Inbound lead generation is a necessary part of successful sales and marketing, as it helps attract potential customers by raising brand awareness and creating tailored experiences for them.

In this guide, we’ll explore the 10 tested and tried inbound lead generation strategies to enable you to design your own approach based on your unique needs, goals, and target audience.

But first, let’s answer the essential question.

TL;DR

• Inbound lead generation is the process of attracting potential customers by using relevant resources and providing personalized experiences instead of pitching your sales offer directly.
• It’s more subtle than traditional and outbound marketing, focusing on long-term, sustainable results and targeting specific, qualified leads rather than a broad audience.

Several strategies are crucial for efficient inbound lead generation, such as:

• Content marketing
• SEO
• Social media marketing
• Email marketing
• Lead magnets
• Landing pages
• Affiliate marketing
• Content upgrades
• Chatbots
• Webinars and online events

Warmly can help you handle various segments of inbound lead generation, from identifying inbound website leads to nurturing them.

What is inbound lead generation?

Inbound lead generation is a strategy where businesses attract potential customers through valuable content and experiences rather than pushing their message out through traditional marketing methods. 

The idea is to draw prospects in by providing helpful, relevant information that addresses their needs or interests instead of reaching out to them and pitching your offer point blank.

As such, inbound lead generation can include a range of techniques, such as:

🎯 ‎ Content marketing - Creating compelling content, such as blog posts, ebooks, whitepapers, videos, etc., that educates or entertains your target audience.

🎯 SEO - Optimizing your content and website to rank higher in search engine results, making it easier for people to find you when searching for related topics.

🎯 Social media marketing - Sharing content, participating in discussions, and building relationships on social media platforms where your target audience resides.

🎯 Lead magnets - Offering free resources or tools in exchange for contact information, such as downloadable guides, templates, or webinars.

🎯 Email marketing - Sending targeted, valuable content to leads who have shown interest in your offerings by subscribing to your newsletter, downloading a playbook, etc.

We’ll cover these and other techniques in more detail later on.

How is inbound lead generation different from traditional marketing?

The best way to understand the difference between lead generation and traditional marketing is to use the pull vs. push approach (and no, it has nothing to do with the gym).

Inbound lead generation aims to pull leads in by providing valuable content and experiences that resonate with their needs, interests, and pain points.

In this case, leads come to your business on their own accord, drawn in by the resources you provide because they find them useful, helpful, or intriguing.

Of course, this means that you’ll focus on leads who have already expressed an interest in your solution, i.e., who are aware of a need or problem that they need to address. 

This interest is the very thing that pulls them to your brand.

Traditional marketing, on the other hand, actively pushes your offer and marketing messaging through various channels, aiming to persuade a broad audience to act immediately—buy your product, subscribe, etc.

This approach usually interrupts leads’ activities, hoping your message will catch their attention, regardless of whether they are actively looking for a similar solution.

Here’s a quick cheat sheet to help you differentiate the two:

Inbound lead generation:

1. Attraction-based - Focuses on drawing prospects in by offering valuable content and experiences. The goal is to engage people who are already interested in or searching for solutions related to what you offer.
2. Content-driven - Relies heavily on creating high-quality content such as blog posts, ebooks, and videos to attract and engage potential leads.
3. Permission-based - Involves gaining permission from users to send them information, such as through email subscriptions or downloadable resources.
4. Customer-centric - Tailors content and interactions to address the specific needs and pain points of potential customers.
5. Long-term relationships - Aims to build trust and nurture relationships over time, leading to higher quality leads and more sustainable growth.

Traditional marketing: 

1. Outbound - Focuses on pushing messages out to a broad audience through channels like TV ads, radio, print media, and direct mail, often interrupting the recipient’s activities.
2. Product-focused - This approach emphasizes promoting products or services directly, often using persuasive techniques to capture attention and drive immediate responses.
3. Interruption-based - Often interrupts the target audience’s routine, hoping that the message will resonate and prompt action regardless of their current needs and interest level.
4. Less personalization - Tends to be more generic, aiming to reach as broad an audience as possible without considering their specific interests that much.
5. Short-term results: Often focuses on generating quick sales or leads, with less emphasis on building long-term relationships with prospects.

What are the best inbound lead generation tactics?

And now, without further ado, let’s break down the 10 best inbound lead generation strategies you should deploy to attract more quality leads across channels.

Pro tip: You can use as many tactics as you want, as they’re not mutually exclusive. When deciding, just keep in mind who your target audience is and where they are most likely to be found, what goals you want to achieve, and how much time and money you’re willing to spend.

1. Content marketing

As mentioned above, content marketing is one of inbound lead generation’s crucial components, as it’s one sure way of attracting potential customers and positioning your brand as a source of truth.

Namely, leads who are looking for information or solutions for their pain points will be drawn to your brand if you provide them with the answers they need. 

As a result, you’ll build trust and authority, encouraging leads to opt for your solution when they decide to buy.

Here’s a helpful example of how you can use well-crafted and optimized BOFU content to monetize on leads who are still in the consideration stage and push them further down the sales funnel. 

You can create various content types, depending on your objectives, including:

• Blogs - Regularly publishing informative, educational, and relevant posts that address your target audience’s pain points can help you gain significant traction in your industry. Don’t forget to update posts to ensure they’ll be fresh and relevant year-round.

• Ebooks and whitepapers - These are more in-depth resources that offer even more value than blogs, as they tend to break down crucial questions in more detail. As such, they’re usually used as lead magnets, where visitors provide their contact information to access them.
• Case studies—These allow you to incorporate social proof into your content strategy by showcasing real-life examples of how your product or service has solved problems for other customers.
• Podcasts and videos - Video content can be highly engaging. Just make sure to cover interesting topics, host industry experts, etc.

Pro tip: Creating quality content can help not only with attracting leads but also with getting backlinks. If your content is good enough, other sites - including those with higher domain rankings - will be more likely to link back to your website.

2. SEO and organic traffic

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) boosts your brand visibility by helping you to rank higher on SERPs. In turn, you’ll be able to drive more organic traffic.

Namely, having good SERP positioning increases the likelihood that web surfers looking for relevant information or solutions will click through to your website instead of turning to your competitors.

Remember, regardless of how good your product actually is, it won’t mean much if you can’t get people to look at it.

To ensure a steady stream of organic traffic, there are several SEO aspects to focus on, including:

• Keyword research and optimization - Use industry and topic-relevant keywords in your content and website to improve search engine rankings and to attract the right kind of audience. After all, you can’t expect to draw in quality leads if you don’t use targeted keywords bound to spark their interest. Invest in keyword research tools such as Ahrefs to identify the right keywords.

• On-page SEO - Optimize crucial elements of your web pages and content, such as meta tags, headings, and images. Publishing content and web copy following SEO guidelines will help search engines understand and rank your content and enhance reader experience and readability.
• Link building - Getting backlinks from reputable sites improves your domain rating and visibility. You can achieve this by leveraging guest blogging, link exchange, or by creating high-value content others will want to refer to (think of content that features things like industry benchmarks, trends and statistics, etc.).

3. Social media marketing

Since the whole point of lead generation is to entice prospects to come to you, social media is one of the first places to focus on, as nowadays, everyone is online.

Of course, you don’t have to disperse your efforts across all platforms. The right social media platform for your business depends on two main factors:

• Whether you’re a B2B or a B2C company and your vertical - Some platforms are designed for professionals alone (e.g., LinkedIn), while others include more versatile demographics. For instance, focusing on Instagram won't be the ideal choice if you target businesses in a highly specific vertical, such as the banking sector. Conversely, if you’re in B2C e-commerce, LinkedIn alone won’t help you generate as many leads as some other social media.
• Your target audience - Different audience types reside in different social media. For instance, Gen Z is most likely to be found on TikTok, decision-makers on LinkedIn, gamers on Discord and Reddit, etc. Define your target audience and determine where they live online before designing a social media lead generation strategy.

To engage with leads online, you should focus on:

• Sharing engaging content as frequently as possible - Being regular and persistent is key in social media marketing, so just make sure to post intriguing content as often as possible.
• Creating compelling content - Posts that include visuals, such as infographics or videos typically perform better and can increase engagement. Content like listicles, short how-to guides, etc., can also resonate well with your audience - just make sure they’re relevant for your ICPs.

Whether for yourself 👇 ‎

Or your brand👇

• Interacting with your followers - Engagement is a two-way street, meaning you must give some to get some. You can’t afford to ghost your followers, so you should dedicate time to answering questions and comments, participating in discussions, and creating interactive content (e.g., polls, quizzes, etc.) to drive engagement and build rapport.

4. Email marketing

Email marketing might initially sound like an outbound lead generation technique, given that you send emails to potential leads. 

However, inbound email campaigns differ from cold email campaigns in one key aspect - you reach out to people who’ve already shown a certain interest in your solution, e.g., downloaded an ebook, subscribed to your newsletter, etc.

