if you are using direct mail and sending them out to your B2 leads; make your content relevant and interesting to your prospects. Your content should capture their attention when they scroll their eyes over the first few lines, something that keeps them reading on and wanting to finish the letter. If a prospect is interested, he/she will most likely respond to your direct mail and you may have yourself a warm B2B lead on your hands.

Direct mail is still worth giving a shot, even if it does turn out to be expensive and sometimes inefficient in lead production, as well as getting feedback from prospects. However, as a marketer, every avenue for marketing that is available counts and can help in producing both leads and sales.