You could have the best small business marketing strategy on the block, but it won’t do much good unless you can market to potential customers. Unfortunately, if you’re just starting out in business, your list of contacts – potential customers that you’ll try to sell to – is probably mercilessly short. (Unless you’re coming from another job in the industry – then your list may be fairly robust.)

But whatever the current state of your contact list, chances are that you’ll want to build it as part of your overall small business marketing strategy. The question is: How?

The most obvious answer is to purchase a targeted list from a company that builds lists for a living. The downside to that small business marketing option is that it can be expensive – prohibitively expensive for many small businesses just starting out.

Fortunately, there are a few alternative sources for contact information that you can use to build your own small business marketing list – a small business marketing list that may even generate better responses than a small business marketing list you would buy.

If you’re marketing to other businesses, consider using your local Chamber of Commerce member list (or any locality’s Chamber list, for that matter). Not only do most Chambers list the names, addresses, and phone numbers of their members, but they also list the business’s industry category – so you can prepare a targeted small business marketing list of your own!

If you’re marketing to consumers, consider using the phone book. You won’t be able to compile a targeted small business marketing list this way (you won’t know, for example, which households bought plasma TVs in the last year) but you’ll get a list of prospective customers and all it will cost is your time. Now that many phone directories are online, you can make your work much easier by copying information from the directories into your small business marketing contact database.

Another great way to compile a list of potential customers is to set up a website that asks visitors to register their names and e-mail addresses. You’ll probably find that visitors won’t be inclined to sign up with you, though, unless you offer an incentive – like a free gift (or even an e-book or article) or discount on your product or service. Setting up a website like that has another small business marketing benefit as well: through your “free gift” you can hook the prospective customer on your product or service (by sending a sample-sized version of the product, for example, or an article positioning yourself as an expert on the service you provide).

Of course, the easiest and best way to build your small business marketing contact list is to keep track of past and current customers as well as those who’ve inquired about your product or service. Taking the time to write down your customers’ contact information when you make a sale or have a meeting will pay off in the end in the form of a highly targeted, rich small business marketing list of exactly the kind of people you want to market to.