So, to create efficient email marketing campaigns, you first need to build and segment email lists based on leads’ interests, behavior, and previous interactions with your marketing efforts.

For instance, leads who have expressed interest in a particular product can receive emails with detailed information, case studies, or special offers related to that product. 

Conversely, those who have engaged with educational content such as ebooks might receive emails featuring new blog posts or upcoming webinars.

Another key point in email campaigns is personalization. Ensure that each email is tailored to the specific audience segment and individual lead, as that’s your best shot that your emails will have high open and click-through rates.

💡 Pro tip: Instead of dealing with all this manually, you can use marketing automation tools. These can help you cover all aspects of inbound email lead generation, from list building and segmentation to crafting and sending personalized emails.

For example, Warmly can add website visitors who match certain criteria (e.g., match your ICP, show high intent, etc.) to automated email and LinkedIn sequences.

Each lead will receive a contextual email or LinkedIn DM based on their interests, interaction with your website, demographics, etc.

5. Lead magnets

Lead magnets are another way of monetizing your most valuable content, such as ebooks, guides, detailed reports, etc.

Namely, gatekeeping your best resources will incentivize leads to provide their contact information in return for access to them.

However, keep in mind that people value their privacy more than anything, especially given the sheer number of spammy emails an average person receives daily. 

This means you’ll have to ensure that the content you’re offering is really valuable enough for leads to be ready to give their contact in return. This content typically includes:

• Ebooks and guides - In-depth resources that provide a more detailed view of topics and issues relevant to your audience.
• Reports and whitepapers - Detailed documents on industry trends, benchmarks, research findings, etc.
• Templates and checklists - Ready-to-use tools, such as marketing plans, budget templates, lead generation checklists, etc.
• Quizzes and assessments - Interactive content that gamifies lead engagement by providing personalized results based on users’ unique inputs.

6. Landing pages

Creating dedicated landing pages for specific content, offers, or campaigns is another crucial part of inbound lead generation campaigns.

For optimal results, design landing pages that are:

• Simple, concise, and to-the-point - Most leads will just skim over it, so save your writing skills for other content types.
• Include compelling offers and CTAs leads will find difficult to resist - Feature strong value propositions relevant to the source that brought leads to that specific page. For instance, if they clicked through your newsletter that addresses LinkedIn prospecting best practices, the offer and CTA could include actions like “Download Free Ebook,” “Try For Free,” etc.

💡 ‎Pro tip: To determine how a landing page performs, use a website traffic tracking tool like Warmly. That way, you’ll be able to monitor who lands on your web pages, how they interact with them, and more.

Find out how to identify companies and individuals visiting your website here.

7. Influencer marketing

Partnering up with key influencers in your industry is another great way to capture the attention of your ideal audience.

Industry influencers already have a large following, many of which are businesses and/or individuals who match your ICP, so there’s no reason to let that go to waste.

Offer incentives to influencers - the most common way is to give them commission rates for each sale, lead, or click-through - in return for them to subtly promote your brand to their followers.

This can be done in various ways, including:

• Guest blogging.
• Giveaways and contests.
• Product reviews and demonstrations.

Source

8. Content upgrades

This is a more advanced inbound lead generation technique, as it involves offering additional value or content related to the content your audience is already consuming.

For example, you could offer downloadable cold email templates to readers of a blog that breaks down cold email outreach.

This enables you to make the most of the leads who have already shown interest in your content and solution, which makes them much more likely to provide their contact info in exchange for access to content upgrades.

In addition to templates and checklists, typical content upgrades include resources similar to basic lead magnets, such as:

• Ebooks.
• Exclusive interviews.
• Playbooks and worksheets.
• Benchmark reports.
• Bonus content.

Source

9. Chatbots 

Chatbots are another excellent way to engage and qualify specific inbound leads - website visitors.

If an individual or a stakeholder lands on your website, that’s typically a sign that they’re interested in what you have to offer. Therefore, you should pounce on them as soon as possible to capitalize on their interest.

Source

Smart chatbots, like Warmly’s AI Chat, can help with that, as they can:

• Engage website visitors in conversation by sending contextual messages and offering valuable resources (e.g., product tours, case studies, etc.).
• Answer visitors’ questions.
• Qualify and score them by asking qualification questions (e.g., “What brings you here?”).

• Schedule meetings.
• Route leads to adequate human reps.

10. Webinars and online events 

Webinars and online events can boost lead generation across levels by:

• Positioning you as a thought leader in a specific vertical.
• Increasing your visibility.
• Capturing leads’ contact information when they register for these events.
• Helping you expand your network and build a strong community of potential leads and partners.

Source

To attract the right audience and compel them enough to sign up for it, ensure that your webinars delve into relevant and valuable topics for your potential leads.

Inbound Lead Generation vs. Outbound: What are the Differences?

Although there’s a high chance that you already know what makes inbound lead generation different than outbound, it can’t hurt to include a quick refresher.

As mentioned above, inbound lead generation focuses on attracting potential customers by creating valuable content and experiences tailored to their needs and interests. This is done by leveraging personalized content and educational resources and providing tailored experiences.

In contrast, outbound lead generation involves proactively reaching out to potential customers through direct methods, such as cold calling and emails, advertising, etc. 

Several additional differences stem from this key one, including:

1. Engagement

Inbound lead generation attracts and engages prospects by providing value and addressing their needs, compelling them to come to your brand in a non-intrusive and subtle way.

On the other hand, outbound lead generation relies on direct and to-the-point outreach, often interrupting prospects’ current activities to capture their attention.

Of course, outbound lead generation also targets a specific audience based on attributes and characteristics relevant to your product’s ICPs, although a much broader one than inbound.

2. Cost efficiency and ROI

The great thing about content is that it can be repurposed and updated over time, keeping it fresh and relevant.

As a result, the content you publish once can continue to generate leads long after it’s been created, making inbound lead generation very cost-effective.

However, inbound lead generation takes time, as building trust and authority among potential leads cannot happen over time. This means that you’ll have to be patient to start getting ROI.

Outbound lead generation, on the other hand, requires more up-front costs related to advertising, email campaigns, and other direct outreach methods.

On the bright side, outbound typically yields results faster, making it a good choice if you’re in a hurry to get an ROI.

3. Lead quality

Inbound lead generation is focused on higher-quality leads from the get-go: 

• Leads who are already interested in your content and solution.
• Leads who are actively looking for information regarding their needs and pain points.
• Leads who are engaging with your content.

This means that these leads are more likely to convert soon.

At the same time, outbound results in a higher volume of leads, but they are usually less qualified and require more time and effort to convert.

4. Customer experience

Inbound strategies are focused on creating and nurturing meaningful, lasting relationships.

As a result, they’re intent on providing each lead with a tailored experience that resonates with their needs, interests, behavior, etc.

In turn, this approach encourages leads to convert sooner and become long-term customers.

Outbound lead generation is more aggressive and intrusive than inbound due to its focus on immediate results. 

Consequently, the general lead experience might not be as positive as it is with inbound leads, who are more likely to feel valued, appreciated, and listened to.

5. Long-term impact

Since inbound lead generation tends to build long-term relationships and trust, it’s more likely to result in higher retention rates.

Namely, if leads create a positive association with your brand thanks to all the valuable resources and experiences you provided, they’ll be readier to stick with your brand through thick and thin later on.

Outbound lead generation is intent on selling as quickly as possible, meaning it focuses less on building lasting relationships and more on selling right now.

However, regardless of its success and initial ROI, outbound isn’t capable of establishing brand loyalty among leads and existing customers, as they won’t have that many reasons to be loyal to begin with.

If all you’re looking for is a quick sale and are treating customers as numbers, you can’t really expect to get much more in return.

How does inbound lead generation work?

Finally, let’s explain how inbound lead generation works by dissecting the stages of the inbound marketing funnel and breaking down how they work together to deliver results:

Awareness stage

The main objective in the awareness stage is to attract potential leads and raise brand awareness by addressing their needs and pain points in your content.

In this stage, you should develop high-quality, informative content that deals with specific challenges, questions, and interests of your target audience, helping them understand:

1. How to handle their problems and requirements. 
2. Why your solution is the best for their specific needs.

This content could include anything from blog posts, articles, and social media content to infographics, videos, and more.

SEO and social media marketing are also crucial at the awareness stage, as they:

1. Make your content easily discoverable by your target audience by providing higher SERP rankings.
2. Increase brand visibility and engagement through posts that resonate with your audience, replying to their comments, etc.

Consideration stage

The main objective at this stage is to engage leads further by providing more detailed information and solutions to help them assess their options and, ideally, conclude that yours is the best.

To achieve this, you should:

• Offer more advanced resources that delve deeper into key topics, such as ebooks, whitepapers, case studies, and detailed guides.
• Host webinars and online workshops that provide valuable insights and drive direct interaction with your audience.

• Leverage email marketing using segmented email lists to send personalized content recommendations, follow-up messages to leads who have downloaded a resource, etc.

