B2B List Building – How to Build an Ultra Refined List

By: Jack Reamer |
 February 1, 2022 |
 Lead Generation

List building DOES take time and effort.

(Unfortunately, there is no easy quick-fix when it comes to finding leads.)

BUT if you can get the process right, targeting the correct prospects WILL increase your sales, which in turn puts more money in your pocket. 

So if you have been scraping the web looking for “B2B list building”, you’ve come to the right place.

SalesBread has 12 years of lead gen experience, and we guarantee one lead a day for our clients. 

How do we get this right? By building the perfect list. 

In this article, we will share all out tips, tricks and hacks for building that perfect list.

But first….

Did you know that getting a list of prospects is easy?

For example, you could buy a list or even just find people on Linkedin and Facebook, but the trick is to find “hot leads.”

In fact, having the right list of qualified prospects is even more important than having the right content for your cold email. 

The reason?

Well, if people like what you’re selling and are ready to buy, then you will get those sales.

And at the end of the day sales = money.

Isn’t this what all businesses owners want?

What is a hot lead?

Some people think that a hot lead is a dream customer.

But a hot lead is defined as the prospect’s eagerness to engage with you about how you can help them. 

Example:

Let’s say you are looking for leads and you have a hosting company.

If you have found a CEO of a tech company who went through a 2-week outage because of their hosting provider, they are probably already looking for ways to fix their hosting issue.

So if you reached out to that CEO and said that you had 99% uptime, there is a good chance that they will be excited to talk to you because you can solve their problem. 

If you don’t segment your list, unfortunately, you will not have hot leads. 

You might worry, though, that if you get super specific about your list, then you won’t have enough people to contact.

But think about it, if you don’t have enough prospects who might actually want what you have to offer, then your product might just not be market-related just yet. 

If you can’t find hot leads, you are going to be at a severe disadvantage from the start. 

What do the stats show?

When you build a targeted list of specific prospects, stats show that these segmented campaigns increase revenue by 760% compared to a one-size-fits-all email campaign. 

 

Have a look at some of the above stats. Did you notice that the number one reason for loss of engagement is irrelevant content? 

Therefore, finding prospects who WANT what you’re selling is critical. It makes complete sense.

Why try to sell hospital equipment to a realtor, for example?

It’s not going to work.

You will just waste time and frustrate yourself and your prospects. 

Tip 1: Consider events and attributes when trying to find hot leads.

What does this mean? 

An “event” is exactly what you think it would be. 

It’s a company that’s gone through something that you can track, like:

  • They are hiring a new position
  • They have just gone through a PR disaster/ and have had a recent press release on the issue. 
  • They have just done a round of funding
  • They’ve just started a new ad campaign

An “attribute” is when you are looking for specific characteristics in a company. This would include things like: 

  • The size of the company
  • The location
  • Their revenue
  • The technology that they are using
  • Their unique monthly visits to a specific website
  • It could even be their podcast downloads
  • Job title

When it comes to building your list, look at both “events” and “attributes.”

It’s important to note that most data tools are set up for searching for companies’ “attributes” rather than events.

Here is an example:

You are selling HR software to tech companies to help them with employee retention problems.

The first thing that you would need to do is Identify companies that you would like to target. 

Your absolute best accounts are in the tech industry, between 50 and 200 employees.

Some people might stop here and send messages to these accounts.

But you should take this research a bit further when it comes to building your list so that you can have an even more targeted list of accounts. 

How do you do this? Here are 3 ways:

Number 1:

Look at companies that have one HR person in the department. This means that one person is dealing with all the HR issues.  Therefore, they would be open to seeing how your HR tool would help them.

Number 2.

The next step would be to look at which tech companies are hiring employees at the moment.

This shows that there is churn at their companies and that they will be looking to hire employees and keep them around longer. 

Number 3.

You could also look at tech companies that have poor Glassdoor ratings.

This will indicate that employees are not happy, suggesting that their HR managers might need your software to help them out. 

You could then target all of these companies, as they would be an excellent fit for your product.

You could even set up a Google alert to help you find who you want to track, or you could use sites like indeed.com and angel. co. 

Where to find attributes for  hotlist prospects

Where to find “events” for hotlist prospects

Tip 2: How do you find contact information? – Make use of web scraping tools

What is web scraping? (Luckily you don’t have to be a computer boffin to do it. Thanks to technology there are many tools out there that can web scrape for you)

Web scraping is a term used for extracting data from a website. 

Why should you make use of web scraping? 

Well, you might need to collect phone numbers, company names, specific demographics, or even email addresses for email marketing, and this is where web scraping can come in handy. 

You could either hire a V.A to do this manually, but this will cost you a ton of money and time.

We suggest making use of web scraping tools instead.

There are many Google Chrome extensions that you could use. 

But we have found these two tools to be the best when it comes to web scraping:   

Data-miner.io

 

If you are new to list building, you could try the free version of Data miner, which includes:

  • A scrape of 500 pages per month

Or you could pay for various packages ranging from $19.99 a month to $200 per month. 

Phantombuster

Phantom Buster allows you to find data from email addresses, to contact information. You can even scrape social media platforms like Instagram and Linkedin. 

Here are some features that Phantom Buster offers:

The pricing is also reasonable. There is a free option, but packages start from $30 – $900 a month.

Tip 3: Do not buy information data when prospecting

via GIPHY

Some lead generation sales teams buy data.

