Free lead generation tools are the best for small businesses. The benefit of using this type of generation tool is that you can get fabulous and meaningful information about your target customers. Lead generation tools provide a stable platform for a small business to enter new markets and gain more clients. A lead generator is an online tool that helps organize and understand information about consumers. Information, such as names, email address, preferences, behavioral patterns and much more can be collected with the use of a lead generator.
A lead generation company produces leads to help local business find more customers. These leads can come in the form of a phone call or email. Small businesses hire lead generation companies to improve their sales. The purpose of this guide is to inform viewers about small business lead generation companies and how it will benefit them.
There are a number of companies dedicated to helping small businesses succeed. Lead generation companies for small businesses make it possible for businesses of all sizes to find new potential customers and can provide the ultimate boost in sales, leads and online exposure that any company needs to ensure its success.
When it comes to lead generation, many small businesses face the problem of not knowing which lead generation companies they can trust. However, lead generation isn’t something you need to think twice before engaging in. That’s because there are free and low cost tools that allow you to generate leads.
How to Find the Best Lead Generation Company and Service For Your Business
Finding the best lead generation service for your business might seem overwhelming. But there are certain factors that you can use to assist with your decision-making process.
This is our methodology for narrowing down your options:
Niche-Specific Leads
Stay away from lead generation companies that are for “everyone.” You won’t be able to get the most qualified and accurate leads this way. Some services specialize in B2B, while others are better for small businesses and B2C organizations.
Look for a lead generation company that has experience in your industry. Whether it’s technology, healthcare, or retail, look for a service in your niche.
Lead Generation Process
Lead generation methodology is not created equally. Every service seems to have a unique twist on how they come up with leads. You should pick a company based on how you want to have your leads delivered.
Some organizations will simply provide you with a list of leads and contact information. Other services take the extra step by contacting those leads and setting appointments for you.
There are lead generation companies that provide PaaS (people-as-a-service), which essentially means you’re outsourcing a full-time lead generation staff.
Do you just want leads delivered? Or do you want lead scoring data and lead nurturing assistance? These are the types of questions you need to ask yourself when evaluating a company’s lead generation process.
Competitive Price
Unfortunately, most lead generation services do not post their prices online. That’s because they offer a unique quote based on your custom needs.
So you might want to get a quote from at least a couple of your top considerations. The price needs to be reasonable and fit within your budget. Otherwise, the lead generation service could negatively impact your ROI.
Some companies offer flexible pricing options. You might only pay for qualified leads. Others will bill you on a monthly or contract basis per campaign.
Reputation
Every lead generation service is going to do a great job of selling themselves on their website. But you should do some digging on your own before you make a final decision.
Look up case studies, customer reviews, and testimonials to learn how that organization has actually helped businesses generate leads. If you can’t find that information online, you should consider looking for an alternative service.
Growbots
Know the market you want to target? Just tell Growbots, and it will choose your best prospects from a database of more than 200 million contacts separated by industry.
With Growbots, you can quickly contact the right decision-makers and follow up automatically.
Growbots also includes testing so you can check which approaches are most effective.
Key Features:
- Access to over 100 million contacts
- Only pay for the leads that fit your business
- Self-updating database
- Email marketing capabilities, including automation
Pricing: Growbots’ pricing starts at $49/month for their Outreach plan and goes up to $199/month for the All-in-One package.
Overloop
Overloop is a CRM with a special focus on email address prospecting, conversations, pipelines, and workflows.
A drag and drop dashboard helps you see all of your pipelines at a glance, giving you an excellent business overview.
Overloop’s automation is also built on a visual dashboard, so you can put your sales prospecting on autopilot. Best of all, it integrates with a range of services to get contact information automatically.
