Like all things sales and marketing tech-related, there’s an ever-expanding supply of options. Rather than inundate you with a list of 100 of the best B2B lead generation tools, we’re going to keep it focused. Here are the top eight tools we’re digging for generating new business leads in 2020. Eight, not a hundred.
Long time fans and users of Unbounce, they’ve significantly expanded the platform beyond landing pages. For organization’s who maybe lack design and/or tech resources, Unbounce makes lead capture easy peezy. With a diverse set of integrations, you can connect it to email platforms and other tools to build a marketing stack if you don’t have an all in one platform, like #2.
When you’re ready to scale and want a more unified view of your lead generation activity, Hubspot is the way to go. As they’ve expanded their product line up from a marketing tool to a platform for marketing, sales, and support, it offers tools from lead generation all the way through your customer journey. But even just getting started with some of the free marketing and sales tools will help ramp up your b2b lead generation efforts in 2020. For example, use forms and live chat on the free version of marketing to immediately start converting some of your website visitors.
For sales teams taking a targeted, account based approach, LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a must-have lead generation tool. One of the features I find the most useful is the account and lead recommendations. As you interact with and tell Sales Navigator what kind of leads and accounts you’re interested in, it surfaces new contacts and accounts that are similar but might not have been on your account based targeting list. It’s a great way to expand your scope with the accounts you can truly add value to instead of randomly selling to anyone with a pulse.
There is nothing more annoying than trying to schedule meetings back and forth with someone. Calendly eliminates all the back and forth – but it also makes it easier to open up your calendar to potential prospects, referral partners and others who can bring value to your network. Setting aside a time for “office hours” and making that meeting link available opens you up to letting potential partners book time with you in a far more convenient way for everyone – and easily generate a lead.
Video is a hot topic these days – and for good reason. It’s a far more engaging and easily consumed form of content. When it comes to lead generation, personalizing outreach has a significant impact on improving response rate. My favorite tool for this is Vidyard. It makes personalized video super easy to produce and distribute. Don’t worry – you don’t need to be Scorcese – just get started.
Depending on what you sell, generating B2B leads with Meetup could be your new secret weapon. Here’s how – find events and meetups related to your topic, in your area. Reach out to the organizer and see if they are looking for speakers. Many times – they’re open to it and it’s an easy way to get in front of an interested audience of potential buyers. Other options, if you’re a product and you need focus groups or beta users, you can find meetups that are often willing to share these kind of opportunities with their members. Do some research and see what groups are already getting together and how you can add value but increase your awareness.
Keeping track of buying signals in your target accounts, verticals etc. can be a nightmare. Maybe you’ve set up a bunch of Google Alerts that have now been relegated to a folder in your inbox that you never actually check. Maybe you have an intern putting together a spreadsheet. Alternatively, you could setup feeds in Feedly to monitor accounts or industries to identify opportunities for reaching out with your b2b leads. Feedly goes with you on your phone and makes checking updates on the go a lot easier too.
As you’re looking to generate leads and find prospect information, there are additional tools that can help. AeroLeads is an easy way to find prospects and their information from platforms like LinkedIn, AngelList, Crunchbase, Xing, etc. You can find the right audience, prospective business emails, contact numbers, company details, and more, all by using their Chrome extension.
9. Respona
Respona brings outreach all into one platform to help drive links from blogs and influencers as part of a marketing strategy to drive highly relevant traffic to your website.
Methodology for Best B2B Lead Generation Tools of 2021
I realize there are a lot of tools out there, but this list focuses on helping salespeople do more of what they want to – selling and less of what they don’t – managing tools. That said, we’re looking at tools that help scale activity, make prospecting better and help drive b2b lead pipeline. We also love to hear about new tools so leave a comment if there’s something you think fits this criteria.
