How Buying Leads Hurts Your Business | What You Should Do Instead

Anne-Marie Cox, what are your thoughts on purchasing leads to create new business?

Oh, Anne-Marie, I'm gonna, I'm gonna come out strong on this one and say it's, it's a real no-no. Uh, what we— what I could tell you this is this from, from the email marketing side of things. Again, is I speak solely from that, but when you boil it down, what you're looking for in an email is subscriber engagement. Now, when that subscriber comes to your site and clicks in and opts in to receiving your communication and you send them an email to confirm that subscription, and you're really starting that journey and you're really growing with that customer and you're thus increasing the likelihood of higher subscriber engagement and a conversion down the road, whether that be a purchase, a vote, it could be a million different things. When, when you purchase leads, you have none of that. You don't know what you're getting into. And from email service provider framework, many of the email service providers out there actually won't even be able to work with you. I know for a fact AWeber cannot work with anyone that's purchased a list or any type of leads. So I'm gonna say it's you're better off building your, your list over a long haul that you're building from a higher echelon, if you will, of subscribers that are engaged into what you're saying or what you're selling than you are going out and purchasing, purchasing lists. And Evan, what are your thoughts there?

Yeah, yeah, I'm with you on that. I like, you know, doing the golden rule. You treat people like you'd like to be treated. And I hate being spammed, so why would I spam people? I hate being cold-called. Why would I cold-call people? I mean, I guess it could work for some people, and I think it's becoming less and less and less effective. But I try to do things that I'm— I would be receptive to if I saw it. I'll throw a curveball, and I— a friend of mine is doing something interesting where he is using lists in a different way. He'll buy a list of names So say he's trying to target firefighters, for example, he'll buy a list of firefighters and he'll never email them, but he'll upload the list to Facebook so he can track and he'll show targeted ads when they come on Facebook. Okay. So it's a slightly different way of doing it. And, and if I go on Facebook, you know, I don't mind seeing ads related to entrepreneurship, but I definitely wouldn't want you emailing me or calling me. I don't have a phone.

I just have a voicemail.

I don't notice that. Yeah, I don't have a cell phone either, and that's maybe going kind of extreme, but I don't like being interrupted, which is what it all comes down to. And so, you know, you are interrupting your potential clients. You're starting off, you know, on a negative note, which I really hate. So I'm not a big fan.