Essential software for generating leads

When you are just starting out, manually handling your lead generation is all that you as a startup business can afford. Unfortunately, manual lead generation is not the most efficient process and often is ineffective and insufficient when growing and scaling your company. Salesforce says that 21 percent of a B2B sales rep’s time is spent merely performing lead research — and when you are paying the salaries that top salespeople command, manual lead generation is not a good use of their time and money.

The solution is automated lead generation software. There are a myriad of companies to pick from to assist in lead generation and management, as well as thousands of features to consider. Using lead generation software can be complicated and costly if you are not using it to its full capability, so it is essential to understand how they work and what features they boast before choosing one.

What is lead generation software

Lead generation software is a system in which you can automate the segmentation, capture and management of your sales leads. Some lead generation software also nurtures those leads, which can allow the business owner or manager to more efficiently manage their time and the leads.

One example of how lead generation software works is when you have a form on your site. (See Chapter 3: Optimizing your site for lead generation for more tips on creating the best forms and pages on your website.) You have displayed an offer that the site visitor wants, and so they enter their information into your form. Now, the visitor has become a lead — and an automated lead generation software automates the capture of that information, and can help you sort, distribute, or in any other way manage that lead.

Rather than someone manually combing through the collection of lead information, automated platforms help to distribute and analyze the data. The salesperson can focus on quality leads, and automate the interactions with visitors to encourage them to become leads.

Once those leads are at the beginning of your sales funnel, the lead nurturing sections of the lead generation platforms can assist in helping to navigate those prospects through the stages of the funnel to that final purchase. It can also assist with maintaining those lines of communication with your customers, encouraging them to stay with you and potentially upselling them or reselling to them in the future.

If your salespeople are chasing too many cold leads, they will be faced with hard sells and people who were not initially interested in the product you are selling. However, if your salespeople were in constant contact with warm leads, or people who are ready and willing to buy your services, then their time would be better utilized, and potentially they would be bringing more profit into the company. Additionally, an automated software could keep in contact with those cold leads, giving them information and possibly assist in transferring them from the “cold” to the “warm” category.

Your lead generation software can also be vital in keeping the accurate contact information of your leads. Data from marketing lists, social media, referrals, trade shows, word-of-mouth recommendations, and even search engine marketing can become inaccurate or can be missing critical pieces of data.

To recap, lead generation software is a powerful tool. It can help you: find leads; convert visitors to leads; identify hot and cold prospects and leads; disseminate large quantities of data to assist in developing optimized marketing strategies; schedule new campaigns; shorten the timespan of existing campaigns by automating complex processes; automate lead nurturing (see Chapter 9 for more information about nurturing your leads through every step of the process); score those warm and cold leads to help figure out which ones should be chased; and more.

What to look for in lead generation software

Some of the most important things to look for in lead generation software are the functions and tools they provide, like with forms and landing pages. Just as important, however, are the tools that the software can connect to. Integrations are important because even the most robust lead generation software can’t do it all. Once you capture your leads, you’ll want to send them emails, add them to your CRM, track their activity, and more.

Most lead generation tools have a number of native integrations to to the tools you’re already using. For everything else, you can use something like Zapier, a 3rd-party integration tool that connects to 1,000+ apps. So no matter which tools you’re using to generate and capture leads, Zapier can seamlessly send these leads to the other apps in your marketing stack.

Other relevant options are social media integration, lead segmentation and lead assignment.

In regard to lead segmentation, the software should be able to break up data in a way that best suits your business’ needs. Important factors to consider are demographics (job title, company size, location, et cetera), referral source (web page, landing page, offer form, social media, etc.), and behavior (e.g., the type of offer downloaded). There is a specific software that focuses on industries (such as health care or hospitality) and picking the one that has the most data for your market will aid your sales process.

Remember to pick a software that is right for the size of your company — if you are a tiny, lean team, it might not make sense to shell out the huge bucks yet for an expensive system — there might even be a free option! Pick a software you can grow into, but don’t pick something that may have more bells and whistles than you will use in the next five years.

Other essential decision-making factors include: the portion of the customer relationship covered (e.g., contact to conversion); cloud versus desktop accessibility; simple versus advanced functionality; native integration with other sales software (e.g., your current CRM or Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Google Cloud); customer segmentation; and IP tracking. Also, consider utilizing software that fits your B2B or B2C sales model.

