Paying customers—that’s how businesses make money. The first step to getting paying customers is through lead acquisition.
From a macro perspective, generating leads is as simple as using XYZ strategies. Here’s where most people get it wrong, though. Many focus too much on lead-generation strategies.
Only a few businesses focus on where leads are sourced.
You could do email marketing all the live long day. But are the leads validated? Are they relevant to your industry? Did you get your email list from a trusted vendor?
Beyond strategies, we need to emphasize where to find leads. That’s what we’re here to help you with. By the end of this guide, you’ll be able to understand:
- The importance of a lead source
- Where to find leads manually
- Where to find leads using automated tools
- Outreach strategies fit for each lead source
- Best practices to consider
The Importance of Quality Lead Sources
If you’re ever in a lead generation community on Facebook or Reddit, you’ll see tons of people selling leads. Post about how you need leads, and you’ll have DMs flooded.
Email lists can be cheap. There’s a reason many sell them in bulk. It becomes a quantity over quality issue. You’d need to run your lead lists through validation tools.
Even if an email is valid, there’s no guarantee that it's active. Emailing these types of leads can lead to detrimental effects on your deliverability and bounce rates.
But you don’t need to worry about these issues if you get leads from trusted, quality, and vetted sources. So, where exactly do we find these leads?
Where to Find Quality Leads?
There’s a surplus of quality leads. You just need to know where to find them. If you want to find leads manually, here are our recommended sources:
LinkedIn is among the best places to find quality leads across multiple industries. You can connect with leads through the platform, engage with their content, or find company emails.
If you have a Premium account, you gain access to advanced search filters. There are filtering options for job positions, companies, and even hashtags.
But if you don’t upgrade to a premium account, we recommend searching by industry. Get a list of companies in your niche and do your research.
Facebook Communities
Facebook communities are a gold mine for finding leads. There will always be a community on the platform within your industry. Join one of those and network with the people.
Don’t just sell your services outright. Provide value, be an authority, or help out beginners. Doing so helps you stay top-of-mind. When a member finally needs help, you’ll be first on their list.
Just remember, spamming DMs to every community member will likely get you banned. Wait for the opportunity to present your services and give your best pitch.
We live in a world where people want to be brands, and brands want to be people. Regardless of what they want to be, Twitter has made it easier for us to reach out to both.
It can be a great lead-generation tool thanks to its advanced search features. You can filter out Tweets based on the minimum likes or retweets to reach out to somebody more authoritative.
All you need to do is get creative and hone in on your buyer personas and what they could be Tweeting about.
People go to Reddit to find authentic and organic opinions on various topics. For example, many go to Google just to search “how to do lead generation Reddit” and find answers there.
A lot of us trust the people on Reddit. Just a quick glance at their accounts, and you’ll know if they’re a quality lead you’d want to reach out to.
Like Facebook, Reddit has millions of communities. You can join everything from B2B SaaS all the way to gardening. Each subreddit has thousands of potential leads.
Just remember to provide value and engage first. Shilling your services will also end up with your accounts banned.
Slack
Joining a Slack group in your niche or industry is a game changer. It’s one of the best platforms to network. The difficult part is finding a channel that’s not filled with people trying to market their own services.
Another option is creating your Slack channel and inviting your customers to join. You can share content that provides value to customers, encourages engagement, and helps spread word-of-mouth.
Referrals
Customers trust their peers more than any advertisement. That’s why referrals are such an invaluable lead source. Referrals mean there’s trust established from your previous customer.
According to studies, referral leads are 30% more likely to convert than other marketing efforts. So, be sure to include referral strategies like incentivizing referrals or giving discounts.
Former Clients
There’s a lot of nurturing that goes into acquiring a new customer. With your former clients, that trust is already established. You’ve already proven that they’re a quality lead.
So, why not re-engage? Reach out with a quick email. Ask how they’re doing and if they ever need your services again.
