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List Generation: Buying vs. Building

With any marketing strategy, it’s imperative to make sure you are targeting the right audience. Development of target names and addresses, known as list generation, should be a priority in your planning and implementation strategy. After all, if you don’t reach your intended audience, how will you generate sales? But when attempting to reach this audience, is it better to buy a list or build your own?
Let’s look at the facts

When marketing, it's important to reach the right audience. Concentrate on your most qualified leads first and your target prospects second.
When marketing, it’s important to reach the correct target audience.

  • Buying a list is quick and easy.
  • Building a list takes time and resources.

So, what’s the best strategy? The answer is: it depends. Meaning, it depends on who you are trying to target and what type of message you are communicating.
Buying a List
When your objective is to reach a new pool of prospects within your area, buying a list is necessary. Whether that’s for direct mail or telemarketing, you’ll need to reach out to those prospects within the community who don’t yet know about your services. Be sure that you are reaching the appropriate audience – in this case, the 65+ active senior and Baby Boomers.
While buying a list for the traditional outreach like direct mail and telemarketing will help feed the pipeline with new opportunities, we recommend steering clear of purchasing lists for digital marketing [i.e. email marketing].
Building a List
We all know that retaining a current customer is more cost-effective than bringing in a new customer. That’s why developing your customer database for future marketing [out of warranty, tested not sold, etc.] is so important. Your customer database [read more here] includes your most qualified leads – those that are not as price sensitive – and nurturing these relationships will reap continuous rewards.
Reaching out to your current database with targeted messaging across the traditional mediums – direct mail and telemarketing – will result in a higher response rate and more positive return on investment [ROI]. And as mentioned earlier, it’s best to take the time to build an email contact list by collecting email addresses from you customers – let them ‘opt in’ to receiving email communication from your practice.
What’s Next?
Once you have your targets identified [compiled from both your customer database and prospect lists], remember to develop a marketing plan to reach these consumers on a frequent and consistent basis. Also, think about the communication strategy [i.e. “what you want to say”] in order to convey relevant messages to each segment of your list. Your target audience will appreciate the time and effort you put into speaking to them based on their needs via the mediums they prefer and you will reap the rewards.
Questions? CQ Marketing is here to help! Contact marketing at marketing@cq-partners.com

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