Buying Leads - Pros And Cons

Generating B2B leads can be quite tough. For example, almost all B2B marketers have to deal with painfully long sales cycles and low conversion rates. 

Yet, even though B2B lead generation is tricky, it’s not impossible. By working hard and staying consistent, you will overcome these challenges. 

On the other hand, some marketers are looking for an easy fix and they’re usually enticed by the fact you can now buy leads. 

While doing so can benefit your business short term, it’s not a viable long-term solution. Let’s answer whether you should buy leads, once and for all by giving you the pros and cons of this practice.

Pros of Buying Leads

If you’re looking to buy leads, you’re probably expecting quick results. Well, that’s what you are going to achieve. By simply purchasing a database online, you’re going to save a lot of effort and time compared to building the entire database from scratch. 

Depending on the company you buy from, those leads could be highly targeted, meaning that you could potentially improve your conversion rates. In turn, you’ll also have more opportunities to close sales.

If you try to enter new markets, the prospect of building a completely new database probably fills you with dread. In that case, you could buy leads to speed up the entire process. 

As you can see, it’s a viable strategy in certain scenarios, especially if you want to speed up the entire process. 

Again, the results you see will depend on the company you buy leads from. We suggest only working with trusted companies. 

Just one example is Cognism. They offer phone-verified numbers, business emails, and direct dials. The best thing about this company is that its data follow privacy protocols and are both GDPR and CCPA-compliant. 

The Cons of Buying Leads

While you can get quick results, in the beginning, it would be taking the easy way out instead of putting in the effort to create a long-term B2B lead generation strategy. Ultimately, it could cause more problems for your business. 

The main problem you will experience when you buy leads is that those particular contacts have shown zero interest in what you have to offer. Hell, they might not even be aware that you exist. You’ll basically be dealing with a cold lead that might not want anything to do with you. 

Because of this, the results from buying leads are fairly inconsistent. 

It’s also worth noting that you may miss the opportunity to establish a positive relationship with your prospect from the very beginning. 

Nowadays, customers have more control over their purchasing decisions, and they are usually the ones that initiate the conversation. So in a way, if you buy leads and start dialing customers who didn’t indicate they’re even interested in your brand, you’ll immediately begin to give off a ‘’sleazy salesman’’ kind of vibe. 

In the B2B space, you don’t want to have that reputation.

What You Should Do Instead Of Buying Leads

Before giving in to the temptation to buy leads, you should first try building a solid foundation. By experimenting with different strategies and forging your own path, you’ll find what works best for your company.

1. Inbound Marketing

Generating leads through inbound marketing is the backbone of your B2B sales success. Even though this approach will require patience, it’s still the best way to place your offering in front of prospects who are most likely to make a purchase. 

Double down on the following techniques:

1. SEO

When you’re familiar with what your target audience is searching for, you can create content that helps them solve their problems. That way you can send them to your site where you’ll quickly start nurturing them and nudging them toward making a purchase.

2. Paid advertising

While the upfront investment might be higher, with paid ads, you can reach the prospects who fit the description of your target audience or use search terms relevant to your offering. Paid ads are especially effective for targeting keywords that are harder to reach organically and that your main competitors may already be dominating.

3. Landing pages

By creating better landing pages, you will have an easier time converting users you brought in using SEO or paid ads. Once you spark their interest, you can then collect their information. That way, you’ll have a qualified email list that you can then use to nurture those leads with engaging content. 

Outbound Marketing

What do you do if you don’t have an established sales framework, you just simply cannot wait it out, or you don’t have the necessary funds? This is the main reason why companies buy leads, after all. 

You can introduce a tool that allows you to contact other companies without having to buy leads. 

One such tool for B2B outbound lead generation is the one we have created - LeadArm which allows you to automate cold emails by identifying the industry and location you want to target. 

The best thing is, you don’t have to buy leads - our tool is simply filling out their contact forms automatically.

To avoid spamming, you can import an exclusion list to avoid contacting the same business twice. 

Additionally, since it’s usually hard to properly track the results of outbound efforts, we implemented features that allow for monitoring analytics such as average success rate. That way you can learn how to improve your next batch of emails.

This is one of the top ways to achieve faster results without having to buy leads or lose your time by using cold calls as your primary outbound technique.

Overcome All B2B Challenges By Yourself

Yes, B2B lead generation is challenging, but you can overcome those challenges without resorting to shortcuts.

By investing enough time into creating and following an inbound lead generation strategy, and approaching outbound marketing with care, you can start producing results far better results than with a paid contact list.

Ultimately, your prospects as well as your sales team will appreciate the fact that you’ve built a better foundation instead of making them nurture unqualified leads.