Decision stage

This is the final stage that leads to conversion.

In it, you should focus on converting leads into customers by presenting compelling offers and CTAs that encourage them to make the final leap and become paying customers.

Several tactics work the best here, including:

• Providing irresistible offers that incentivize leads to buy, such as free trials, demos, discounts, or limited-time offers.

• Highlighting success stories and testimonials from satisfied customers to build trust and credibility.
• Use strong, clear CTAs that guide leads to take the desired action, whether it’s signing up for a service or contacting your sales team.
• Having your sales team follow up with leads who have shown strong interest or engaged with your offers via personalized messaging based on leads’ interactions and behaviors.

Once you combine all these actions into a holistic strategy, you’ll get a well-oiled lead generation machine that constantly brings new leads to your pipeline.

Convert more leads with Warmly

Handling lead generation manually is no easy task in today’s competitive market. 

Besides, some lead generation metrics vital for success can’t be tracked without help from tools designed to monitor specific lead generation channels and capture relevant data - such as Warmly.

Warmly is a revenue orchestration platform that lets you harness your website’s full conversion potential by:

1. Tracking and identifying website visitors - both companies and individual stakeholders.
2. Enabling email campaign attribution by letting you track visitors who come through specific campaigns.
3. Revealing B2B and intent data on each identified lead, enabling you to score and qualify them.
4. Providing automated and human-handled options for engaging leads on your website while they’re still hot.

Sign up for Warmly’s free forever plan and discover how it can help you generate and convert more leads today.

Or book a live demo to see it in action first.

Choosing the right lead generation strategy is crucial for achieving your business goals, as it makes all the difference between a pipeline filled with quality leads and a complete disaster.

In this guide, we’ll share the best lead generation tactics, tips, and best practices backed with practical examples, helping you design the optimal lead generation strategy for your unique needs.

TL;DR

A lead generation strategy is a set of systemic approaches designed to attract, nurture, and convert high-quality leads.

The best lead generation strategies include:

• Website optimization
• Chatbots and live chat options
• Content marketing
• SEO
• Lead magnets
• Lead-capturing forms
• PPC advertising
• Free trials and freemiums
• Webinars and other online events
• Referral and affiliate programs

To ensure the efficiency of your lead generation strategies, focus on defining your target market, lead nurturing, and prioritizing quality over quantity.

Warmly can help you unlock your website’s full lead generation and conversion potential by covering all the important segments of the lead generation funnel.

What are the best lead-generation strategies?

Before we get to the best part, a quick reminder of what a lead generation strategy is.

A lead generation strategy is a set of techniques designed to attract potential leads, coax them into sharing their information with you, and guide them further down the sales funnel.

Although there’s no simple answer to which strategy is the best for you - as it depends on your goals, needs, industry, budget size, etc. - several lead-generation techniques are bound to yield results for just about anyone.

We hand-picked such strategies, which resulted in a list of the 10 best lead-generation strategies for attracting qualified sales leads and nurturing them into conversion. 

Let’s begin!

Pro tip: You don’t have to stick to a single strategy, as most of these tactics can be combined into a multifaceted approach that covers more than one lead gen channel, as you’ll see in more detail below.

1. Optimize your website and landing pages

No lead generation strategy can be complete without website and landing page optimization.

The digital era we live in means that most of your buyers - and all of them if you’re a SaaS business - will look for solutions and products online.

As a result, the first thing they’ll come face-to-face with regarding your brand is your website.

To make the most of your website’s lead generation potential, you need to take several measures:

➡️ ‎ Ensure that it’s optimized for your target audience and ICP - When designing landing pages and your website, always keep in mind who you’re aiming to attract. For instance, a company that sells clothes to young adults and a company that offers credit ratings and data must have websites structured for their ideal audience (i.e., more casual vs a more professional approach, focusing on sentiments and personal preferences vs business value, etc.).

➡️ ‎ Make it easy to navigate - Ensure that all the vital segments of your website, such as product descriptions, pricing, case studies, etc., are easily accessible. No one wants to spend ages looking for pricing information or a help center. 

➡️ ‎ Take care of loading speed - Optimize your website for desktop and mobile devices, or you risk losing quality leads.

➡️ ‎ Sprinkle CTAs and lead magnets across important landing pages—Make the CTAs and lead magnets relevant to the page they appear on and provide leads with enough incentive to click on them. For instance, you can include a “Try For Free” or “Book A Demo” CTA or add a downloadable case study on a product feature description page, as they all enable leads to learn more about your product or experience it firsthand.

➡️ ‎ Include social proof - There’s nothing that leads love more than to hear about your product from satisfied customers, meaning that strong social proof is one of the most powerful weapons in your lead generation arsenal. Include case studies, testimonials, reviews from G2 and Capterra, etc., and let your customers become brand advocates. 

Pro tip: To determine how successful your website is in attracting and engaging the right audience, invest in a website traffic tracking tool like Warmly.

With it, you’ll be able to:

• Identify website visitors.
• Figure out how they interact with your website, as the platform lets you monitor their sessions in real-time.
• Detect hot leads based on intent signals, such as visiting high-intent pages (pricing, demo landing page, etc.), frequently returning to your website and specific pages, downloading resources, etc.

2. Use chatbots and live chat

This lead generation strategy is directly related to website optimization, as chatbots and live chat options are essential parts of most well-designed websites.

For instance, Warmly’s chatbots can greatly leverage lead generation, as they can be trained to do a range of valuable actions:

• Engage leads in conversation by sending personalized messages and asking questions aiming to qualify them (e.g., what they’re looking for, what they need to know more about, whether they’re interested in buying or just looking around, etc.).

• Capture leads’ contact information by offering something in return, e.g., a valuable and contextual resource such as a case study that breaks down a feature a lead inquired about.
• Answering leads’ simpler questions, such as those regarding a specific feature or the existence of a free trial.
• Book qualified meetings.

However, although chatbots are available 24/7 and can handle more straightforward requests and operations on their own, it’s wise to include a human rep in the flow, as human interaction is essential for conversion.

This is why having a live chat option is critical. With it, your sales team can personally engage leads in conversation and guide them down the sales funnel.

Inside Warmly, you can set up an automated workflow that will notify sales reps via Slack or email when their attention is required, for example, when a lead asks a high-intent question or asks to speak with a real human.

That way, you’ll ensure that a rep will be kept in the loop, enabling them to jump in when necessary.

Pro tip: Warmly offers an option for hopping on a live video call with website leads while they’re still hot. This allows you to have a qualified meeting with them then and there, increasing the chance of a successful conversion. 

Check out our Warm Calls best practices to boost your video call response rates.

3. Create engaging content 

Regardless of industry, most modern businesses invest in content marketing strategies for a good reason - it works.

Providing prospects with valuable resources such as highly educational blogs, how-to-videos, valuable newsletters, and engaging podcasts helps with several things:

• Positions your brand as a thought leader.
• Brings value to leads, building trust and nurturing loyalty.
• Increases brand awareness and visibility.

By offering valuable resources to potential leads without necessarily asking for something in return or trying to sell upstart, you’ll encourage those leads to choose your products or services over your competition’s precisely because you’re already familiar and credible.

To achieve optimal efficiency of your content marketing strategy, make sure that the content you deliver is:

• Relevant to your target market - If you’re in the medical industry, writing blogs about current fashion trends won’t get you anywhere, regardless of how popular that content type is at the moment.
• Focused on bringing immediate value—Create content that educates leads on an important topic or helps them solve a particular problem. For example, if you’re in the marketing industry, you could create step-by-step guides on conducting targeted lead generation, produce podcasts with industry leaders, etc.
• Not too salesy - It’s ok to promote your product. After all, that’s the entire point of content marketing. However, aim to find the right balance between shameless self-promotion and product-led content.

Pro tip: You can take content marketing one step further by creating gated content, but we’ll discuss that in more detail in the section dealing with lead magnets.

4. Invest in SEO 

If you ever wondered why Search Engine Optimization is a non-negotiable in the lead generation process, just remember: “The best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of Google search results.”

Good SEO ensures a high SERP ranking, increasing brand visibility and greatly improving the chance that leads will click through.

The further down you are, the less likely it is that anyone will bother to check what you’ve got to offer. 

This means that even if you have the world’s best product in a given category, you wouldn't be able to monetize it simply because you’d go under your ideal audience’s radar.

To get optimal SERP positioning, there are several aspects to take care of:

• Keyword research - Tools like Semrush and Ahrefs can help you find keywords and phrases your target audience uses when searching for your products or services. Focus on less competitive keywords while ensuring they’re still relevant to your business.

• Drilling down on the competition - Keep an eye on what the competition’s doing and how well it’s performing to get a better idea of what approach to take to attract quality leads. Again, platforms like Ahrefs and Semrush offer free tools for website domain checking, which you can leverage to see how your competitors are faring and what they’re doing to stay competitive.
• Technical SEO - This includes everything from loading speed to mobile-friendliness and URL structure. 
• Building backlinks - Try getting backlinks from reputable sites to improve your own domain reputation. You can achieve this through guest blogging or by creating content that’s good enough for other websites and bloggers to cite and use as reference.

