Buying Leads - Who does it, what success?

[altwebdesign]

I've been looking at purchasing some leads, web design related, but this is a non-industry specific question.

If you purchase leads what successes have you had or horrors and would you recommend purchasing leads to others?

Some leads are non-exclusive and sometimes people are looking to sell the same lead to 5-10 other people, what do you do to stand out in this crowd?

 

[S-Marketing]

Complete waste of time buying leads. It goes against almost every decent marketing principle in both theory and application.

 

[tony84]

I only buy exclusive leads.

Success (if you can call it that) isnt great. They pay for themselves but i only convert maybe 1-2 in 10.

Just a thought but if i had SEO skills and could build a decent website id be building my own lead generation site, it would save me £100 a month.

 

[altwebdesign]

Complete waste of time buying leads. It goes against almost every decent marketing principle in both theory and application.

Keen to hear why.....
the benefits of them, that i perceive, are that they save you time doing all the marketing and can purchase them, there and then without the 'hassle & time' of marketing.

So stretchy what would you say are the down side to purchasing them and why does it go against the marketing principle, in your opinion of course?

I would take a stab at it and say its because your marketing is tailored to each individual company and target audience and buying leads skips all that and goes against your original marketing plan and idea?!

 

[captaincloser]

Buying leads ? Welcome to the twilight zone.

Usually nobody will be able to srop you getting your fingers burned buying 'leads'. Its what happens. Dont ask me to explain...it's just a bad business and a bad way to do business. Vultures...and as for 'exclusive leads'...don't even think of going there.

Generate your own leads or employ someone to cold call for you.

The above is opinion only but based on rather a long time in sales...

If people selling red-hot exclusive leads for your industry really had red hot leads they would be in your industry not the reselling leads industry.

 

[altwebdesign]

not many great words about this then!

 

[Greg Black]

Most companies that sell leads to multiple companies are just sharks. Plus they aren't really leads, they are just names and addresses. The bun fight that then ensues when 6 or more companies fight over a customer like hyenas tearing apart a decaying zebra carcass.

I don't know who you are looking to buy leads from, but if they are companies like Approved Index or worse Campaneo, then just save yourself the hassle. Unless you are ruthless this won't be a tactic for you.

As Captain Closer has said, it is always best to generate your own leads. When I ran a web design business I paid a girl to make calls for me and set up appointments, it works out more expensive and you have to put some investment in before you get a return, but the quality is so much better and you can close some really good deals.

Back then she could make 1-2 appointments each day, so divide that by your daily rate and you have the cost of the lead. I don't know how many appointments you could arrange each day now as I'm sure the market has moved on.

For web designers I still think that a good SEO campaign is hard to beat. It shows you are at the top of your game, having owned a web agency that had great search engine rankings, we used to get several leads every day and it became a process of filtering out the good ones from the time wasters.

 

The type of leads from the type of companies you are looking to buy from are a complete waste of time, speak to any industry who have used these leads and they will tell you the same thing.
Problem number 1, the leads are sent to 10 or more companies, they say less but its not true.
Problem number 2, there jack of all trades, master of none, they deal with loads of different industries and you will know each industry has there own qualification process, this is not taken into account at all.
I am buidling something that will stop this happening in my industry, but as for yours i would look at other avenues.

 

[altwebdesign]

ill give this a miss then!

 

[astutiumRob]

people are looking to sell the same lead to 5-10 other people, what do you do to stand out in this crowd?

I know a reseller who had some initial success with bought leads, went in with very keen pricing, but none of the clients stayed long - jumped ship as soon as someone else was 50p cheaper - but for one-off design work it *might* pan out.

So get in first and get in cheap is the only way to make non-exclusive leads pay, and you *must* monitor the ROI very very closely.

We work with a number of web-designers - preferring to pay them 10% affiliate commission on hosting sales they bring in rather than buying "these people want hosting" leads from the various agencies and websites that offer them.

 

[educate2xL]

Hello, it's educate2xL

Listen, I use to average 100 to 200 cold calls a day for over 2 1/2 years. I got a hands on education in leads because I bought all kinds of them. So-called interviewed, Laser targeted leads which I paid $90 dollars a month and it was a complete nightmare because I didn't sign one person up in my business. Half of them didn't even remember filling out the form & others lied about the money they had to spend to start a business but were really broke. Now I know there are people who will tell you that they had Great success buying leads. But if they're honest, they know they had to go through A LOT of them to get success over time.

Also, when you buy leads, majority of them are old, numbers don't work, they haven't been scrubbed against the Do Not Call list, and they are not exclusive leads but have been re-sold to many different people. The only leads that actually worked for me were mlm genealogy report leads from real mlm companies. But being chained to a phone all day was still NO fun.