If you already have a list of former clients you want to reach out to, try using sales engagement tools to streamline your re-engagement campaigns.
Tools To Help You Find Quality Leads
Finding leads manually is great for personalizing outreach as you get to go in-depth with your research. However, we need automation to sustain healthy lead pipelines and scale. Here are the tools we recommend that can help you find quality leads.
Instantly B2B Lead Finder
With Instantly B2B Lead Finder, you don’t have to worry about quality over quantity. You gain access to over 160 million verified leads.
Find leads using the advanced search features. Filter out leads by job position, company size, location, and industry. You can also use keywords to zero in on a specific niche.
The best part is you don’t have to use multiple tools for your outreach campaigns. After building your email list, you can automatically run outreach campaigns.
If you’re unsure how to start cold email marketing, here’s a guide you can check out.
Apollo
Apollo is one of the go-to lead finder tools for many marketers. They have their own validation tools. However, most would recommend using a third-party validation tool like Neverbounce.
Users can use advanced search filters to find leads that fit their buyer personas, search based on annual revenue, and gain access to AI-powered lead scoring.
Their lead-scoring features are rather new. So, if you want to get more hands-on, try lead qualification methods like BANT.
Email Scrapers
Email scrapers help you collect publicly available lead information on a website. There are even scrapers built specifically for certain platforms.
For example, Scrapy Bird is a B2B lead scraper made for Twitter. Octopus CRM has its own built-in LinkedIn scraper tools. GMaps Extractor scrapes businesses found on Google Maps.
No matter which one you use, be sure to have them validated. Also, ensure that you’re scraping publicly available information to avoid any legal woes down the line.
Snov.io
Snov isn’t just an email scraper tool—it's also a CRM. It can help users streamline entire sales processes, manage lead pipelines, verify emails, and run outreach campaigns.
One of the more impressive features Snov has is its ability to find the tech stack your leads are using. This is essential, especially if you’re trying to do an A/B comparison with your product.
LinkedIn scraping is also one of the areas Snov excels at. You can get a Chrome extension to store lead data straight from the platform.
ZoomInfo
ZoomInfo is a great Apollo alternative. It boasts a robust database of millions of B2B leads, features to streamline lead outreach, and AI-powered business insights.
Not only can you find leads with ZoomInfo, but you also get data-driven strategies for approaching each lead. You can even use it to stay up-to-date with high-value prospects.
They have a feature called “Scoops” that creates a newsfeed of your prospects. With the information you get, you’ll be more than ready to send exceptionally personalized emails.
Cognism
The best sales cadence involves multichannel communication. You’d want to combine email, call, and text for more effective outreach. Cognism does just that.
Not only can you find a lead’s email, but you also get their mobile numbers. The tool also boasts a 98% mobile phone number accuracy, so you can immediately start outreach.
Plus, Cognism can be integrated with various CRMs, including Salesforce, SalesLoft, and Hubspot. More importantly, pricing is tailored depending on your unique business needs.
Seamless AI
Seamless AI acts as both a lead finder and a sales enablement tool. You can get their prospecting tool for free for Chrome to collect lead data like emails and phone numbers.
Your sales team can also focus on managing campaigns thanks to their AI-powered writing assistant. Email copy, marketing, and sales messaging all get a unified voice.
Key Takeaways
If you want to know where to find leads, start understanding where quality leads can come from. Then, use automation tools to help you streamline lead data collection. As a quick recap, here’s what we recommend:
- Use Instantly B2B Finder to get verified leads that fit your buyer personas
- Apollo is great for finding leads, but your lists aren't auto-validated
- Email Scrapers like Scrapy Bird can be used to parse B2B emails from Twitter
- Snov and ZoomInfo are excellent at providing detailed lead information
- Cognism and Seamless AI act as both lead finders and sales enablement tools
A common issue lead finders have is a lack of verification features. With Instantly B2B Finder, you’re ensured that each lead is verified and fits your qualifications. Try it out for free today!