Lead Aggregators: Three best practices to ensure quality leads instead of a spreadsheet of contacts

To know how to best navigate your industry when purchasing lead lists, you must first have a sense of how lead aggregators operate. In our business, we have seen a number of lead aggregators—primarily working in the home improvement industry. While they may position themselves with slight differences, most work in the same way: they create advertising and content using magazines, mailers, or websites that are owned by the lead aggregator company. These may appear to be reviews-oriented or purely informational. People interested will then sign up for updates or future content or respond to a specific offer or call-to-action. The company then will add their contact information to a list which they will sell to companies in the area where that person lives.

Typically, the higher the cost of the lead, the more likely that customer expressed interest in wanting to do a particular type of home remodeling project. They may even have information such as what kind of project that person is looking to start. If you are familiar with lead aggregators, you can probably predict the following:

MYTH – Leads from aggregators provide lists of interested homeowners to home improvement companies so they can reach out to them about starting a project.

REALITY – The list they are selling to you is also being sold to many other home improvement companies in your area. Likely, someone has already reached that person, the person is not interested in a project, or they have been getting non-stop phone calls from all your competitors and want to be left alone.

This isn’t to say that a lead from these programs will never get you a sale. If they are selling you a list of 2000+ names, statistically there will be people on that list that are willing to engage with your company.

Here’s the smart way to navigate the lead aggregator system:

1. Check that there are no duplicate leads. ALWAYS have lead aggregators send you the list in an Excel format. Run a duplicate check on the phone numbers column. You do not have to pay for duplicate leads. Lead Aggregators have a system that will refund you if you can prove that they are double/triple charging you for duplicate leads. Also, make sure to check for duplicates from past lists they have given you, as they will often use this method to try and “fluff up” their contact lists.
2. Check the list they gave you against leads you already have in your system. Many aggregators will give you the same contact information of clients that a different lead aggregator also has. If you can prove that a different lead aggregator has already given you this client’s information at an earlier date, some lead aggregators will refund you for those.
3. Have someone in your company check that all phone numbers are both in your area and that the numbers are not disconnected. Every list we’ve checked has at least one number that is not registered to the name listed on the lead. You can be refunded for leads like this as long as you have provided the lead aggregator with a list of your company’s serviceable areas (by zip code is always best).

There are many more tips we could list, but then you’d be reading a full book. We’ll close with saying that, on average, following the above three steps allowed us to save past clients $400 – $900 a month. If you use these tips, we want to hear about it! Let us know how it goes for you.