Is Buying Marketing Data Worth It?

Alan is at the PopUp Reading Shop to talk about building your list. Is buying marketing data online the best way to build your customer base or is there an easier way?

Note: This transcription has been generated with AI and there may be errors present. 

 

So we’re here at the reading Popup Business School in the Oracle in the centre of reading. And one of the questions we’ve been asked by the participants is, can I buy data or lists of customers to market to? And the short answer is, yes. There are plenty of companies out there that will sell you lists of data for you to be able to market to, and a lot of business works this way. Now, would we recommend you buy lists of data is a completely different question. And it depends on the list. What you need to do is think about who are your customers? And how can we reach them. And basically, the list gives you a way to be able to reach people. Now for us, we sell workshops to housing associations, so I was actually able to go online, and I found the list of all the housing associations in the UK, and there was a small charge for it around about £100. So I thought that was a really good investment of £100, I bought the list. And then I sent out marketing emails, and letters to that list. And then I would make phone calls to be able to land the business. And that’s how we started. But you don’t need to spend money to be able to generate a list. Let’s say you were selling to schools or colleges, you could go on Google, and Google a list of schools and colleges, you could build your own list within an hour or so. Or if you’re selling to people who love a certain type of food or a certain band, you could go on Twitter, and find the list of people to market to very, very quickly. And there’s actually many places you can go to get free lists on Facebook, there are groups dedicated all sorts of subjects, let’s say you were selling a yoga product. If you found a group for Yoga people, there’s a whole list of people that have joined that group that you can start talking to marketing to and selling to. So yes, you can buy lists. Yes, they’re available. No, they aren’t always cheap. But sometimes you can find good value lists. The Best Value Lists are the ones you find yourself, and that you have permission to market to cold marketing can work. And it’s a place we’ve all got to start when we start up our business. But if we then get out there and build our own list of people we want to talk to on Twitter, or own list of people from LinkedIn. That’s a far richer marketing source that you can go for, rather than than buying a cold list of someone else. So yes, you can buy lists. Maybe there’s a better place to start. My name is Alan, I’m one of the cofounders of the Popup Business School. And we built this to help you start up businesses and make money doing what you love. If you happen to live in the UK, then come to one of our live events. You can find details on our website, pop up business school.co.uk. If you happen to live in a different country, then well send us an email and who knows we might be able to sell one there so that then you can come for free. All of our events are completely free. If not, we have videos and advice online, hit the subscribe button on the YouTube channel. And you will get updates when we release new videos helping you to start up your business and overcome the obstacles and barriers to making money doing what you love.