Pro tip: Note how SEO, website optimization, and content marketing have multiple touchpoints. This proves you should combine several lead-generation techniques and strategies to generate more high-quality leads.

5. Leverage lead magnets

One of the best things about creating quality resources is that leads are often willing to give something in return for access to them.

And that’s the entire philosophy behind lead magnets.

You take your most valuable content - templates, industry reports, ebooks, etc. - and offer it in exchange for leads’ contact information.

If the resources you offer provide sufficient value, leads will have just the right incentive to provide their names, email addresses, job roles, etc., to access them.

So, to ensure that this strategy will successfully generate leads, use only first-class content as lead magnets.

6. Use lead-capturing forms 

Lead-capturing forms are a typical way of getting leads’ information.

However, for them to succeed, you have to place them strategically.

For instance, you can use lead-capturing forms when leads:

• Subscribe to your newsletter.
• Book a demo.
• Request a quote, etc.

You should also keep in mind the stage of the funnel your leads are in when crafting these forms. 

Leave more detailed and elaborate forms for later funnel stages, when leads are more likely to provide more information.

Conversely, use short and simple forms for leads at the beginning of their buyer’s journey.

Pro tip: Some lead enrichment tools include lead form optimization, which means that the platform will auto-populate most of the form’s fields based on the basic contact info the lead provided. 

That way, you can display only very short forms to leads, which increases the chance that they’ll take the time to fill them out.

7. Craft compelling ads

Advertising can further increase brand visibility by displaying your brand wherever your target audience is.

This is why running targeted pay-per-click ads on search engines and relevant social media platforms is always a good investment when it comes to lead-generation campaigns.

‎

To improve the lead generation efficiency of ad campaigns, focus on:

• Choosing highly-targeted keywords to bid for while trying to avoid those that are too competitive.
• Defining your target audience.
• Continuous optimization of your ad campaigns (e.g., identifying negative keywords, analyzing performance and adjusting strategies accordingly, etc.).
• Retargeting, which shows ads to users who have previously visited your site or interacted with your content to remind them of your product and encourage them to return.

8. Offer free trials and freemiums

Giving potential customers a chance to test your product for free is a powerful lead generation strategy, as it lets them experience your offering firsthand.

Both freemiums and free trials are efficient, so you can choose the approach that fits your vision better:

➡️ ‎ Freemiums are free forever versions of your product that include some essential features. 

➡️ ‎ Free trials provide access to all product features on a specific plan for a limited period.

The reasoning behind both strategies is pretty much the same—once leads recognize the value your product provides, they’ll be more likely to upgrade to a paid plan.

9. Host webinars and online events

Hosting webinars and other industry events is valuable for several reasons:

• It helps with networking by connecting you with other professionals and leaders within your industry.
• Increases brand visibility and establishes you as a thought leader.
• Lets you collect valuable lead information.

Namely, to register for your workshops or webinars, leads will have to provide their contact information.

As a result, you’ll get a rich new lead pool your sales reps can focus on in the future.

Moreover, if your webinars provide enough educational and other value, leads will likely opt for your product, as they’ll associate your brand with a positive experience.

10. Launch referral programs

Referral programs enable you to transform paying customers into brand advocates and generate scores of qualified leads.

You can use various methods to incentivize existing customers to recommend your product to their peers, such as special rewards (e.g., free shipping) or discounts (20% off their monthly subscription).

Source

Of course, first you have to ensure that your customers are satisfied with your offering. Otherwise, no incentive will be strong enough to encourage them to refer new leads to you.

Pro tip: In addition to referrals, you can also use affiliate marketing to generate more leads in B2B lead generation campaigns. Affiliates are usually influencers, industry experts, or established companies with a strong following among your target audience.

In return for a reward - a commission rate for each sale, lead, or click - affiliates promote your brand to their followers and peers, increasing your visibility and helping you get highly targeted leads.

What are the best practices for lead generation?

Finally, regardless of your unique lead generation strategy, there are some tips and best practices that you should always implement:

Define your target audience and ICP

Trying to perform lead generation without understanding who you’re supposed to target and engage is a lot like fishing in the desert.

You might have all the fancy equipment at hand, but it won’t do you any good if you keep casting your line in scorching sand.

The same goes for your lead generation efforts. You can design the best lead generation strategy the marketing world has ever seen and use all the cutting-edge tools, but you still won’t get any high-quality leads if you apply your strategy randomly.

So, before you start doing anything regarding your lead generation strategy, make sure that you’re well aware of:

• Who your target audience and ICP is.
• Where you can find them.
• What drives them.
• What problem they’re looking to solve.

That way, you’ll be able to focus on the right lead generation channels and create a tailored approach bound to resonate with your audience.

Focus on quality instead of quantity

Imagine the following scenario:

The lead generation strategy you invested lots of time and money into results in thousands of new leads. However, less than 10 of those leads end up converting into paying customers.

Is that strategy a hit or miss?

The entire point of lead generation isn’t just filling your pipeline with any leads but with qualified leads that are likely to convert and bring you ROI.

If most of your leads churn before subscribing at least once, you’ll experience serious revenue loss across levels.

Ensure that your lead generation strategy focuses on generating quality leads, i.e., leads that show actual buying intent for your specific offering.

In the end, it’s much better to generate 10 leads and convert 9 than to generate 10,000 and convert 2.

Right?

Don’t forget to engage and nurture leads

Attracting, identifying, and capturing high-quality leads gets you only halfway to your intended goal - conversion.

To make sure that most of your leads eventually become paying customers, you need to engage with them to build rapport and trust.

Regardless of the engagement channel you choose - i.e., social media, email marketing campaigns, etc. - make sure the communication is personalized.

You’ve surely received generic, spammy sales emails or offers at least once, so you know how off-putting they can be.

Make sure you have as much relevant information on your lead as possible, ranging from basic contact info and firmographics to more detailed insights such as their interests, pain points, etc., to draft compelling messaging that will resonate with them. 

Pro tip: You can use automation tools to streamline engagement and nurturing. For instance, Warmly lets you create personalized email and LinkedIn outreach workflows to contact the highest-quality leads that match your ICP.

Start converting more leads with Warmly

Handling lead generation manually is no easy task in today’s competitive market. 

Besides, some lead generation metrics vital for success can’t be tracked without help from tools designed to monitor specific lead generation channels and capture relevant data - such as Warmly.

Warmly is a revenue orchestration platform that lets you harness your website’s full conversion potential by:

1. Tracking and identifying website visitors - both companies and individual stakeholders.
2. Enabling email campaign attribution by letting you track visitors who come through specific campaigns.
3. Revealing B2B and intent data on each identified lead, enabling you to score and qualify them.
4. Providing automated and human-handled options for engaging leads on your website while they’re still hot.

Sign up for Warmly’s free forever plan and discover how it can help you generate and convert more leads today.

Or book a live demo to see it in action first.

In the ever-evolving lead generation landscape, staying ahead of the curve requires more than just intuition and guesswork. 

The key to unlocking your sales and marketing efforts' full potential lies in tracking the right lead generation metrics and KPIs, as they can point you in the right direction, helping you identify and convert high-value leads.

But with so many data points to consider, how do you determine which lead generation metrics truly matter?

We’re here to help! In this detailed guide, we’ll discuss the 15 essential lead generation metrics and KPIs every marketer—beginner and pro alike—should monitor for optimal results.

Let’s dive in!

TL;DR

• Lead generation metrics and KPIs are measurable values vital for assessing the efficiency of your lead generation strategies.
• Choosing the right metrics for your business depends on business objectives, lead generation channels, your business stage, and type.

Top lead generation metrics to track include:

• Number of generated leads
• Lead conversion rate
• Website traffic
• Cost per lead
• Lead quality score
• Customer acquisition cost
• Marketing Qualified Leads
• Sales Qualified Leads
• Lead source attribution
• Lead velocity rate
• Time to conversion
• Customer lifetime value
• Churn rate
• Engagement rate
• MRR

💡 ‎ Warmly can help boost your website lead generation and conversion rates by identifying website visitors, detecting the hottest leads among them, and engaging them while they’re still hot.

What is a lead generation KPI?

Before we begin, here is a quick reminder of what lead generation metrics and KPIs actually are.

Lead generation KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are measurable values that help you evaluate the effectiveness of your lead generation efforts. 

As such, they are crucial for:

1. Tracking progress.
2. Determining whether your strategies are achieving their intended goals.
3. Helping you figure out which segments require tweaking and improvements.

How do you choose the right lead generation metrics?

Not all lead generation metrics are equally useful for different businesses, goals, and needs.