Key Features:
- Find email addresses either individually or in bulk
- Turn these emails into cold emails, all in the same tool
- Track email campaigns with in-depth data
- Automated workflows reduce repetitive tasks
Pricing: Overloop is free to start as a CRM. Starting with email automation and tracking is $70/month. Email finder credits start at $39/month for 250 credits, ranging to $299/month for 10,000 credits.
HubSpot
HubSpot is one of the world’s top CRMs available. While they offer a wide variety of tools, one of the top uses of HubSpot is its email marketing services.
With HubSpot, you can create stunning conversion-ready emails while also learning from valuable insights and reports into how your emails perform with your customers.
HubSpot can be one of your best assets when it comes to sales and marketing.
Key Features:
- Easy-to-use platform
- Separate hubs let your focus on the areas your business needs, all in one tool
- Live chat functionality
- Email template, scheduling, tracking, and engagement tools
Pricing: HubSpot offers a free CRM with valuable tools. Their paid plans are for their marketing, sales, customer service, CMS, and operations hubs, which start at $45/month.
Pardot
Pardot is a well-known lead generation tool that helps you manage and qualify sales leads. By qualifying leads, you can rest assured that you’re always talking to the best leads.
Pardot includes fine-grained segmentation and marketing automation for better communication with your future customers.
There are also tools within Pardot to help you with landing page design, embedding forms, and email management.
Key Features:
- Lead nurturing and qualification tools help you find the best potential customers
- Detailed data that lets you customize the user experience
- Separate tools based on industry
Pricing: Pardot’s pricing ranges from $1,250/month for their Growth plan, $2,500 for their Plus plan, and $4,000 for their Advanced package.
Global Database
Pricing: Available upon request, customizable by the number of regions and industries and other individual requirements.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars via G2
Global Database offers verified and up-to-date business information through an online platform with an advanced filtering system. You can get contact data of the companies matching your ideal lead profile, with a certain financial state, credit risk, position on the market, or digital presence. All you need is to pick various criteria according to your expectations or use one of the integrated workflow solutions provided by the company.
Sumo
Pricing: Free, Paid plans start at $49/month
Rating: 4/5 stars on GetApp (Based on 7 reviews)
Sumo is one of the most popular tools for listing, building, and capturing emails on your site. The tool offers popups, slide-in popups, and welcome mats (a popup email opt-in that covers an entire page).
The tool also has an option for a floating social share bar on your site and heat maps for figuring out where visitors are clicking on your site. The tool can be used for free (with Sumo branding on popups and the social share bar).
ConvertPlus
Pricing: Paid WordPress Plugin for $23 one-time fee
Rating: N/A
ConvertPlus is another tool for displaying popup forms on your website. However, instead of a SaaS solution, this tool is offered as a WordPress plugin.
It has many of the same features as Sumo, including timed popups, percentage of the page scrolled popups, exit popups, etc. It can be a good tool for companies using WordPress that can’t invest in a monthly SaaS tool.
MailChimp
Pricing: Free, paid plans start at $9.99/month
Rating: 4.5/5 stars on GetApp (Based on 2295 reviews)
MailChimp is one of the most popular and easiest-to-use email marketing platforms out today. One of its best features is its intuitive, easy-to-use drag-and-drop email builder. MailChimp also offers email automation. The platform can be used for free to store up to 2,000 email contacts and send out 12,000 emails/month. After that, paid plans start at $14/month.
Survey Anyplace
Best For: Surveys, quizzes, and personalized personality tests.
Integrations: Yes
Survey Anyplace is a CRO tool to boost customer engagement and lead generation with surveys, quizzes, and personality assessments to generate new leads. It adds value to your surveys and quizzes with personalized results to drive maximum visitor engagement.
How to Use Survey Anyplace to Generate New Leads?
- Create personalized personality quizzes, marketing questionnaires, lead generation quizzes, and surveys.
- Provide extra motivation for customers to take your surveys and quizzes by providing a useful result at the end of completing it. It can be a score, advice, maturity level, or personality type.
- Send the personalized result and advise via email or auto-generated pdf report.
