If you’re looking for lead generation tools for growing your business, you might find the options available to you a little overwhelming. But don’t let that deter you.

Lead generation is the lifeblood of growth, especially if you’re a B2B company. So it’s no surprise that 53% of marketing professionals allocate more than half of their annual budget on generating new leads.

Finding the right lead generation software for your business, however, can be tricky. Start exploring this space and you’ll find that the many offerings you come across all do slightly different jobs.

But that’s a good thing. It means that, once you know what your business needs, you can pick the lead generation tool that’s right for you.

Let’s see what’s out there. 👀

What is the best lead source?

If you’re looking at it from a purely ROI perspective, the best lead source is actually email. Multiple studies online have shown that for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you get a return of anywhere between $36-$42 in business. That’s pretty huge compared to other forms of lead generation (despite all the hype that influencer marketing or paid advertising tends to get).

But that begs the question—how do you get the emails of your leads to begin with? This is the part of the marketing puzzle that requires you to think bigger. Because you can’t just rely on cold outreach alone… you need a full-scale strategy that brings leads consistently and predictably into your brand’s orbit. 

Ideally, you should start out by picking a few tools from this list that span all the different categories of lead generation: outbound, inbound, email automation, on-page optimization tools, and lead tracking tools. Because there’s not just one lead source that will do all the heavy lifting for you—it’s when you combine these together that you unlock their true potential.

Outbound B2B lead generation tools

Outbound lead generation tools help you to find and connect with potential leads via email, social media or over the phone. It’s about reaching out, as opposed to inbound lead generation, which is about bringing leads in.

1. Magical 🪄

Want to make your outbound lead gen effortless? Look no further than Magical. Magical allows you to populate outreach messages, fill lead generation sheets, and update your databases (without the time-consuming copy-paste between tabs).

Messaging leads: Quickly create a keyboard shortcut for your lead gen templates. For example, you can key in “//outreach1” or “//outreach2” and drop lines of proven outreach content into any email or LinkedIn message.

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But using Magical doesn’t mean your lead gen messages are all copy-and-paste. You can personalize everything in a flash, dropping contact details, job roles, and other info into your message too. And you can tweak whatever you need for the final touches.

You can even move lead data from your open tabs to other sheets with one click. (And you can autofill any form field and pull info from anywhere, including to and from your sales and CRM systems.) This makes prospecting a breeze.

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Magical is super easy to set up. No coding required. Simply download the app to Chrome and it works wherever you go on the web. 👍

Also read: 5 helpful tips for winning outbound lead generation

2. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps you add leads to your CRM and makes it easy for you to send direct marketing content to engage and convert them. It also allows you to target specific types of people within certain industries. Build engagement by sending direct InMail messages to let leads know about new content and offers they might be interested in.

3. Outreach.io

Outreach.io lets you manage the whole account-based sales process. It integrates sales management and AI tools, like conversation intelligence and revenue intelligence, so you get better, more insightful information on your customers. With this handy info, you can drive engagement.

Things to consider when choosing an outbound lead gen tool:

• Identify your ideal customer. You need to know exactly who you’re targeting, including their interests, habits and behaviors.
• Your marketing and sales team must be talking to each other. The tool you use can help to prevent this by allowing teams to collaborate easily.
• Adopt a multi-pronged approach. Outbound lead gen works well when it’s also paired with an inbound lead gen strategy.

Inbound lead generation software

These tools are all about driving leads to your website, app or platform, or helping them stay there.

4. Semrush

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a major part of inbound lead generation tools. If you’re maximizing your visibility in the search engines for relevant terms at different stages of the buying funnel, you’ll get more relevant traffic that’s ready to convert into a lead.

‍Semrush helps you to find effective SEO keywords for your business, track your SEO strategy, and improve the technical aspects of SEO, like backlinks and metadata. You could also try Ahrefs or Moz—there are lots of SEO tools on the market that do roughly the same things.

5. Drift

AI chatbots help you to be available to your customers 24/7, deliver a consistent customer experience, and direct customers to the right people in your sales or customer service teams.