Therefore, you should consider several factors before deciding on which lead generation metrics to track:

1. Business objectives - This one is a no-brainer. Focus on metrics that are most relevant to your specific goals and requirements. For example, if your goal is to increase sales, focus on metrics related to lead conversion rates and lead-to-customer ratios.
2. Preferred lead generation channels—Different lead generation channels (e.g., social media, email marketing, content marketing) may require specific metrics. For instance, tracking click-through rates (CTR) is relevant for email campaigns, engagement metrics for social media, etc.
3. Available data - Choose metrics you can track accurately and continuously based on the data you can access. If collecting relevant data is impossible or too difficult, switch to those you can track more easily or use tools that can help you find that data. For example, you can’t accurately track website engagement if you can’t tell who your website visitors are and how they interact with your content.

Another important factor to consider before choosing which KPIs to monitor is the type, size, and stage of your business:

• Startups and early-stage businesses can keep things simple and focus on growth metrics (number of generated leads, conversion rates, etc.) and lead and customer acquisition costs.
• Growing companies can start to introduce granularity by focusing on metrics that indicate how to ensure sustainable scaling, such as customer lifetime value, performance of different lead generation channels, etc.
• Established enterprises can use advanced metrics, such as multi-channel attribution, customer retention rate, and more, to expand into other markets, retain more customers, cross-sell and upsell, and more.
• B2B companies often place more focus on account-based metrics (e.g., success rates of account-based campaigns, number of targeted and converted accounts, etc.), and lead quality and conversion rates, as these ensure they’re targeting the right accounts and appropriate stakeholders within them.
• B2C companies should prioritize metrics that reflect consumer behavior and engagement, such as social media engagement metrics, multichannel buyer sentiment, customer retention rate, and more.

Finally, if you’re wondering when is the best time to start tracking metrics and KPIs, the answer is - as soon as possible. That way, you’ll avoid missing out on actionable insights.

Early tracking allows you to measure the effectiveness of your strategies and make informed adjustments from the get-go, so make sure to track metrics:

1. At the start of every new lead generation campaign.
2. When implementing changes to existing strategies, in order to determine their impact.

What are the top lead generation metrics to track?

Regardless of your industry and stage of business, there are some lead generation metrics and KPIs that everyone should track.

Let’s break down each!

1. Number of generated leads 

The number of generated leads is the total count of leads collected over a specified period.

Knowing how many leads you generated over a certain period helps you assess the efficiency of your lead generation strategies and provides insights into which parts require adjustment or improvement.

Tracking the number of generated leads involves 2 key steps:

➡️ ‎ Use lead capture tools - Web forms, landing pages, website traffic trackers, etc., can all help capture relevant lead information.

➡️ Focus on regular reporting and analytics - Create regular reports to review the number of leads generated over specific periods (e.g., daily, weekly, monthly). Analyze trends and compare lead generation volumes across different campaigns and channels.

2. Lead conversion rate

Lead conversion rate measures the percentage of leads that progress to the next stage in the sales funnel, such as becoming an MQL or SQL or eventually converting into a customer. 

This metric is essential for assessing the effectiveness of your lead nurturing processes and overall lead generation strategies.

It’s directly related to the number of generated leads, as the whole point of lead generation is to find leads who are most likely to convert. 

If you generate thousands of leads but manage to convert just a dozen, this is usually a sign that something is seriously off with your marketing strategy.

The formula for calculating your lead conversion rate is:

Lead Conversion Rate = (Total Number of Leads/Number of Leads Converted) × 100

For example, if you start with 1,000 leads and 200 of them are converted into paying customers, the lead conversion rate would be:

(200/1000) × 100 = 20%

When it comes to tracking lead conversion rates, you should:

1. Define conversions - Clearly define what a lead conversion in your context entails. This could be moving from a cold lead to an MQL or SQL or becoming a paying customer. Ensure that your marketing and sales teams understand these stages well for accurate measurement.
2. Use conversion tracking systems - Leverage CRMs, automation tools, website visitor identification tools, etc., to accurately track lead progression through the sales funnel and capture their transition from one stage to the next.

3. Website traffic 

Website traffic measures the number of visitors to your website over a specific period. 

As such, it’s crucial to understand how well your website attracts visitors and how many match your ICP.

There are several segments of these metrics to keep an eye on:

• Total number of website visitors over a period of time.
• Unique visitors, i.e., specific companies and individuals that visit your website, especially if they’re returning visitors.
• Page views, i.e., the pages your visitors land on most frequently or spend the most time on.

To accurately track website traffic, you should:

➡️ Use a website traffic tracking tool - These solutions can help you identify website visitors, so you’ll know not only how much traffic you’re generating but also who your unique visitors are.

➡️ Analyze visitor behavior - Use solutions that can uncover insights into visitors’ buyer intent by monitoring how they interact with your website. If your solution of choice can reveal more details of their digital buyer journey (e.g., how they interact with competitors’ websites and ads or topics they researched on the web), all the better.

➡️ Track where your traffic is coming from - This includes sources like organic search, paid advertising, social media, referral sites, and direct traffic, helping you understand which channels are most effective in driving visitors to your site. For instance, you can add a snippet of tracking code to your cold emails to know which visitors came through specific outbound campaigns.

Pro tip: You can achieve all this with a single tool - Warmly. Our solution has options for identifying website visitors, revealing intent, and even tracking leads that came through email campaigns. Try it out here.

4. Cost per lead (CPL)

Cost per lead (CPL) is the average cost of acquiring a single lead. 

By understanding CPL, you can determine whether your marketing investments are yielding a good return and make informed decisions about where to allocate your resources.

The formula to calculate CPL is:

CPL = Total Cost of Lead Generation/Number of Leads Generated​

For example, if you spend $5,000 on a lead generation campaign and generate 500 leads, the CPL would be:

5000/500 = $10

This means that, on average, you are spending $10 to acquire each new lead.

Of course, since businesses differ in size, budgets, and objectives, there’s no definition of the optimal CPL value, as it depends on the individual business. Only you can tell what’s economical for you and what isn’t.

To track these metrics, you need to:

➡️ Keep tabs on your lead generation expenses - This includes all the costs related to lead generation efforts, such as advertising (e.g., PPC campaigns, social media ads), content creation (e.g., blog posts, ebooks), lead capture tools, and other relevant costs.

➡️ Monitor the total number of leads generated.

Pro tip: Although a lower CPL is ideal, it’s also important to ensure that the leads are high-quality and have a good chance of converting into customers. Balancing the costs with lead quality helps in maximizing overall ROI.

5. Lead quality score

Lead quality score helps businesses determine how likely a lead is to convert into a paying customer based on certain criteria and characteristics, allowing for more effective prioritization and resource allocation. 

A higher lead quality score indicates that the lead is more likely to engage and convert, while a lower score suggests that additional nurturing or qualification may be needed.

Calculating this metric can be more complex than other KPIs because your definition of a high-quality lead might differ from the next business’s.

The scoring process involves several steps, including:

1. Calculating your lead conversion rate.
2. Defining the behaviors and attributes that indicate buyer intent and good ICP fit in your specific case.
3. Determining the impact each action and behavior has on conversion (e.g., if 2 out of 3 leads who frequently returned to your pricing page converted in the end, it’s a good sign that this is high-intent behavior).
4. Creating your scoring and qualification system based on the most relevant buying signals you defined 

That’s why doing it manually isn’t the best of options. 

Instead, you could use a tool to automate lead scoring and qualification based on the criteria and data attributes you specified as relevant.

Pro tip: You can achieve this with Warmly, as the platform enables you to put lead qualification and routing on autopilot.

6. Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

This metric measures the average cost of acquiring a new customer.

Monitoring CAC helps you ensure that your customer acquisition activities are sustainable and profitable and that they will not exceed your marketing budget.

The formula to calculate CAC is:

CAC = Total Cost of Acquisition/Number of New Customers Acquired

Where:

• Total Cost of Acquisition includes all expenses related to acquiring new customers, such as marketing and sales costs.
• Number of New Customers Acquired is the total number of new customers gained during a specific period.

For example, if you spend $50,000 on marketing and sales efforts in a quarter and acquire 500 new customers, your CAC would be:

50000/500 = $100

This means that, on average, you’re spending $100 to acquire each new customer.

To track it, you need to:

➡️ Monitor overall acquisition expenses, including all relevant marketing and sales expenses.

➡️ Record new customers acquired over a specific period.

7. Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)

MQLs are leads who are considered more likely to become customers based on their engagement with your marketing team and activities. 

These leads have demonstrated a higher level of interest and engagement compared to other leads, making them more promising for further nurturing by the sales team.

There’s no direct formula for calculating MQLs. 

Instead, the process involves defining criteria that indicate a lead’s potential to become a customer (e.g., engagement metrics, demographics, behavioral signals, etc.) and scoring them based on those criteria.

The best way to do this is to use marketing automation and lead intelligence tools that can identify, score, and qualify leads on your behalf.

8. Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs)

SQLs are leads who have been evaluated by the sales team and considered ready for direct sales engagement. 

These leads have passed through initial marketing evaluations and shown a significant level of interest or intent, indicating they are more likely to convert than MQLs.

Being able to identify them is crucial for your lead generation and conversion success, as they’re the ones who are most likely to convert right now.

Similarly to MQLs, SQLs are typically identified based on specific criteria or behaviors that align closely with your sales team’s requirements.

As a result, the process of tracking them is the same:

➡️ Define the criteria that set a lead out as qualified for sales (high-intent behavior, e.g., booking a demo, contacting sales for a custom quote, returning to your website, and visiting high-intent pages, etc.).

➡️ Score leads based on that criteria.

Again, the fastest, most efficient, and most accurate way of tracking and identifying SQLs is to use designated tools for lead enrichment and qualification.

9. Lead source attribution

Lead source attribution tracks and identifies the origin of your leads, such as which marketing channels or campaigns contributed to generating them. 

Accurate attribution helps you understand which sources provide the best quality leads and contributes to more informed decision-making in your marketing strategy. 

To track it, make sure you monitor all your lead generation channels (e.g., website, email campaigns, PPC campaigns, etc.) and capture lead data to determine which lead came from which source.

10. Lead velocity rate (LVR)

This metric tracks the speed at which your lead pipeline is expanding, providing insights into the effectiveness of your lead generation efforts and the overall health of your sales funnel.

The formula to calculate it is:

LVR = (Number of Leads This Month − Number of Leads Last Month) / Number of Leads Last Month × 100

For example, if you had 500 leads last month and 600 leads this month, the LVR would be:

(600 − 500) / 500 × 100 = 20%​

This indicates a 20% growth in your lead pipeline over the period.

To track it, you should:

➡️ Regularly track the number of generated leads, ideally every month or even week.

➡️ Calculate LVR periodically using the formula above to understand the lead growth rate for a specific time interval. This helps detect anomalies and track changes in lead volume over time.

Pro tip: Analyze how LVRs change over time to understand your lead pipeline’s growth dynamics. This can help you understand and predict growth trends.

11. Time to conversion

Simply put, this is the average time it takes a lead to progress from initial contact to becoming a customer.

Tracking time to conversion is crucial for assessing the speed of your sales cycle, identifying potential bottlenecks, and making data-driven decisions to enhance your lead generation strategies and overall conversion rates.

To calculate it, apply the following formula:

Time to Conversion = Sum of Time Taken for All Conversions/ Number of Conversions​

For example, if you have 10 leads that converted over a period of 30 days, and the total time taken for all conversions is 300 days, the average time to conversion would be:

300/10 = 30 days

To track it, you’ll have to:

1. Determine the individual time to conversion for each lead (you can do this by applying timestamps in your CRM that will help you pinpoint the actual time it took you from initial contact to conversion).
2. Add all those individual times to conversion together to get a sum of time taken for all conversions.
3. Keep tabs on the number of conversions over that specific period.

12. Customer lifetime value (CLV)

This metric shows the total revenue a business can expect from a single customer over the entire duration of their relationship.

As such, CLV helps you understand the long-term value of acquiring and retaining customers, allowing you to optimize marketing spend and fully monetize your customer base.

The formula to calculate CLV is:

CLV = Average Purchase Value × Average Purchase Frequency × Customer Lifespan

Where:

• Average Purchase Value is the average amount of revenue generated per purchase.
• Average Purchase Frequency is the average number of purchases made by a customer within a specific period.
• Customer Lifespan is the average duration a customer remains active with your business.

For example, if a customer makes an average purchase of $100, purchases 4 times a year, and stays with your business for 3 years, the CLV would be:

100 × 4 × 3 = $ 1,200

To track CLV, take the following steps:

1. Gather data on average buying values and frequencies from your sales and CRM systems. 
2. Analyze historical data to calculate the average customer lifespan. This can be done by tracking the time from a customer’s first purchase to their last purchase or when they become inactive.

13. Churn rate

Churn rate is one of sales and marketing teams' least favorite metrics, as it shows the percentage of customers who stopped engaging or making purchases over a specified period.

This KPI is crucial for assessing customer retention, understanding the reasons behind customer loss, and evaluating the overall health of your business. 

The formula to calculate churn rate is:

Churn Rate = Number of Customers Lost During a Period/Number of Customers at the Start of the Period × 100

For example, if you had 1,000 customers at the start of the month and lost 50 customers by the end of the month, the churn rate would be:

50/1000 × 100 = 5%

This indicates that 5% of your customers churned during the month.

You can track this metric by:

1. Maintaining accurate records of customer numbers at the beginning and end of the measurement period. 
2. Tracking the number of customers who have canceled or stopped using your product or service. Ensure that this information is updated regularly to reflect recent changes.

14. Engagement rate

Engagement rate measures how actively leads interact with your marketing content, such as email open rates, click-through rates, and social media interactions.

It is an important indicator of how well your content resonates with your audience and how effectively it drives actions such as likes, shares, comments, and clicks.

Although the formula to calculate engagement rate varies depending on the type of content and the platform, there’s a common formula that can be applied to most cases:

Engagement Rate = Total Engagements/Total Impressions or Reach × 100

Where:

• Total Engagements includes actions such as likes, shares, comments, clicks, and other interactions.
• Total Impressions or Reach represents the number of times the content was displayed or seen.

For example, if a social media post received 200 likes, 50 comments, and 30 shares (totaling 280 engagements) and had 5,000 impressions, the engagement rate would be:

280/5000 × 100 = 5.6%

This indicates that 5.6% of the people who saw the post actually engaged with it.

To track it, you have to:

1. Define engagement actions, i.e., which types of interactions are considered engagements for your content. This can include likes, shares, comments, replies, clicks, and other relevant actions based on the platform and content type.
2. Collect engagement data by using analytics tools provided by social media platforms, email marketing systems, content management systems, or a third-party tracking and analytics platform.

15. Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)

MRR measures the total revenue generated from your subscription-based business models on a monthly basis. 

MRR provides a clear view of the stability and growth of your revenue stream by focusing on recurring income rather than one-time sales. 

As such, it’s essential for SaaS companies as it helps forecast revenue and assess business performance.

To calculate it, use the following formula:

MRR = Number of Active Subscribers × Average Revenue Per User 

Where:

• Number of Active Subscribers is the total count of customers with active subscriptions.
• Average Revenue Per User is the average revenue generated per subscriber per month.

For example, if you have 200 active subscribers, each generating an average of $50 per month, the MRR would be:

200 × 50 = $10,000

To track MRR, you first need to:

1. Track active subscribers.
2. Calculate average revenue per user by dividing total monthly revenue by the number of active subscribers. This helps you understand each subscriber's revenue contribution.

Common mistakes to avoid when tracking lead generation metrics

Tracking lead generation metrics is essential for optimizing your marketing and sales strategies, but it’s easy to fall into certain traps. 

Avoiding these common mistakes can help ensure that your data is accurate and actionable:

1. Neglecting data quality - Relying on inaccurate or incomplete data can lead to misleading insights and poor decision-making. To avoid this, invest in good data enrichment tools and regularly audit and clean your data to ensure accuracy.
2. Ignoring context - Evaluating metrics without considering the broader picture can lead to misinterpretation. Always analyze metrics together with other relevant data, such as market conditions, campaign goals, and customer feedback.
3. Focusing on vanity metrics - Prioritizing metrics like the total number of leads generated without considering lead quality or conversion rates or focusing on social media engagement alone will get you nowhere. Balance vanity metrics with meaningful lead generation KPIs that reflect lead quality, buying intent, and conversion rates to gain a clearer picture of your lead generation effectiveness.
4. Failing to set clear goals - Tracking metrics without having specific objectives or benchmarks can lead to a lack of direction and actionable insights. Establish clear, measurable goals for your lead generation efforts, use metrics to track progress towards these goals, and adjust strategies as needed.
5. Inconsistent tracking methods - Using different tracking methods or tools inconsistently across campaigns or periods. Standardize your tracking methods and tools to ensure consistency and comparability of data, which will help you make accurate comparisons and analyses.
6. Not reviewing and adapting - Failing to regularly review your analytics reports and the insights metrics and KPIs provide, results in a very limited picture of your overall business health. Make sure to continuously review your metrics, assess performance, and adapt your strategies based on these data-driven insights.

Start converting more leads with Warmly

Handling lead generation manually is no easy task in today’s competitive market. 

Besides, some lead generation metrics vital for success can’t be tracked without help from tools designed to monitor specific lead generation channels and capture relevant data - such as Warmly.

Warmly is a revenue orchestration platform that lets you harness your website’s full conversion potential by:

1. Tracking and identifying website visitors - both companies and individual stakeholders.
2. Enabling email campaign attribution by letting you track visitors who come through specific campaigns.
3. Revealing B2B and intent data on each identified lead, enabling you to score and qualify them.
4. Providing automated and human-handled options for engaging leads on your website while they’re still hot.

