The advent of data analytics has resulted in the availability of numerous companies that have realized the importance of b2b lead generation tools. For a business, it is very important to generate more leads in order to survive and thrive in this fierce competition. However, many small companies find it difficult to come up with enough quality leads. As a result, they try to look for ways through which they can generate more leads for their business. One of the most common and successful ways is through an online marketing strategy. The objective of this article is to help you learn how these lead generation tools can be helpful for your business.
Lead generation is one of the fundamental business processes that apply to new and developed businesses. There are endless ways of gathering leads. Which way should you go? This article helps you with that, with a few very powerful lead generation tools that any website can use.
There are a lot of lead generation tools out there to choose from. As new services and platforms emerge, a lot of entrepreneurs – especially those who are just starting out – find it difficult to choose which among them is right for their business. To make things easier for you, we’ve compiled this listing of the best b2b lead generation tools that you can use today. Whether you run an online business or brick-and-mortar company, we’ve got something for everyone.
Got a website? No? Well, then today’s guide is super-important to you! How do you get your website in front of new people? How do you start building your email list? Today I’m sharing my favorite free and paid lead generation tools that you can use to grow your list and ultimately make more money. These work on desktop, mobile, or tablet. 🙂
What to Look for in a Lead Generation Tool?
FACT: There are hundreds, if not thousands, of lead generation tools out there. So, which ones are good for you? What should you look for in the best lead gen tool for your website?
Well, I believe it comes down to six factors:
- Ease of use: A tool must be easy to use for everyone and anyone in your organization. It should be simple to install, pleasant to look at, intuitive, easy to update, easy to remove, and overall smooth to work with.
- Accessibility: The best lead generation tools are cloud-based. A simple log-in, and you can access them from anywhere to see, edit, and build your campaigns.
- Impact on your website performance: Tools meant to capture website visitors’ info generally add load to the website and affect website performance. You must ensure that the tool you choose doesn’t slow your site or mess with the visitor experience. For example, SocialIntents loads asynchronously, and hence it doesn’t slow down your site.
- Customer support: A software of any sort is prone to errors. And you certainly don’t want to waste your time figuring out solutions to the problem with your lead generation tool, right? Therefore, always choose a software company with a professional and knowledgeable support team.
- Integrations: Lead generation is a multiple-step process. It needs identifying the visitor, showing a relevant marketing message, collecting the visitor info, storing the collected info, qualifying the lead, segmenting the leads, and so on. A single tool won’t do it all, so you need proper integrations to tie the whole process seamlessly. For example, You can integrate SocialIntents with Mailchimp for email newsletters or with Salesforce for CRM via Zapier.
- Pricing: It goes without saying – The ideal tool should be within your budget, but always choose software based on the value it adds (meaning, consider the abovementioned reasons first) to your business and not how affordable it is.
Google Ads
Best For: Lead generation through paid ads
Suited For: Small to big enterprises
Advertisements are as old as marketing itself. With Google Ads, you can put your brand on the biggest search engine on the planet, with over a billion searches every day. Just design your campaign and Google automatically shows your ads to the relevant audience. It gives you full control to run your ad campaigns as you like it.
How Does Google Ads Work?
- Google Ads brings your brand and products in front of your audience right on the search engine result pages.
- Show well-timed ads to your audience based on their searches, browsing behavior, and search history to increase traffic and bring new customers. Reach out to the customers at the very moment they are looking for products or services like yours.
- Manage your ad campaigns- set goals, monthly budget caps, bidding rules, targeting options, custom messages, and more.
- Track your campaign progress with real-time analytical insights, such as website visits, total clicks, remaining budget, ad views, low-performing keywords, and quality scores.
- Set up Google campaigns for free. You only pay when someone takes action on your ad.
Pros
- Provides much faster results with targeted ads than other methods like content, social media, and blogging.
- Shorter optimization cycle. You can test what is and isn’t working in a matter of days or weeks to make necessary changes.
- Lets you measure the performance of your ads with an in-depth dashboard.
- Provides flexibility to manage ad budgets, making it accessible to small businesses.
Cons
- High competition for CPC bids.
- Needs an expert to set up various initial settings and configurations.
Price: Campaign based
Hootsuite
Best For: Inbound lead generation tool, social media marketing
Suited For: Small to big businesses
Integrations: Yes
Hootsuite is an all-in-one social media management tool to boost your social presence and gain influencers. You can generate new leads using social posts and other activities. If social platforms are the new frontiers to expand your business, Hootsuite paves the way to do it.
Short-Circuit Lead Generation Using Hootsuite:
- Publish >> Engage >> Monitor >> Advertise >> Acquire >> Analyze
- Hootsuite acts as a central hub for all your social platforms and allows you to manage all social activities efficiently.
- Analyze the latest trends, publish new posts, do competitive research, and see your posts’ performance across every social platform from Hootsuite.
- Reply to comments, collect information, and open up your business for new leads via social media.
- Integrate with other tools, such as Slack and Zendesk to nurture the leads into customers.
Pros
- You can collate and analyze data from all the social media channels under one screen.
- Set an automatic posting schedule in advance.
- Cross-channel dashboard to manage mass posts.
Cons
- Sometimes, the reporting doesn’t match the actual stats of the page.
- Pricing could be an issue for some users.