They’re so useful, they’ve helped some companies to increase their sales by as much as 67%. Drift tailor-makes its chatbots so that you can assess customer interest, share relevant content easily, and schedule meetings with potential new clients.

6. Typeform

Polls and surveys can also help you to draw people into your company. Typeform lets you create interesting, engaging and brand-specific forms and surveys that connect you with potential leads. It’s simple and easy too; no coding skills required.

7. Hubspot

‍Hubspot is an all-in-one inbound marketing solution that includes a free CRM platform, a landing page builder, email management features, ad tracking and workflow management. It’s the whole package. It’s particularly useful if you’re developing lead generation campaigns.

Things to consider when choosing an inbound lead gen tool:

• In inbound lead generation, content is king. Spend time creating interesting and engaging information that is relevant to your brand.
• Use calls to action cleverly. Encourage your potential leads to read more, sign up, or contact you today!
• Analyze the results you get. Do more of what does work and less of what doesn’t.

Email automation tools for lead generation

Email automation tools are creative campaigns that keep prospects interested and engaged and help you to convert them to customers.

8. Mailchimp

‍Mailchimp is a lead generation tool that manages the sending of marketing emails and nurture sequences. It has plenty of features to make your life easier, including detailed scheduling tools, A/B testing, and a powerful analytics suite to get insights into open rates, click-through rates, and other metrics you might want to keep track of.

9. Mailshake

‍Mailshake allows you to optimize, personalize and automate cold emailing. It’s easy and intuitive to use and has some useful, ready-made templates that you can implement straight away.

Things to consider when choosing an email automation tool:

• Personalize, personalize, personalize. If your leads feel like you’re lazily spamming them, they’ll move on. That said, automate whatever you can. Reports suggest that 80% of marketers who use automation software increase their leads, and that 77% convert more leads than those who don’t use automation. ‍
• Magical helps here of course—you can focus on personalizing your templates in a compelling way, and you can pull insightful prospect data to and from your records easily.

On-page lead generation tools

On-page lead generation tools help you keep the attention of leads who are already on your website or social media pages.

10. Unbounce

‍Unbounce helps you capture lead details and store them. It allows you to set pop-ups and sticky bars that appear on your website to get attention and persuade people to sign up for more information or an offer. It’s highly customisable so you can personalize the pop-ups and sticky bars to match your branding and style.

11. OptinMonster

With OptinMonster, you can create smart, snappy and eye-catching on-site lead campaigns. Pop-ups, slide-in windows, and captivating games are all available to reel your potential lead in even more. The tool is easy to use and beginner-friendly.

Things to consider when choosing an on-page lead gen tool:

• On-page lead gen tools work well with inbound and outbound marketing tools. Use the former to get someone to your site and, once they’re there, use your on-page tool to keep them there.

Lead generation tools to track website visitors

Who’s visiting your site? There might be potential leads out there that you haven’t considered.

12. Leadfeeder

‍Leadfeeder connects to your Google Analytics account to help you see which companies are visiting your site. This information can be hugely valuable: knowing who’s checking you out can make you aware of new and untapped markets. Leadfeeder offers detailed insight about companies, and includes information on employee numbers, behavioral info and contract details.

13. Hotjar

‍This user-friendly platform helps you see exactly who’s viewed your website and how they’ve behaved while interacting with your content. Use this info to run surveys to find out what people enjoyed or why they moved away.

Things to consider when choosing a web tracking tool:

• Keep your business objectives in mind. Are you only using this data to generate leads, or are you also looking for ways to improve your products and services? Analyze your information closely and use it to your advantage.
• Is your tool scalable? As your business grows, you need a tool that can grow with it over time..

How do you generate leads automatically?

Imagine if every day, you had more leads coming into your funnel than you knew what to do with. This isn’t impossible—in fact, there are several ways to generate leads automatically using the tools and software above. With the right combination of chat bots, automated emails, landing pages, and evergreen SEO content—you can create a self-sustaining lead generation engine that feeds itself.

Looking for an easy way to automate your lead generation? Try Magical—our text expander, autofill, and data entry features will superspeed your lead gen activities and help you get more done in a fraction of the time. 🚀