It is much better for you to get your Own Leads so you know where they've come from and know they are exclusive and they are protected on your own desktop. I tried to keep it as short as possible but I hope this helps. Any other questions, you can PM or email me.

Take care!!
Ivan Harris, Sr.

 

[SetupaCompany]

Personally I dont think it is as black and white as others have suggested - there is a place for buying leads but you have to be careful with the quality.

I would never buy leads from a company that specializes in selling leads - because as has been mentioned these are usually very poor quality and the only people who benefit are the leads company themselves.

However, setting up something more bespoke with a company that has the kind of quality of leads you are looking for can be very effective.

For instance we often get clients asking us about accounting and so we have a relationship with an accountant who we can pass leads on to and they do very well out of it and our customers are happy as we can help them out.

Equally we get people asking us about designers, developers, payment solutions, registered offices, etc and so if we have relationships with companies who provide these services then again, everyone could benefit.

As with most things its not a case of it either works or it doesn't - there is a right and a wrong way to go about buying leads and providing you do it the right way then it can be very effective.

 

[educate2xL]

Listen, nothing wrong with good healthy debate. I understand where you are coming from but here's the bottom line, I've done it both ways and maybe in the very beginning you were able to get better leads. When people were more trusting in the early days of the internet before the days of "Spam Messages" hit. But the Real question to ask yourself is "WHERE" do these leads come from? This is heart of the matter.

See even the so-called bigger lead companies get their leads from doing big "Generic" advertising campaigns in magazines or on websites. Also big campaigns on computer where people's names are confiscated sometimes without their knowledge when they visit a site and their information is harvested through an IP address or other Black Hat tactics that are illegal.

Other times, people opt into a page after being baited and tricked into doing it. And all these I mentioned above are the leads they call Business opportunity seeker or business leads. The Majority of these lead companies get leads by any means necessary. They don't really care how they get the leads or the quality of them. They want to make money period which should be no surprise to us. I've seen the way these so-called reputable lead brokers or companies get their leads and I'm telling you it's better if you get your own leads yourself. Anyone with the right tools could do what these lead brokers do.

The fact is Most people these days despise filling out forms because they are scared they will get spammed to death. So they put in false info and fake phone numbers . . . etc because they are just curious & not serious about wanting to know what the business is. I've spent too much money on leads for years and I Never got a good response at all because of the quality of the leads. But as I said before, the only leads that worked effectively on a more consistent basis for me were mlm Genealogy reports from Real businesses. But you have to be careful there too making sure it's a real company and that the leads are exclusive and are not old and outdated.

After all the buying and the Drama that goes along with it. Even with the Genealogy reports, I got tired of having to buy leads and be at the mercy of the Lead brokers. So I searched for a better way to get my OWN leads and not pay month after month for leads that you really don't know if they're good or not. It's better to just harvest your own leads on demand so you KNOW what you're getting.

I don't have an Axe to grind but I don't want people to spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on leads thinking that it's going to bring them quality people in their business or quality customers. I want to save you from going through wasting money and more importantly Time that I and several others I've known over these past 20 years have done. It's very discouraging to spend a lot of money and get NO results!! And especially in this economy, nobody has money to waste. Apologies for the length of this post but I wanted to be as thorough as I could be.

Hope this helps!!

If I can be of service, please feel free to PM me.

Sincerely,
Educate2xL

 

[SetupaCompany]

Listen, nothing wrong with good healthy debate. I understand where you are coming from but here's the bottom line, I've done it both ways and maybe in the very beginning you were able to get better leads. When people were more trusting in the early days of the internet before the days of "Spam Messages" hit. But the Real question to ask yourself is "WHERE" do these leads come from? This is heart of the matter.

I agree it is all about WHERE the leads come from. But just because you are not collecting the leads yourself does not mean they are a waste of money. My point is that there are situations where it WILL and DOES work.

And its not just in the beginning..... unless 7 years (in some cases) is still 'the beginning'.

You make some very valid points but equally I think my previous post did two. Where you have high quality leads being bought or sold between two reputable companies who have synergies with the products they offer then yes buying leads can work.

You seem to have mostly experience with buying leads in bulkd from lead generation companies which I would agree is generally a no-go area. However developing more meaningful relationships with like-minded companies can be a very effective way to buy leads.

If it hasnt worked for you then I would guess you have never found the right company to do such a deal with but to dismiss all lead buying as pointless and a waste of money seems a little naive to me.

Its not so much about WHAT you do but HOW you do it that is important.