Exploring lead generation software is all about finding the right fit for you and the service you’re offering. CRM, deciding whether to use a landing page popup—it’s all well and good.
But until you can drive leads into your business, you’re really just dancing around one basic fact: you need more leads who are willing to pay your business to do something for them.
There are all sorts of tools you can use to explore lead generation. For example, the best AI content writing software can help you optimize your site with lots of content, potentially drawing in leads. But let’s rewind back to the beginning. What are the specific lead generation tools that can help you, and how do they do it?
And just as importantly, how can you optimize these tools for the greatest chance of success? Below, we’ll look at some of the best lead generation tools, how they work, and explore how you can make them work for you—even while you sleep.
What Are Lead Generation Tools?
Lead generation tools are the templates, automations, and drag-and-drop builder tools that you can use to handle inbound traffic and turn web visitors into potential leads. In the world of “lead gen” marketing, it helps if you can convert some of your traffic into people who are calling you and asking you about the services you offer. That process is the simplest form of describing lead generation.
It will be up to you to put these systems in place—and we’ll talk about some ways you can do that after this list. But lead generation tools can encompass a wide variety of marketing automation software that helps you discover, convert, and drive qualified leads to your business. They’re especially important for small businesses who may have a lot of subscribers to their newsletter, or lots of followers on Twitter, but not enough of those visitors turning into leads.
With that, let’s dive in to some of our favorite tools.
What are the Best Lead Generation Tools?
1. Unbounce
Unbounce is a landing page platform and builder powered by AI, which helps you turn incoming visitors into incoming leads. Yes, you read that right—AI, as in artificial intelligence. How does that factor into what Unbounce does? How does it impact the landing pages you create? Here’s a brief guide.
Unbounce uses a process called smart copy to automate much of the process of creating these landing pages. With just a few manual inputs of your own writing, the AI takes over. It uses a “Write more” button which then extends the paragraphs you created.
The nicest thing about this feature is that you can review the copy. It’s also pre-formatted to work for those scanning Internet users who don’t want giant blocks of text, but rather short and impactful writing.
If that was all Unbounce did, it would be an interesting resource. But it’s an entire landing page builder. Yes, the AI works with Unbounce’s data-backed tools to help you avoid hiring an expensive copywriter and build something that can immediately begin generating leads for you. As lead management tools goes, it’s marketing software that’s virtually unparalleled in ease of use.
Further reading 📚
2. Wisepops
Popups are great for lead generation—but not when they get in the way of basic web functionality. Enter Wisepops, which offers “intelligent” website popups. What’s so intelligent about it all? These are contextual popups, which help you turn your website into a lead generation platform with all the slickness of a slide-in, rather than a distraction. In other words, Wisepops gets your customers’ attention without making them want to bounce.
The popup design features here include exit popups, simple notifications, and other templates designed to appeal to a web-savvy target audience. For example, cart abandonment can trigger a “going so soon?” popup that adds to the overall stickiness of your website.
Any SaaS that offers you slide-in popups is going to raise a few alarm bells. Won’t you have some visitors bouncing? Aren’t you going to annoy them? Why go through all the work of attracting people via Google Ads and subscribing for heat maps software if you’re just going to blast people with popups?
The answer: you have to do it right. And Wisepops is one solution that can help you do that.
3. Apollo.io
Maybe you don’t want something as specific as website popups. Featuring a free version, as well as different pricing options for single entrepreneurs and startups, Apollo.io is more of a full-service lead nurturing solution.
It can help you grab potential prospects by searching popular sites like LinkedIn. It can help you run lead generation campaigns that capture their attention. Then, with prospecting and a sales funnel, you can run your lead generation service almost like it’s a customer support platform—responding to people, managing potential leads, and juggling everything that comes with it.
At the heart of the best lead generation tools is your ability to manage your customer relationship. With Apollo.io, you’ll be able to use a form builder experience to generate what might feel like a cold email to every prospect. But you’ll also have a method of capturing them when they become inbound leads. It will also give you the workflows to deal with the incoming leads in an organized way—which reflects well on the services your company offers.
4. Optinmonster
Sometimes, the goal isn’t to turn a visitor into a lead right away—at least not in a serious, about-to-make-a-purchase sense. Allowing your customers to opt-in to something you offer is one way to turn them into a potential lead. It makes for a stickier web presence, capturing more of the audience who visits your site.
Optinmonster is all about that opt-in. Full of automation tools that help you get the most of all the hard SEO work you've been doing, it’s one of the best lead generation tools because it makes your website far more appealing for first-time visitors. On offer here are features like:
- Lightbox popups
- Floating bars
- Scroll boxes
- Gamified wheels
- Page level targeting
- Geolocation targeting
…and that’s just scratching the surface. Think of Optinmonster as a way to streamline the entire lead capture process by making your website something of an automated lead capturing machine. The central goal here is to use your website as a complete sales funnel, essentially making it one giant landing page to capture lead data. You may not convert every customer, but you’ll have one large list of potential customers ready.
5. ConvertPro
What if you like the ideas of these lead generation and referral tools, but need it to work with a marketing platform that’s more aligned with your blogging strategy? Enter WordPress—and with it, ConvertPro.
ConvertPro is a lead generation tool that’s built exclusively for WordPress. And though WordPress isn’t among the top CRM platforms you’ll read about—it’s a blogging platform after all—you may just come to find ConvertPro feels like the CRM tools you’ve come to expect.