Sign up for Warmly’s free forever plan and discover how it can help you generate and convert more leads today.

Or book a live demo to see it in action first.

If you’re running a SaaS company, one of the first things you need to focus on is SaaS lead generation.

After all, no SaaS business can be successful without high-quality, high-potential leads, as they’re key to growing revenue year after year.

In this guide, we’ll dive into all the SaaS lead generation essentials, including all the important definitions, tips, and the 7 tested and tried SaaS lead generation strategies that are sure to help your business thrive.

TL;DR

• SaaS lead generation is the process of attracting and identifying potential customers for SaaS products or services.
• The main difference from traditional lead generation lies primarily in the fact that SaaS lead generation is conducted entirely via digital channels, from lead identification and scoring to engagement and conversion, which creates several other differences.
• B2B and B2C lead generation strategies have similarities but are also widely different in terms of marketing focus, sales cycle length, and target audience size.
• Best SaaS lead generation strategies include content marketing, SEO, PPC, social media marketing, free trials, automated outreach, and website optimization.
• To run an efficient SaaS lead generation process, you should:
• Define your ICP.
• Choose the main SaaS lead generation channels.
• Implement lead capture systems.
• Engage with leads across channels.
• Monitor and analyze campaigns.

How is SaaS lead generation different than traditional lead generation?

In simple terms, SaaS lead generation is the process of attracting, identifying, nurturing, and converting potential customers specifically for SaaS products or services.

Since SaaS products and services are digital, it’s no wonder SaaS lead generation is also tied to the digital sphere. As a result, you must rely on the web and other software solutions for every step of the process.

Additionally, the entire sales cycle is much longer regarding SaaS products. Building strong, long-term relationships with SaaS leads takes time, which is necessary as SaaS products generally rely on a subscription payment model.

So, when it comes to the key differences between SaaS and traditional lead generation, several stand out the most, including:

Digital and online focus

SaaS lead generation exclusively relies on digital marketing channels such as content marketing, SEO, PPC advertising, social media marketing, and email campaigns. 

On the other hand, traditional lead generation can use digital and physical tactics, such as cold calling, traditional advertising, face-to-face customer interactions, etc.

Subscription model

SaaS products typically operate on a subscription basis, where customers pay a recurring fee for access to the software. 

This affects the lead generation strategy, as the focus is on acquiring leads more likely to become long-term subscribers than one-time buyers. 

As a result, the entire lead generation and nurturing process is longer and requires different strategies than with traditional lead generation efforts.

Free trials and freemiums 

Another key difference between SaaS lead generation and traditional lead generation is their specific approaches to attracting potential customers.

SaaS companies often offer free trials or freemium versions of their products to spark leads’ interest and incentivize them to convert to paying customers. 

This means that leads can test a software product firsthand for a limited period or with limited access to its features instead of relying on demos or sales calls, which encourages continuous user engagement and product adoption.

Although this approach takes more time and won’t get you an ROI as quickly as simply selling a product from the get-go, it can certainly pay in the long run, as providing users with an immersive product experience can help convert them into recurring customers.

Lead nurturing

Given the longer sales cycle and subscription-based revenue model of SaaS, lead nurturing becomes crucial, as you’re looking to generate long-term paying customers.

Building that kind of trust and loyalty is no easy task, as you have to continuously educate leads about your solution and how it addresses their pain points, personalize their experiences every step of the way, be sure to listen to their feedback, etc.

Traditional lead generation, on the other hand, can be focused both on building long-term relationships or one-off sales, allowing for more flexibility in how you approach leads.

B2B SaaS lead generation vs B2C lead generation

‎The key difference between B2B and B2C SaaS lead generation is the target audience.

B2B SaaS lead generation efforts are focused on other businesses. 

However, since you can’t engage and convert an actual company, your leads will actually be the people representing these businesses, i.e., decision-makers or key stakeholders within organizations. 

In contrast, B2C SaaS lead generation targets individual consumers looking for software products for personal use or small-scale applications.

This difference in target audiences and decision-makers accounts for several other important differences, such as:

Size of your target audience

In B2C lead generation, you focus on individuals of various profiles, meaning your lead pool is much wider than in B2B lead generation.

For instance, if you build a mobile app for editing photos, your product can be used by amateurs and professional photographers, social media influencers, and average Joes who just want to play a bit with photo editing.

On the other hand, B2B lead generation is limited by the nature of the offering and the number of businesses that might be interested in it.

Namely, many B2B products are industry-specific, meaning they’re a match only for businesses within that vertical. Moreover, B2B products require bigger investments, further reducing the number of potential customers.

Finally, there are fewer businesses than individual customers, which also affects the size of your target audience.

Length of the sales cycle

B2B sales processes are typically longer because multiple decision-makers are involved. 

This means you’ll have to be ready to invest more time and effort into attracting and nurturing leads while taking a more professional approach to attracting and communicating with them.

Conversely, B2C sales processes are usually much quicker as you depend only on one decision-maker - the potential customer - and individual decisions are always faster and easier to make.

As a result, the entire process of attracting and converting these leads is more straightforward and allows for taking a more casual approach, as we’ll see below.

Marketing focus and strategies

Since B2B SaaS lead generation focuses on other businesses, it employs specific strategies designed to attract and convert companies.

These include:

• ABM marketing that targets specific companies and stakeholders within them with personalized messaging.
• LinkedIn outreach and advertising for networking with key stakeholders.
• Creating industry-specific content that positions you as a thought leader.
• Participating in or organizing industry conferences and similar events to increase brand visibility and connect with decision-makers.

Moreover, when dealing with businesses, your entire brand messaging and content have to be professional and appeal to the practical side of things (i.e., emphasize ROI potential, improvement in business efficiency, etc.).

B2C SaaS lead generation typically relies on other strategies to generate high-quality leads, such as:

• Social media that entails using popular platforms to reach individual users with targeted ads, promotions, and relevant posts.
• Content marketing, which includes creating engaging content like blogs, videos, tutorials, etc.
• Influencer marketing that leverages the popularity of an influencer, blogger, gamer, etc., to promote a SaaS product to their audience

All these strategies have some common traits, as they all emphasize personal satisfaction and individual value. 

As a result, brand messaging and content appeal to emotions much more than in B2B lead generation and are more personal.

Note: B2B lead generation can include some B2C strategies and vice versa. However, some methods are more common in B2B or B2C, which is why we categorized them like this.

What are the different types of SaaS leads?

Before we dive into the 8 best SaaS lead generation strategies, let’s quickly clarify what types of SaaS leads exist.

They can be separated into 4 key categories:

1. Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) - Leads who have engaged with your marketing efforts to an extent that suggests they are likely to be interested in your product. They have shown interest through activities like downloading content, attending webinars, or signing up for a newsletter. They’re probably not ready to purchase, meaning that further nurturing is necessary.
2. Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) - Sales qualified leads are leads who have demonstrated a higher level of interest and have the potential to convert into paying customers. They have a specific problem or need that your product can cater to and may have had initial product demos or sales chats. They’re ready for direct engagement with sales and are close to converting.
3. Product Qualified Leads (PQLs) - Leads that have used the product (often through a free trial or freemium) and shown behavior that indicates they are likely to convert to a paying customer, such as actively using the product, continuing to engage with it, etc.
4. Customer Success Qualified Leads (CSQLs) - Existing customers who express interest in additional products or upgrades. They are already familiar with your brand and have had a positive experience. Ideal for upselling or cross-selling.

SaaS lead generation strategies

When doing SaaS lead generation, there are several strategies you shouldn’t miss out on, regardless of your industry, size, and target audience

1. Content marketing 

Content marketing focuses on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and engage a clearly defined audience. 

For SaaS companies, content marketing aims to educate potential customers, address their pain points, and build trust in order to guide them through the sales funnel and convert them into subscribers.

There are various content types you can use to generate leads, depending on your product or service, niche, target audience, etc., including:

• Blog posts.
• Case studies.
• How-to videos.
• eBooks.

Source

Pro tip: Use gated content to capture leads. Choose the most valuable resources most likely to incentivize leads to provide their information in exchange for access, such as templates, industry reports, detailed guides, etc.

Source

Pros & Cons

✅ Cost-effective, as you don’t need a big budget to pull it off.

✅ Generates organic traffic, as optimized content can improve your SERP rankings and drive quality traffic to your website.

✅ Builds trust and authority, positioning your brand as a source of truth.

❌ Takes time to generate results. Think of it as a marathon more than a sprint.

❌ Highly competitive landscape, as everyone is generating some kind of content.

2. SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a digital marketing strategy focused on improving a website's visibility in search engine results pages. 

The goal is to attract organic traffic by optimizing website content and structure to rank higher for relevant search queries. 

For SaaS companies, SEO is a crucial strategy for increasing brand awareness and driving traffic consisting of high-quality leads.