The problem with this is that it’s not always the freshest, most up-to-date data that’s out there. 

Therefore you could be wasting your time and money because the data is not super accurate.

This is why scarping websites yourself with specific tools like Phantom Buster and Data Miner is so much better, as you will always have fresh data when building your B2B prospect list. 

Tip 4: Use scarping to generate a super targeted list of companies.

If you want to build a list of high-quality leads, you can scrape websites by adding in your own filters. This will ensure that your potential leads are super targeted. 

How do you this? Use sites such as Yelp and Crunchbase

Example: 

Say you want to sell “Reputation management services” to dentists to help them improve their Yelp scores so that they can get more customers. 

You could use scrapers to generate a list of companies.

How?

Go through Yelp in every city in your country and use it to find dentists who have a 3-star rating.

From there, tell your scraper to extract the company names, contact data, names of dentists, and company websites to find the correct email addresses of people to whom you should reach out to. 

There are very few places that you can go to find this information.

Web scraping takes time, but if you do this to understand how web scraping works, then you can get very defined about who is on your list. 

You could do the same with Crunchbase to find companies that use a specific technology. 

Crunchbase is using web scrapers to filter out websites that happen to use a given tool. 

Why is this important?

Well, imagine you spam hundreds of potential customers with your product or service, and they have no need for you. 

With the example above, imagine if you tried to sell your “reputation management services to dentists who have 5-star reviews, it’s not likely that they would want to pay for your services, as they already have a great reputation.

This is why specific targeting during the list building process is imperative.

You don’t want to come across as a spammer during your marketing campaigns. 

Tip 5: Explore filters in the directories.

Most directories do have filters. Don’t just grab everything in the directory because you won’t have a very granular list. 

Instead, when you build your ideal customer profile, make use of the filters that are offered. Play around to find exactly what you are looking for.

Have a look at the filters Crunch Bases uses:

You can search from companies to investors and even filter them by organization, location, titles, and past schools. 

Tip 6: Personalization & Web Scraping go hand in hand

Personalization and web scraping go hand in hand when building a list of B2B leads.

An example is going to your buyer personas blog and having the web scaper find the titles of their blogs.

You could then use this to personalize emails for outreach.

You could mention in the email that you enjoyed their blog about XYZ.  Have your VA read through the blog and extract something that they found helpful. 

You could even find out if they recently won an award for something and then congratulate them. 

Remember that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. 

You want to have relevant cold emails when it comes to targeting people, as this will allow for higher conversion rates. 

Tip 7: Have a human check everything

via GIPHY

Before you send out your cold email or Linkedin messages, have a real live human look through your list of contacts.

Remember that web scraping tools are basically robots who can get things wrong sometimes. So before you begin your marketing campaign, check out your list first. 

Ensure that you have the right B2B companies, as some online tools might have listed the company incorrectly, for example.

Perhaps it’s a dentist’s practice and not a tech company, for example.

Having a person look at your list and double-check that it’s correct does take time, but it will be worth it.  

NOTE: Refine your B2B email list until it’s perfect.  This should be part of your marketing strategy, as it will give you the right target audience who will engage with your cold emails. 

Tip 8: Make use of specific keywords when list building

You can use keywords to extract the exact data that you need. For example, on Glassdoor and even Linkedin,(BUT with regards to Linkedin, be careful of the keyword tool, there is a specific way to use it correctly.) you can use keywords to find the right people.  

Side notes

Is web scraping illegal?

Is it illegal to use web scraping tools? Many court cases are going on now, but it’s not unlawful to use web scraping tools to find data.

Even Google scrapes websites. The main thing to remember is what you do with the data. If you’re using scrapers to find companies who could benefit from a product you are selling, why not? 

If your product or service could make a world of difference to another company, then this is a reason to use the data for good.

But if you’re just spamming millions of people who do not match your product or service, then this can pose a problem.

(Besides being flagged as spam, you will have hundreds of potential leads unsubscribe to your mailing list)

But in short, web scraping is not illegal. 

Do you need to be a tech boffin for B2B lead building?

No, you do not.

Luckily tools such as Data Miner, Crunchbase, Phantom Buster, and even Clarity.FM makes data mining a breeze; the only thing is that it takes a lot of time. 

Does SalesBread offer list building services?

Before we onboard clients and startups, we usually ask them if they know who their ideal customer is?

Will they be reaching out to decision-makers or looking for referrals? 

We will also ask who has purchased their product or service over the past six months. 

These metrics are important for us to get an idea of who to target.

But once a client has been onboarded, we DO obsess about building the perfect list for our customers. 

We refine this list a few times before we begin with our outreach campaigns, and this is why we can get 1 lead a day for our customers. 

The Take-Away

As a quick recap, here are 8 tips that can help you build B2B lists.

  1. Consider events and attributes when trying to find hot leads.
  2. Make use of web scraping tools to make B2B contact lists
  3. Don’t buy data, as it is not always the best and freshest information
  4. Make a super targeted list of companies
  5. Make use of filters
  6. Remember that personalization and web scraping goes hand in hand
  7. Have a VA look through your list before you send out your direct mail.
  8. Use keywords

If this sounds too complicated or list building isn’t your vibe, let’s get on a free 15 min consultation call. (Hit the button below) 

We would love to help you find B2B data that will knock your business out of the park and make you money. 

Click Here For Your Free 15 Minute Consultation