Much has been made of the power of social media marketing in recent times. However, is it really all it is cracked up to be? When you compare this form of marketing to the notion of using a sales lead list, it doesn’t look quite as powerful as it did before.
How does marketing with a sales lead list differ from social media marketing?
Before we answer this question, let us focus on what a sales lead list is. Put simply, it is a list of names and email addresses of people who have expressed an interest in a particular topic, item, product or area. Your ideal list of names will be comprised of people who are interested in your business area. For example, your company may specialize in selling various forms of insurance. In this case you would want to create a list of people who are interested in the insurance policies you sell. They may have expressed an interest in getting a quote at some point in the past. They may not have gone ahead with it, but you know they may have a need to buy such a policy because of the previous contact they have shared with you.
Finding leads via social media sites
Let’s now compare this process with the idea of finding leads via social media marketing. In this situation you would have to focus on establishing a presence on a social media site (or more than one, if you wanted to gain the best results). This takes time to do, whereas building up a sales lead list can be done as part of developing and promoting your business website.
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It is also much harder to engage with people on social media sites. Let us assume for a moment you build up a following on Facebook. You may have thousands of likes on the site, establishing you as a company worth following. It will undoubtedly take lots of effort to reach this stage. However if you want to promote your insurance products you will have to steer these people towards your website anyway. As you can see, the real power is in the sale lead list, because this stays with you and your business for as long as you hold it. You can also divide the list into separate areas, so people who expressed an interest in life insurance will receive information and advice on relevant topics. Similarly people who requested a quote for car insurance will receive emails with relevant information in them. Thus you have far more control over a sale lead list than you would have over social media marketing. It is also true to say many businesses can be assured of generating further sales every time they send an email to their sale lead list.
Better results from a sales lead list
Providing you maintain your list effectively, cleaning it regularly and ensuring it only contains names that represent good leads for your business, you can generate a higher income for your business than you would achieve from social media marketing. This is not to say social media marketing is worthless; rather it is to say it should be used in a different way. Think of it as one of the ways in which you can generate names to go on your sale lead list, rather than directly competing with it.
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Many business owners have pointed to the power and value a list of this type holds. The more names you have on your list, the more potential there is to earn money from it. This holds true not just now, but for the future as well. The long term value of a single customer can be huge. Furthermore it costs more to get names of potential customers in the first place than it does to carry on corresponding with them once you have them. You have a far greater chance of converting a name on your list into a customer than you do of converting one of your social media followers into a customer. This fact alone should convince you of the power of creating and maintaining a sale lead list for now and the future.