- Embed the questionnaire and survey on any device, i.e., iOS or Android phone or tablet, native app, Facebook page, web app, and other compatible devices to maximize customer engagement and lead generation.
- Integrate the tool with your CRM tool to export the data and pursue the prospects.
Pros
- Provides the option to upload images for respondents to visualize and reproduce the issues.
- Provides excellent design flexibility with custom CSS.
- Offers more complex skip logic options than other tools to scout the best leads.
- You can create scored surveys as well.
Cons
- Certain features like multi-language support and custom CSS are locked into higher price tiers.
Price: Starts at 33/month
Hellobar
Best For: Sticky bar and banner on the website
Suited For: Small to medium businesses
Integrations: Yes
Hello Bar is a relatively simple lead generation tool than the others discussed in the list. However, it effectively draws visitors’ attention and prompts them to take action, such as clicking on CTAs and filling out the survey forms.
How Does Hello Bar Act as a Lead Generation Tool:
- The Hello Bar widget adds an unobtrusive sticky banner on the top or bottom of your website.
- You can customize the message and CTA on the bar to increase visitors’ actions.
- Prompt visitors to subscribe to the mailing list and fill out forms to collect new leads.
- Add product announcements to attract customers and increase conversions.
- Add incentives, such as free pdf, ebooks, or discounts to motivate people to fill out the survey forms.
- Use geo-targeting to target specific audiences from desired locations.
Pros
- The non-intrusive alert bar is a fantastic feature for targeted lead generation.
- Provides advanced audience targeting to help to target the right visitors.
Cons
- Lacks other features like surveys and feedback provided by other tools at a similar price.
Price: Free basic Plan. Paid plan starts at $29/month
Unbounce
Best For: Landing page optimization, forms, pop-ups, and sticky bars.
Integrations: Yes
Use Unbounce for lead generation and to bring your website alive with exciting landing pages, forms, and sticky bars to prompt user action and increase engagement.
How to Use Unbounce as a Lead Generation Tool:
- Create and optimize beautiful landing pages using drag-&-drop landing page builder and 100+ templates to drive visitor engagement and reduce bounce rate.
- Create and embed lead forms, opt-in, popup, and sticky bars on your website to collect visitor information.
- You can launch popups and sticky bars when visitors arrive on a page, abandon a page, click an element, scroll down, or whenever you want.
- It also supports A/B testing. Experiment with messaging, UI design, and forms to validate what works for your visitors and what doesn’t.
- Real-time data dashboard to check how your pages and tests are performing.
- Integrate with other tools, such as Google Analytics, Slack, etc.
Pros
- Inbuilt website analytics engine is very flexible and simpler to set up than Google Analytics goals.
- The SmartCopy feature is helpful for both newcomers and experienced users to write focused page content.
- Plus, the team actively works on your feedback and suggestions.
Cons
- Many essential features are only available after mid-tier plans, making the tool expensive.
- You cannot A/B test the pages created outside Unbounce, limiting this feature’s use.
Price: Starts at $80/month
How We Evaluated the Best Lead Generation Companies
To determine the top lead generation companies and the best-for scenarios of each, we evaluated the services offered and how effective each provider is at generating leads, qualifying them, and setting appointments. We also evaluated other things important to sales-forward businesses like supplemental services, pricing, customer support, and our firsthand experience as to the ease of working with the lead generation company or using the platform.
Conclusion
Small businesses have a lot to keep track of. You need to make sure your finances are in order, that you’re hitting all of your sales goals, and basically running your business like an actual company. Advertising is one of the most expensive hurdles small businesses face, so the challenge is to find the tools that work for you without breaking the bank.
Nothing is more important to the success of a small business than new leads. You could have the best product, service or website in the world, but if you don’t have people contacting you to buy it, you’re bound to fail. In this video, I’ve listed a few lead generation companies that small businesses can use to attract new clients.