There are various types of business lists to choose and a plethora of business list companies/brokers or “online Paypal sites” (buyer beware) ready and willing to sell you one.  We receive lots of questions regarding business lists. One of which is about the difference between a Specialty or Professional Business List vs. what I will call a general or “Primary Contact” US Business List.  In this post, I wanted to quickly and as simplistically as I can break-down the difference between a specialty business list and a general or primary contact business list.

Basically, a general or primary contact US Business List typically covers most businesses within the US, (approximately 13 million at this point) and provides the primary contact, often times they are the main decision maker, within that firm. Depending on the size of the business/industry the primary contact could be the owner, president, VP, general manager, office manager, etc.

A specialty or professional business list dives deeper and broader within a particular industry/profession and/or company for that matter. Although some of the contacts within this type of business list might be from the same company, each person is essentially a “decision maker”, but specifically for themselves. They will evaluate and purchase specific items/products/services that will benefit and/or help them personally/professionally.

Okay, how about some real world examples. Say you have a product or service that is for the general use of a particular company/industry such as signage, credit card processing, insurance, advertising, website design, etc. than a primary contact business list is a very viable and useful resource. In these examples you may only need to “speak” to the person who makes the decisions for that company. If nothing else, this “primary contact” could direct you to the right person within the company in charge of making those types of decisions.

However, if you have a specific product or service that could be used by many professionals or people within that particular industry or company than perhaps a specialty business list or professional business list is more suitable. Take for example a Real Estate company, Accounting firm and/or Law firm. A Law firm may have any given number of attorneys practicing within that particular company but only one primary decision maker. So if you are promoting a continuing education product/service for attorneys than you probably want to speak with as many attorneys as possible rather than just the primary contact that is in charge of making larger scale decisions.

As always understanding your target audience is “The Key” to determining which Business List might be right for your company’s marketing and sales campaign. For more questions regarding which targeted business list is right for you, contact one of our list specialist at 888-474-6021.

 

 

 

 

Tags: business list, business lists, business-to-business marketing

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 8:37 am and is filed under Uncategorized, business list. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.