Guide to Buying Data from Data Brokers: Key Considerations and Best Practices

Data marketplaces such as Datarade usually advertise many different data providers or datasets. You can find a list of options there and select the one that fits your needs the most. Usually, the platform provides information about data features, freshness, a description of the company, and more that allows you to buy data for lead generation and other purposes. Data exchanges are marketplaces where data providers and data consumers are able to buy or sell data to one another. Much like marketplaces, they are spaces that allow for vendors and buyers to meet, evaluate, and transact. Data brokers aggregate information from diverse sources like public records, online activities, and consumer behaviors to compile detailed datasets.

One of the main issues with buying raw data is that you need to have an in-house data team to process and analyze it properly. In case you’d like to learn more, we have prepared a guide explaining how to prepare for working with public web data. Or you can buy several and generate actionable insights from multiple data sources and categories. Once acquired, integrate the data with your systems (CRM, BI tools, ML models, etc.). Clean and normalize it if necessary, then apply it to drive insights. This includes pricing (one-time, recurring, per-use), usage rights, delivery format, and SLAs (service level agreements) for updates or support.

Scraping the data and buying it have their strengths and weaknesses. Generally, scraping data in-house provides more flexibility but will require a lot of resources upfront. Compared to Coresignal, the scope of their coverage and focus areas varies.

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With a data collaboration platform, you get exactly what you need, and nothing you don’t. Instead of buying a massive package of data, you can How to buy data pick and choose the exact data points you want. If one supplier doesn’t have everything you need, you can buy from another supplier too, all at once and without worrying about duplicate data.

Once you have a basic idea of what your data acquisition needs and limitations are, you can decide which data acquisition method is best for you. How much bandwidth do your internal teams have to handle data acquisition and negotiations? Who in your organization might be able to handle the technical and legal aspects of the acquisition? Determine which employees would have the best understanding of the data needs within your organization. However, no company can collect all of the data they need on their own.

Performance & Analytics

These datasets are invaluable for businesses seeking to enrich their customer understanding, refine marketing efforts, and tailor product offerings to market demands. Once you’ve identified potential data sources, it’s critical to evaluate the quality and compliance of the data. Low-quality data can lead to inaccurate insights and poor business decisions. Non-compliant data can result in legal penalties and reputational damage.

Gaining insights into company performance and market trends

Leverage SEO, niche forums, LinkedIn, and partnerships to reach your audience. Data brokers organize the data the way they see fit and give it to you without customizations. You just get what you get and that’s that, even if the data you purchased ends up being unusable. Fortunately, you can get started acquiring the data you need to succeed as soon as today by following a few simple steps and choosing the right method for your company. The frequency of updates depends on the nature of the data and your business needs.

Data Quality Metrics

The same applies when analyzing workforce dynamics or tech adoption trends. In these cases, it’s not just about having more data, but having better, cleaner data aligned with your goals. High-quality data is clean, fresh, accurate, deduplicated, and easily integrated.

How to buy data? Best practices for buying data

  • Selling data, on the other hand, refers to offering collected or processed data for purchase, either through data marketplaces, private sales, or subscription models.
  • Seamless integration with AWS cloud services, enabling easy deployment and monetization.
  • In a world where data is power, how you manage it can define your competitive edge—and your reputation.
  • We safeguard personal privacy by reviewing all data before it is listed for sale on Data & Sons.
  • In these cases, it’s not just about having more data, but having better, cleaner data aligned with your goals.

These marketplaces also require a certain level of technical expertise to search for, purchase, and transfer data to your organization’s systems. In most cases, businesses need to hire professionals to set up API integrations and clean and standardize the data for use. Data exchanges make it easy to find data, but still don’t make the process of acquiring data as fast, easy, or customizable as it could be.

In order to remain competitive, you’ll need to acquire high-quality data from external sources. In fact, in a 2019 Deloitte survey, 92% of data analytics professionals said their companies needed to increase use of external data sources. Acquiring external data can feel like an overwhelming and confusing process, but the companies that aren’t taking advantage of external data sources are quickly falling behind. Companies such as HundredX and Facteus provide data that offers insights into consumer behavior and sales trends.

  • Third-party data is data collected from various sources and aggregated by a vendor.
  • For example, if you’re building a data product, say, a recruiting platform, you’ll likely need multi-source employee data to ensure comprehensive coverage.
  • Cost varies depending on many factors, so setting a reasonable spending range is better than having one set number in mind.
  • Research different vendors and pricing models to find the best value for your needs.
  • The user-friendly interface requires no technical expertise to purchase data with just a few clicks.

Companies buy web data to gain market insights, fuel AI models, generate leads, track competitors, enrich internal datasets, or improve decision-making. Public web data offers scale, real-time relevance, and unique visibility into business trends, talent movement, and market demand, all without relying on limited internal sources. One public web data provider that can help you build your data product or extract deep insights into investment opportunities is Coresignal. We can offer you broad coverage of over 3B public web data records from multiple sources, such as Indeed, Owler, and more.

Whether you’re acquiring insights to drive smarter decisions or monetizing your own data assets, success hinges on trust, compliance, and clarity. Whether you are trying to answer a specific question with new insights or optimize an existing system, you will want a large and diverse set of data related to your area of concern. Data pricing varies widely depending on the data source, quality, and usage rights. Research different vendors and pricing models to find the best value for your needs. Data aggregators can offer valuable insights, but it’s important to understand the sources and methodology used to compile the data. Data vendors can offer higher quality and more specialized data than marketplaces, but they may also be more expensive.

They will always have gaps in their internal information that only external data can fill. Define KPIs to track the impact of the data on your business outcomes. Data catalogs provide a central repository for metadata about your data assets.