Price: Starts at $29/month. A free plan is also available
Discover.ly
Best For: Lead generation through social platforms
Suited For: Small to medium companies
Integrations: Yes
Discover.ly is a browser extension that helps generate leads by showing additional information from various social media platforms about the profile you are currently viewing.
How to Use Discover.ly to Generate Leads?
- It automatically searches the social profiles of potential prospects.
- Enter the contact details, and it automatically shows you the public information available on other sites to build your prospect list.
- Discover.ly instantly finds information about exciting leads so you can get in touch with them for new opportunities.
- You can integrate it with other CRM tools to export the prospect list and start your marketing campaign.
Pros
- Easy to use. It helps to find new leads with a click.
- You can export the leads to your CRM to eliminate the manual work.
Cons
- It’s just a browser extension without much of a dashboard and reporting interface. It is only suitable for scouting blind leads.
Price: Contact for price
BuzzSumo
Best For: Social media engagement tool
Suited For: Small to big businesses
BuzzSumo is another social media engagement tool that helps to generate leads through social platforms. It’s a cloud-based platform that helps you discover the best engagement content and ideas across social media to build your brand influencers.
How Does It Help to Generate Leads:
- BuzzSumo helps drive more traffic to your website by increasing your social media presence to generate new leads and conversions.
- Track social media trends, analyze hot topics around your business, and contact influencers.
- BuzzSumo gives you in-depth insights into popular keywords, trending topics, rising post, and search volume data.
- See what people are saying about the current and emerging products in your industry.
- You can also perform competitive analysis to generate new ideas, create high-performing content, engage your followers, and collect information.
Pros
- Provides in-depth filter options to categorize and segment the results.
- You can also use advanced queries to search for specific results.
- Supports automatic alerts about emerging trends and your competition as well.
Cons
- The influencer search is restricted to one or two channels like Twitter, limiting its use for people who use multiple channels.
- Many features are locked in higher tiers which can make the tool expensive.
Price: Starts at $99/month
ProProfs Survey Maker
Pricing: 15-day free trial, paid plans start at $0.25 per response, billed annually
Rating: 4.5/5 stars on Capterra, 4.38/5 stars on GetApp
As a cloud-based tool, ProProfs Survey Maker allows you to capture qualified leads and identify their pain points. The online survey tool helps you pick questions that enable your operators to understand the prospect’s purchasing intent and customize their interactions going forward.
Distribute surveys effortlessly through email, social media, or embed a form on your website to maximize the likelihood of reaching your target audience faster. A 15-day trial of ProProfs Survey Maker is available.
Crystal
Pricing: Contact for pricing
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars via Capterra
When you’re reaching out to a lead for the first time, it’s critical to understand who they are. Crystal uses AI to predict anyone’s personality from their online footprint, helping you write and speak with the most effective style. It’s like having a coach for every conversation.
Qualaroo
Pricing: Paid plans start at $80/month, billed annually
Rating: 4.5/5 stars on GetApp (Based on three reviews)
Qualaroo is a tool for gathering feedback from site visitors. You can use the tool to show survey and popup lead generation forms on your site. You can ask customers questions like, “Is our pricing clear enough?”, “Did this page answer your question?” etc., and then use that data to optimize your site better.
Survicate
Pricing: Free, paid plans start at $89/month for up to 1000 responses per month
Rating: 5/5 stars on GetApp (Based on 15 reviews)
Survicate is another tool for collecting feedback from your audience. In addition to showing surveys or feedback forms on your site, you can also embed a survey directly into an email. This makes it easy to get feedback after customer support threads.
HubSpot
There are a lot of pieces within a lead generation campaign. With HubSpot, you can manage most of the processes in a single platform. For instance, you can create and schedule blog posts, attach and automate social profiles. It also helps with driving organic traffic by improving your SEO campaigns.
It’s an all-in-one solution designed for inbound marketing. The platform comes with valuable insights to measure and improve your campaigns. Some of its features include landing pages, ad management, conversational bots, forms, and live chat.
And best of all, it’s free to get started. It comes with a pay-as-you-grow model to make it more affordable for startups and small businesses. Once you’re ready to start paying, $45/mo or $540/yr.
Drift
Speaking to your website visitors in real-time drives engagement and potential conversions. This is possible using Drift’s live chat tool. It’s ideal, especially with the rise of conversational marketing. But it doesn’t just enable you to communicate with leads in real-time.
It also offers a calendar scheduling feature to book calls and meetings with prospects. The platform also enhances account-based marketing by aligning sales and marketing data. This helps build personalized conversations for different groups.
There’s also Drift Video, which empowers you to start conversations using visual content. In other words, there are plenty of ways to use this platform to enhance your lead-generating efforts.
You can test it out by requesting a demo. Then plans start at $400/mo for the Pro and $1,500/mo for more advanced automation features.
Which tool is best for generating candidate leads?
The best tool for generating candidate leads is LinkedIn. This platform is excellent for professional niches. It is the most effective tool that HRs need to perform recruitment.
Conclusion
Lead generation isn’t a trick. It’s not something you do to make bucks. It’s the process of interacting with your prospects in order to collect contact details, distinguish you from the competition and establish a relationship that will hopefully convert into sales.
Any company needs to generate leads to stay in business. Since the importance of generating high-quality leads cannot be overstated, lead generation tools are becoming more important. Lead generation tools are necessary for businesses to effectively promote and maintain their brand. For any business, there are numerous free lead generation tools available. However, not every tool is perfect for your website or brand.