When you’re running any marketing campaign, you’ll usually need some sort of database so that you can contact potential clients. But just how should we put a database together?

1. Your current contacts

The best source of data is always going to be your current contacts. They’ll be likely to have heard of you and know what you do; the data is likely to be up to date and current and if they’ve already bought from you, they’re more likely to buy again. If at all possible, you should start here with your data.

2. Building a database

The next best source is to build a database. There are a number of ways we can do this, but by far our favourite is LinkedIn. It’s very searchable and you can search for people by title, location, size of company and industry to name but a few and we have several ways of getting the right data onto your database. The data is still fairly accurate and of course, although more time consuming, it is free to build.

3. Buying a database

The final source is to buy a database. The advantage of this is that it’s very quick. You can get a huge database together in a matter of minutes. However, there is a cost to this (around 30-40p per record), it’s not always as clean as it can be and of course it’s cold – in other words, they haven’t heard of you. Of the three methods, it’s doable but it’s not my favourite way.

So, should you buy a database? Yes, if you’ve exhausted other methods or you’re looking for something quick and are not too worried about the quality. Otherwise I would opt for option one or two, which is likely to give you much warmer data.

If you’d like some help with creating a database and then contacting the people on there to get qualified leads, why not contact us?

Simply reply to this email, call us on 01386 298 042 or click here to book a time in my diary that suits you: