Every business needs leads. Without a robust way to fill your pipeline, your business will grind to a halt and fail. Lead generation tools seek to help you solve that problem.
We’ve selected the 8 best lead generation tools for businesses of all shapes and sizes. These tools serve different, nuanced purposes, but their top-line aim is the same— generating leads.
Here we cover:
- Exploring sales databases to source your next leads.
- Using automation to maximize efficiency.
- Leveraging powerful AI tools to increase conversion opportunities.
Lead Generation 101
Lead generation can be broken down into four key areas. This segmentation of leads depends on how the leads are qualified.
- Service-qualified leads: When someone reaches out to you and says they are interested in a particular service you offer, they fall into this category. This could be through an outreach email enquiring, or they may have used your service through a free trial. These leads are prevalent for SaaS-based businesses.
- Product-qualified leads: Similar to service-qualified leads, product-qualified leads rely on interest in a product. These leads come to light when a consumer gets involved in a product trial or enquires about a tailored version of your product. The latter offers a great insight into why they might be considering your product and the pain points they may have.
- Marketing-qualified leads: When a lead reaches out following marketing activity, they are categorized as a marketing-qualified lead. They may complete a survey following clicking on an ad. They might engage with a social media post. They could reply to an email campaign. These leads are often higher up the funnel than the last two categories but are still worth exploring.
- Sales-qualified leads: These are some of the hottest leads. They have begun to ask sales-based questions or have expressed a desire to purchase your offering. If a lead begins to ask about price, explores pricing options, or asks for price comparisons, they become a sales-qualified lead.
Each tool on our list will help you generate leads from one or more of these four categories. They are designed to help you connect with high-quality, qualified leads. Some will help you to create a culture of high engagement. Others will reduce the manual admin attributed to lead generation through automation.
Sales Lead Generation Tools
Our first category is the batch of tools most people associate with lead generation. The sales databases. The tools have vast databases of contact details and information. They let you fill an outreach campaign and start guiding people to your products and services.
Instantly
Instantly fits into multiple categories on this list, but the B2B lead finder sits proudly in the sales lead generation software section. With Instantly, you can explore a database of over 160 million contacts. The beauty is you don’t even have to do that manually. Using AI-powered workflows, you can quickly find leads and lookalike leads within minutes.
One of the issues with lead databases is that the leads may not be verified. That means you’re paying for useless contact information. That’s not the case with Instantly. You only ever pay for verified leads. That means you can be sure that when you reach out, you’re likely to make a connection.
The search process is straightforward, thanks to the advanced filtering system. You can explore precisely the kind of leads you want to work with. Once you’ve got the leads, it’s time to contact them. The integration with Instantly’s email marketing tool is seamless. It takes a few clicks, and your list is integrated into your automated email campaign. Outreach couldn’t be simpler.
The email system itself maximizes your chance of success through a number of advanced tools. It starts with the AI-powered email warm-up. This ensures that your emails reach as many inboxes as possible without the risk of going to junk. You won’t find yourself asking, “Why are my emails going to spam?”
When you’re ready to start sending your campaign, all you have to do is create a workflow and Instantly does the rest. The entire campaign is automated. You can keep an eye on progress through the intuitive, detailed analytics suite.
Pricing Tiers:
Growth: $37/month
Hypergrowth: $97/month
Leads
Growth leads: $47/month
Hypergrowth: $197/month
Light Speed: $492/month
Free Trial: Available for both tiers.
G2 Rating: 4.9 Stars from 1,918 reviews.
Snov.io
Snov.io is a complete sales platform with full CRM capabilities and a comprehensive sales toolkit. This could be a good option if you don’t have a particularly heavy tech stack and need a tool to fill multiple roles at once.
Alongside the CRM system (that users report is simple to set up), you can also use tools such as email warmup and a technology checker. The technology checker allows you to investigate the technographics of a business. This adds a layer of potential personalization that goes above and beyond the usual fare.
Pricing Tiers:
Trial: Free
Starter: Starts at $30 per month
Pro: Starts at $75 per month
Managed: Starts at $3,999 per month
Free Trial: Snov.io presents a free trial as a freemium version of the product.
G2 Rating: 4.6 stars from 366 reviews
Global Database
Global Database offers exactly what it says in the name: a huge database of over 250 million companies worldwide. You can access their database through advanced filtering before exporting leads to your choice of software. There are a number of native integrations, but it is worth checking to ensure that your tech stack matches up before committing.
The filtering on the database is more advanced than some other options. You can narrow your search based on features such as credit risk, digital presence, and even market position.
Technically minded businesses can leverage Global Database through their API. That means you could create an application that harvests their data for an individualized sales and marketing process.
Pricing Tiers:
No information is available. You need to request a quote following a meeting with a sales rep.
Free Trial: No free trial is available.
G2 Rating: 4.6 Rating from 38 reviews.
Landing Page Builders and Lead Capture
You’ve sourced your prospects and are ready to launch a marketing campaign. That campaign needs to lead somewhere. Typically, that’s either your website or a specifically built landing page. Once there, you need to capture the lead’s details. These tools offer the solution.
Unbounce
Unbounce has recently developed its platform to harness the power of AI. Now, with just a few clicks and prompts, you’re able to create landing pages in a matter of minutes. These pages are designed based on the metrics of thousands of historical pages. Meaning your campaigns have the highest chance of converting and capturing your leads.
Alongside the landing page builder, Unbounce also offers popups and sticky bars for your website and an AI copywriter to help you get your pages launched quicker.
One of the standout features is Smart Traffic. This feature uses AI learning to send visitors to the landing page which is most likely to convert based on previous customers with similar attributes.
Pricing Tiers:
Build: $99 per month
Experiment: $149 per month
Optimize: $249 per month
Concierge: Starts at $649 per month
Free Trial: Users are able to access a free trial at any of the first three tiers of pricing immediately. If you’re keen to try the Concierge tier, then you’ll need to contact their sales team.
G2 Rating: 4.4 stars from 359 reviews
ClickFunnels
ClickFunnels is the brainchild of Russell Brunson. Russell is a high-profile influencer in the eCommerce space, and he deems a lot of that success to be down to ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels is a marketing system that includes a plethora of tools.
The main focus is capturing leads and sending them further down your sales funnel toward conversion. Those tools include:
- Sales funnel builder
- Website creation
- Landing pages
- Online course creation
- Email marketing
- Workflows
- Smart checkout
One of the major draws of ClickFunnels is the community that goes with it. Thousands of business owners regularly attend webinars and engage with each other online. That’s especially appealing to startups or entrepreneurs near the start of their journey.
Pricing Tiers:
Basic: $147 per month
Pro: $197 per month
Funnel Hacker: $297 per month while on sale. Normal price: $497 per month.
Free Trial: Every tier gives 14 days of free trial access.
G2 Rating: 4.6 stars from 391 reviews
Sales Process Automation
Any business working at scale requires some automation of its sales process. Without it, your sales team is doomed to spend hours and hours of their week on menial tasks. Using the following tools reduces that impact so they can focus on speaking with leads and closing sales.
IFTTT
IFTTT means “If this, then that.” That’s a reference to conditional logic that creates automated workflows. The possibilities for using this system feel almost endless. For lead generation, it can automate much of the administrative process. For instance, if someone submits a contact form on your website, then they are immediately added to your CRM system.
The tool is incredibly accessible. You don’t need to have any coding experience at all. They’ve even created app versions for both Apple and Android. The newly launched AI center provides another level of automation, including a daily Slack update that summarizes all of the messages from the day.
Pricing Tiers:
Free: The free tier allows you to create two applets with limited ability.
Pro: $3 per month - 20 applets
Pro+: $14.99 per month.
Free Trial: Paid tiers off a free trial.
G2 Rating: 4.6 stars from 111 reviews
Zapier
Zapier is very similar to IFTTT but has considerably more native integrations. There are very few major software tools that Zapier cannot connect to. Where it can’t, you can use code to create manual “Zaps.”
Alongside automation, Zapier offers some of its own tools in the form of Interfaces and Tables. Interfaces allows you to design forms, landing pages, and even apps. Tables is your data center, with any collected lead data ending here. Then, through the power of Zaps, you can connect everything. For example:
- A lead is collected through an Interfaces form
- The lead is added to a lead tracker in Tables
- Once an email is sent from Tables, a Zap sends that information to your CRM and adds the contact to your email drip campaign.
Pricing Tiers:
Zaps
Free: Create unlimited Zaps with up to 2 steps
Starter: $29.99 per month - Multi-step Zaps
Professional: $73.50 per month
Team: $103.50 per month - adds unlimited users
Company: Pricing on request
Tables and Interfaces have their own separate pricing structure. They both include a free tier and subsequent paid levels.
Free Trial: Through the free tier.
G2 Rating: 4.5 stars from 1243 reviews
Live Chat
Engaging with your prospects when they’re right there on your website can dramatically increase conversion. You’re able to handle objections immediately and prove your customer service ability.
Intercom
Intercom allows your team to talk with visitors directly through your website. They have, as many tools have on this list, integrated an AI version of their product.
The new version of Intercom includes a shared inbox with conversation summaries. It can also access your knowledge base to assist customers instantly should an agent be unavailable. If the AI can’t help, there’s a seamless transition between the bot and a human.
Then, everything is connected through Workflows using the same sort of logic as IFTTT or Zapier.
Pricing Tiers:
Zaps
Essential: $39 per seat per month
Advanced: $99 per seat per month
Expert: $139 per seat per month
Free Trial: 14-day trial
G2 Rating: 4.5 stars from 2952 reviews
Key Takeaways
Each of these lead generation tools helps you fill your pipeline. Then, you can convert those leads into paying customers. Integrate them into your tech stack, and you’ll benefit from increased effectiveness and efficiency.
- As leads are generated, segment them to maximize tailored outreach opportunities.
- Leverage automation to reduce the time your sales team spends on admin.
- These tools will help you to generate leads, but you need to ensure your content and communication facilitate success.
Instantly offers both a vast database of leads and a sophisticated email marketing tool. What’s more, the two seamlessly work together to maximize your conversion opportunities. Get started today.