According to Forrester, 66 to 90 percent of your customer’s journey from initial search to buying is self-directed. That is why it is imperative that your marketing and sales efforts are getting in front of the right people, the first time. There are many parts to getting found and leading that person to your sales funnel, such as SEO, social media, and advertising. Utilizing a lead generation software will make it easier to tie all the pieces into one uniform package, which in turn frees up the sales and marketing people to engage potential leads more and make more sales.

Some of the best of lead generation software (out of 5 $$$$$)

Marketo $$$$$

Marketo is considered a leader in lead generation software, offering a cloud-based platform to monitor and manage customer engagement. Integrated into the platform are social marketing, automated marketing, lead nurturing, budget management, sales insights, website personalizations, and analytics (so you can track every aspect of your lead generation process.)

Callingly $

Callingly is a terrific new company that immediately and automatically gets your salespeople on the phone with a lead as soon as they enter their information on your website. When you wait too long to follow up with a lead about their inquiry, you reduce your closing effectiveness. But when you automatically get them on the phone, your conversion numbers increase substantially.

HubSpot $$$

HubSpot is a leader in online marketing, so it is no surprise they have one of the best-automated marketing software offers on the market now. The all-in-one platform is cloud-based, accessible from any device. Create and manage your web presence, manage online traffic and leads, and utilize integrated analytic metrics to nurture and tweak marketing campaigns. With both B2B and B2C availabilities, the management of your accounting, construction of lead generation tools, and target-based industries will be efficient and straightforward.

Zapier $

As we stated above, Zapier allows you to connect all of your apps to one another, making it invaluable for your lead generation efforts. Using Zapier, your lead generation form information will send to just about any CRM, email marketing service, spreadsheet, or cloud storage service around.

Asana $

Asana is a world-class work management software that allows your team to manage and collaborate on projects. It also happens to be perfect for helping your team follow a sales playbook, especially newer members of your sales team. Each step in a sales playbook can be shown as a to-do item, with the ability to label, sort, comment, and calendarize each step.

InfusionSoft $$$

InfusionSoft was built with smaller sales and marketing teams in mind. Manage customer relationships, and pick categories from a variety of industries, like hospitality, education, and health care.

Pardot (by Salesforce) $$$$$

Salesforce created Pardot for those B2B companies needing more niche sales and marketing automation. A robust email marketing system helps to support the longer timetable and multi tier sales process that is usually involved in B2B sales.

Campaign Monitor $

Campaign Monitor is a cloud-based marketing system that is more focused toward subscriptions, email (like newsletters) and report generation. It can be used to create custom email marketing campaigns, and the price tag is great for smaller businesses.

SharpSpring $$

SharpSpring is cloud-based and offers marketing automation, mobile and social marketing, customer relationship management, sales automation, customer service, and more. If you are already using a CRM, SharpSpring claims to integrate with any platform on the market, so no transition will be necessary.

Pipedrive $$$

Pipedrive is more sales than marketing focused, and was created to assist small sales teams in managing and growing their sales. Pipedrive’s focus is on the salesperson, giving them tools and training to manage all aspects of the sales cycle.

MyEmma $$$

MyEmma, or Emma, is an email marketing platform that allows users to design email campaigns from scratch or using one of their tried-and-true email templates. The cloud-based platform is accessible on any device and can help marketing teams manage email communication, break down granular demographic information, and review spending, open rate, or any history.

Adobe Marketing Cloud $$$$$

From the makers of the beloved editing software line (Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, etc.) comes an integrated marketing platform to access, organize and curate marketing content. Included in the suite is access to Adobe analytics, target, social, Experience Manager, media optimizer, and Adobe Campaign, all accessible via a real-time dashboard and intuitive interface. If you are used to working with other Adobe platforms, then it will be a smooth transition for any marketing team.

Socialdraft $

Social media marketing can get complicated, especially if you are managing multiple accounts. Socialdraft is a cloud-based platform that incorporates Facebook, Facebook Groups and Pages, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram, allowing numerous channels, content scheduling, bulk uploads, reports and alerts. Schedule your posts using a content creation calendar, with a drag-and-drop display that makes it easy.

Originally published at www.jotform.com.