In this episode of the 7 Figure Agency Podcast, host Joshua Nelson explains how digital‑marketing agencies can build high‑quality prospect lists to fuel outbound outreach and secure retainer clients. He outlines the three primary ways to acquire such lists—joining a niche trade association, purchasing data from vendors, and borrowing lists through joint‑venture (JV) partnerships—while emphasizing why list quality (owner‑level contact details, personal email, cell phone) matters for conversion. Nelson walks through the practical steps for each method, highlighting the benefits of association membership (affinity messaging, vetted members) and detailing his preferred data vendors, especially Coldlytics, which combines automated scraping with human researchers to deliver enriched, accurate contact columns. He recommends appending missing emails and phone numbers, using Coldlytics for purchases, and provides discount links. Finally, he points listeners to a free 12‑hour training program, the 7 Figure Agency Roadmap, for broader agency‑growth strategies.
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This is the 7 Figure Agency Podcast. Discover the strategies and techniques to grow a highly successful and profitable digital marketing agency with your host, Joshua Nelson. I want to show you how to get the list of the top prospects within your niche. So if you're looking to grow and scale your agency and you've got to do some prospecting, you got to get some appointments on the schedule, you're going to want to watch this video. So when it comes to getting agency clients and landing retainer-based clients, it really typically starts with we've got to figure out who we want to do business with, we've got to capture their contact details, and then we've got to reach out, right? We've got to reach out via email, via SMS, via the phone, via social media channels. And often overlooked is the quality of the list of prospects that you reach out to. Right? If you've got a bad list without good contact details, you can do lots of chase, you can do lots of emails, you can do lots of calls and not get the outcomes that you're after. So on today's video, I really just want to walk you through what we found to be the best source of high-quality list data so that your prospecting can be as effective as possible. And so when it comes to building a list or getting the list of prospects within your space, there's only a handful of options, right? The, you know, the typical thing we'd think of would be we're going to build the list, right? Run our own marketing, Facebook ads, Google ads, and those are the highest quality leads. And that's one play. The other option would be to scrape the list, like use a tool like D7 Lead Finder, put it in industry and let it go scrape Google Maps and other tools like that. Not a huge fan of scraping the list because usually you're going to get not the owner's contact details. You're going to get a generic email that's being used, so your connections aren't going to be as effective as they could be. I want to share the 3 key strategies that I'm a super high fan of. Number 1 is the association. So within your niche, there's a, a paid association that members participate in. In my example, we work with plumbing and HVAC contractors. There's this organization called the PHCC, the Plumbing, Heating, Cooling Contractors association, and I was able to join that association. I was able to get the names, phone numbers, mailing addresses of their members. We had to do some additional research in order to get the email addresses and social profiles, but that association has two major benefits. Number one, I'm able to draft on affinity. So once I've got the list, I'm able to reach out and say, hey, I'm reaching out to you because you're part of this association. So that's one massive benefit of joining the association. So it's a little bit different angle to come in on. But number 2 is we know that they're quality organizations, right? They're the— they're in business, they're investing in continuing education, and they're participating. So I really like the association list. It's kind of the base list that you prospect into. Now, number 2 option was to— is to buy the list. And what I found is if you source your list and you do some research on the back end of it, you can get really high-quality contact details— the actual owner, their actual personal email address, in a lot of cases even their cell phone number so that you can call or SMS them. And then number 3 would be to borrow the list, right? And that's a conversation for another day, but borrowing a list is to find people that are already doing business with the clients you want to work with and finding joint venture relationships. Hey, I'd like to send this to your list because I think they'll get value. Or hey, I'd like to share revenue with you for anybody that we're able to get as part of our relationship together. That's more of a JV play. So let's focus on joining the association and buying the list. The joining the association play is pretty obvious, right? Go to Google, type in a search for association for your niche. Plumbers, roofers, AC contractors, you name it, dentists. And then reach out to those groups, find out what the join process is, find out whether they're willing to provide the list when and if you join that association. And of course, there's other benefits of this play as well, in that you can participate in their events where they have live events. And so there's lots of additional meat on the bone associated with joining the association. When it comes to buying the list, there's lots of great tools that I've used over the years, from InfoUSA, which is now Data Axle, to SIC code, to Apollo and other tools like that. A tool like Data Axle is pretty good. It's 'cause you can search plumbers of a certain revenue threshold in a certain geographic area. It will tell you how many contact records you could buy, enter some details, and now you can potentially acquire that list. What I found in kind of comparing the data sources that are available on the market, typically when it comes to like Data Axle or SIC code, They are gonna give you the name of an owner potentially, and they're gonna give you an email address. The accuracy, the quality of it isn't 100% 'cause they're pulling from public data sources. You know, the quality of Apollo, of, you know, like scraping tools, even less. There's one platform that I really lean on pretty excessively, and that is Coldlytics. The reason I like Coldlytics is because in addition to using the scraping tools, in addition to having access to data sources, they've got a live researcher component as well. So you tell them, I want all the plumbers in Florida. They use those tools to scrape together, pull together, combine a list, and then you can tell them, hey, I want the LinkedIn profile, I want the Facebook profile, I want the cell phone number, I want the email address of the owner, I want the email address of the marketing director. They can add all of those columns, and then they've got a human person that's using the best-in-class tools to figure out who the right person is. And I found that, you know, I've got another video if you type in data comparison, I'd be glad to share that with you. But I found that the quality is super high. And of course with that quality, I can make the outbound calls, we can do the outreach with confidence 'cause we're getting through to the right people. And so lots of different sources. If there were two things I'd recommend on today's video, number one, join the association and then make sure you append email addresses and contact details as necessary. Number 2, purchase from a high-quality source like Coldlytics. And if you're interested, we do have a discount if you go to 7figureagency.com/coldlytics in order to get signed up with, I, I believe it's 50 free credits inside that platform. Now, getting the list is just the first step in your overall outreach process to prospect within your niche. And so if you'd like more details on the big picture of choose the niche, position yourself as the expert, do the outbound marketing to get prospects to raise their hand and schedule in on your calendar. We map that out in a free training program we call the 7 Figure Agency Roadmap. And so if you wanna check that out, you can go to 7figureagency.com/roadmap. It's completely free. Dive in. It's about 12 hours of deep dive training on the 7 Figure Agency model. So if you've got any questions about accessing list data, the different list sources we've tried, how to do your outreach process, let me know in the comments. And if you got value from today's video, please hit the like button and be sure to subscribe for future videos just like this. We'll talk to you soon.