With ConvertPro, there are plenty of tools for using templates, integrating tools like ActiveCampaign, or building an email list. It doesn’t function as an outgoing email finder quite like Apollo.io, but that’s not what you’re using it for. Although there isn’t a free version—and the annual pricing for ConvertPro is currently $87—and there isn’t a 14 day trial, you may just find out that after you buy it, you wonder how you ever ran a WordPress site without it.
6. OptiMonk
What’s the best way to handle lead generation? Most of us know intuitively that the best way to handle a new website visitor is to address them as personally as possible. But there isn’t always a Chrome extension or free tool that makes that possible.
OptiMonk gets pretty close. Featuring a free account option, OptiMonk features all sorts of nice personalized messaging that you can use to make customers feel unique—and bring them back to the point of being a lead. For example, their cart abandonment feature can use a secondary offer to incentivize people into coming back and still becoming a customer—more than a lead.
More than a plugin, and more than a lead scoring feature, OptiMonk’s M.O. is to make visitors feel valued—even if that simply means you do a little bribing to keep them around. Think of it as an automated lead generation tool because it makes it so unappealing to bounce from your site when your customers are unlocking secondary offers.
Further reading 📚
7. Leadfeeder
With a name like Leadfeeder, you know it has to be good at lead generation for B2B companies. But what are the distinguishing features that lands Leadfeeder on our list?
Essentially, Leadfeeder is adept at giving you more information about who’s visiting your website. Remember the old days of Google Analytics, when everything you needed was on-page and you could find out all sorts of things about the people clicking to your site? The paid plans at Leadfeeder feel like a time machine. Functioning like a pipedrive to your website, Leadfeeder gives you insights into who’s already visiting you.
Through Leadfeeder’s tools, you’ll be able to check out specifically which companies may be visiting you, as well. For that reason, you can view this as one of the key B2B lead gen tools on our list.
8. Lead Scrape
Leadfeeder is great if you want the software tools to help you decipher who’s visiting your website. But what if you want to scrape local leads for a more dedicated in-person business? For example, if you run a landscaping business, you may find it hard to get your first clients by using a common online marketing tool. SMS software, for example, won’t help you with your business if no one is there to give you their phone number.
Lead Scrape, on the other hand, helps you find the B2B companies that you need to reach out to. Not exactly a widget and more of the tip of the spear when it comes to your sales pipeline, it can be an invaluable tool for discovery. Before you try leadPages, before you try Shopify, before you try Qualaroo, before you try Hunter, before you try Datanyze, before you try anything, you have to know and identify your potential customers. That’s as true in the B2C market as it is in the B2B market. And for that reason, you might consider Lead Scrape an essential lead gen tool.
9. Cleverly
Get a lot of your leads through LinkedIn? Then it might be time to try Cleverly. It can work on top of LinkedIn Sales Navigator to provide you with data from thousands of B2B campaigns.
But Cleverly isn’t exactly the traditional software you’re used to, an implementation like Salesforce can sometimes be. Instead, Cleverly is a top agency for generating LinkedIn leads to help you create more of an inbound marketing pipeline for your B2B business.
10. ConvertCalculator
Calculator forms are powerful incentives and can result in ordinary web visitors becoming leads before they even realize what’s happening. But it doesn’t quite work if you don’t have a great calculator to put on your website and drive that traffic in the first place. ConvertCalculator, on the other hand, can provide exactly that.
In exchange for using a free calculator, your potential leads will be all too happy to sign up for your service. And while you don’t necessarily need relationship management software for it, you’ll likely find that the more calculators you put up, the more B2B relationships you’ll have to manage.
11. Autoklose
Email campaign management, targeted ads, A/B testing—Autoklose does a little bit of it all. Running as smoothly as Zapier does for your automations, Autoklose is ideal for those who have lists and want to make sure that they remain “sticky”—i.e., keep leads around—but don’t want to invest a lot of time for manual tweaking. Good marketing campaigns should be at least partially automatic, and that’s what Autoklose can bring to what you do.
12. Involve.me
Branding itself as “customer engagement software,” Involve.me is a tool for creating landing pages, widgets, and other lead-friendly content that you can plop on your website and immediately put to use.
Involve.me’s main M.O. is to get your web visitors active. When they’re engaged, they’re also incentivized. If they want to use a tool you have to offer, for example, they might be willing to trade their email address in exchange for that tool. Involve.me gets them engaged enough to think about becoming a lead—even if that wasn’t their initial intent.
Why Should You Also Incorporate the Best AI Content Writing Software?
You may remember that earlier in this list, there was some overlap between the best AI content writing software and what lead generation tools can do for you.
Think about why for a second. Let’s say you use MailChimp, for example, to keep all sorts of leads around in the form of a newsletter sign up. That’s great.
How do you automate lead capturing, then? You can incorporate AI content writing software and AI writing tools to get your campaign as automatic as possible.
Today’s AI content writing tools are especially adept at handling lead generation. They can use AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action) and other copywriting frameworks to bring people in, encourage them to click on your calls to action, and ultimately, become genuine leads.
And the best part? You don’t necessarily have to lift a finger to do any of it. Not if you outsource to great AI writing tools.
To find out more about those, be sure to visit our page on the best AI writing tools you can put to use immediately.
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