It includes various tactics, such as:

• Ensuring that your content and website include relevant keywords and have a structure that makes them readable and appealing (e.g., using appropriate headers, meta descriptions, title tags, etc.).
• Internal linking.
• Optimizing your website’s loading speed on computers and mobile devices.
• Backlink building, etc.

Source

Pros & Cons

✅ Enhanced user experience across devices.

✅ Increased organic traffic, better domain rating, and visibility.

✅ Improves your credibility by helping you position your website and content at the top of SERPs.

❌ No immediate or guaranteed results. Sometimes you do everything right and don’t reap the expected benefits because SEO is not an exact science.

❌ Requires expertise, such as specialized knowledge and skills in areas such as keyword research, content optimization, and technical SEO.

3. Social media marketing

Another staple SaaS lead generation strategy is social media marketing, which can be used for B2B and B2C lead generation alike.

It involves using social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc., to promote your brand, engage with your audience, and drive traffic to your website. 

You can use all kinds of tactics here, including social media advertising, posting relevant and compelling content, engaging leads, and more.

Pro tip: The platform or platforms you choose should be appropriate for your target audience, so make sure to know where your leads live on the web before designing a social media marketing strategy.

Pros & Cons

✅ Direct audience engagement.

✅ Real-time feedback on your content and campaigns, allowing for quick adjustments and improvements.

✅ Improves brand awareness.

❌ Requires continuous engagement and maintaining an active presence year-round.

❌ Algorithm changes, as social media platforms frequently update their policies, which can impact the visibility and performance of your content.

4. PPC

PPC or Pay-Per-Click advertising is a digital marketing strategy where advertisers pay a fee each time their ad is clicked. 

In the SaaS space, PPC campaigns are designed to drive targeted traffic to companies’ websites.

This is done by bidding on relevant keywords, crafting compelling ad copy, and placing ads on search engines and social media platforms where potential customers are most likely to see and interact with them.

For best results, however, you have to constantly monitor your campaigns and optimize them on the go, refining your ad copy, targeting, and bidding strategies.

Pros & Cons

✅ Immediate results.

✅ Allow for precise targeting of specific audience segments.

✅ Good control over budget, with options for setting daily budgets, bids, and maximum cost per click.

❌ Could get expensive, especially for highly competitive keywords.

❌ Requires ongoing monitoring and management.

5. Freemium and free trials

Freemium and free trials are popular strategies used by SaaS companies to attract potential customers by offering access to their product at no initial cost. 

Both approaches aim to showcase the product's value, build trust, and encourage users to convert to paid plans, but they differ in some ways. 

The freemium model enables you to offer a basic version of your product for free, with access to its essential features. Users can use this version for free with no time limits (so-called “Free-forever plans”).

As such, it’s best suited for products where users benefit from a basic version and can be motivated to upgrade for advanced features to get even more value.

The free trial model, on the other hand, lets you provide potential customers full access to your SaaS product’s features for a limited time (usually 7 to 30 days).

This makes it effective for products where experiencing the full feature set is crucial for demonstrating its real value.

Pros & Cons

✅ Lets you show users your product’s value before they commit.

✅ Generates sales opportunities.

❌ Conversion challenges, especially regarding freemium users.

❌ Churn and revenue loss risks.

6. Leverage your website 

Your website has an enormous lead generation and conversion potential, provided you know how to make the most of it.

To increase and harness your website’s lead generation capacity, make sure to take the following steps:

• Optimize its speed and structure.
• Ensure your landing page and other web page copy is relevant and actionable.
• Include CTAs.
• Leverage lead-capturing forms.
• Invest in a website traffic tracking solution that can identify website visitors and help you detect those most likely to convert.
• Use chatbots and live engagement options to engage visitors while they’re still hot.

Pros & Cons

✅ Provides a centralized point of control for identifying and engaging quality leads.

✅ Targeted lead capture, as you can set up filters to create audience segments.

✅ 24/7 availability, as this strategy doesn’t depend as much on sales reps, meaning that your leads will be provided with a personalized experience regardless of whether an actual human is available.

❌ Initial investment, as you’ll need software solutions for tracking and engaging website visitors.

❌ Potential compliance concerns, especially when dealing with European audiences due to GDPR rules.

7. Automated outreach sequences

Automated outreach involves using software tools and technologies to streamline and automate reaching out to potential leads. 

It can include anything from email marketing campaigns to social media messaging and automated follow-ups.

Pros & Cons

✅ Increased efficiency across levels.

✅ Allows for a “set it and forget it” approach.

✅ Good scalability.

❌ Initial setup and costs.

❌ Potential for getting flagged as spam.

How to do SaaS lead generation: Step-by-step guide

Define your ICP and target audience

Before you implement any SaaS strategy, you must conduct detailed market research to define your target audience and Ideal Customer Profile to know who to focus your lead generation efforts on.

This will help you decide on preferred lead generation channels, approach, specific lead generation strategy, etc.

Decide on and optimize your lead generation channels

Once you’ve pinpointed your market and defined your ICP, it’s time to choose the lead generation channels you’ll use the most.

It can include anything and everything we mentioned above, from content marketing to social media and PPC campaigns.

Regardless of which channel you choose, don’t forget to leverage your website as well. 

Think of it as your shop window - it’s one of the first things your leads will come in contact with, so make sure it’s optimized for conversion by implementing the steps and tips we mentioned above.

Implement lead capture systems

To be able to nurture and engage with your leads, you first have to get their contact details and gather as much information as you can on them to craft a personalized approach.

Investing in a lead enrichment tool, such as Warmly, is one of the most efficient ways of ensuring that you’ll get all the relevant info on each valuable lead.

Warmly is designed for capturing leads - both companies and individuals - that land on your website, enriching each identified visitor with:

• Detailed B2B data (contact info, employee count, industry, technographic, job role, etc.).
• First-party intent data (insights into how leads engage with your website, such as pages visited, time spent on each page, chatbot interactions, etc.).
• Third-party intent data (buying signals left throughout the web, such as researched topics, visits to competitors’ websites, etc.).

This way, you’ll get the necessary contact and basic B2B info and gain valuable insights into a specific visitor’s intent to buy, enabling you to qualify and score them more easily.

Engage with leads

Once you’ve captured and qualified leads, you should engage them in a way that will resonate with them.

With Warmly, there are a number of options for engaging leads, including:

• Chatbots - Warmly’s AI Chat will automatically engage all website visitors (or just those that match certain criteria) and offer them valuable resources, answer queries, book meetings, or ask questions that can help qualify them.

• Orchestrator - Orchestrator adds leads who match predefined criteria to automated email or LinkedIn sequences, sending personalized emails, DMs, or connection requests.

• Live video and text chat - This enables reps to engage leads in live conversations via chat or video straight from your website.

You can combine these options while leveraging insights Warmly uncovered on each lead for optimal results.

Monitor and analyze

Finally, it’s important to track relevant KPIs to understand how your SaaS lead generation strategy is performing.

You should monitor metrics such as conversion rates, cost per lead, and overall ROI of your lead generation campaigns to get a clear idea of what’s working and what requires improvement.

Start generating more quality SaaS leads today

Although effective SaaS lead generation takes time and effort, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a pain that will cost you an arm and a leg.

Use some of our techniques, leverage your existing resources, make a few tweaks here and there, and you’ll be ready for takeoff.

If you’re keen on filling your pipeline with high-value SaaS leads as soon as possible, Warmly can help you.

It’s optimized for identifying website visitors and allowing you to drill down on leads most likely to convert right now, enabling you to engage them while their interest is at its peak.

Subscribe to Warmly’s free plan and take your SaaS lead generation to the next level.

Or book a live demo with our team to see it in action first.

‎

If you’re eager to find highly targeted prospects more likely to convert, targeted lead generation is a far better choice than standard lead generation.

However, many B2B sales and marketing teams aren’t quite sure what the concept of targeted lead generation entails, which inhibits them from applying it more widely in their strategies.

In this article, we’ll break down all the essentials, helping you master the art of generating targeted business leads in no time.

Let’s dive straight in!

TL;DR

➡️ ‎Targeted lead generation is the process of identifying and attracting high-quality, high-intent leads by focusing marketing efforts on a specific audience segment that’s most likely to be interested in your product.

➡️ ‎ It’s a more narrow and specific approach than general lead generation, as it focuses on particular, well-defined audience segments.

➡️ ‎Targeted lead generation is generally a good choice when launching a new product, entering a new market, or looking to shorten the sales cycle, as it allows for a more targeted and personalized approach to leads.

➡️ ‎While it can improve conversion rates, optimize marketing spend, and increase lead generation efficiency across levels, targeted lead generation also involves higher upfront costs, complex processes, and the risk of going too narrow in searching for quality leads.

➡️ ‎There are several steps to conducting efficient targeted lead generation, including:

• Defining your ICP.
• Using a lead enrichment tool for valuable data insights.
• Creating audience segments.
• Engaging leads.
• Constantly monitoring and improving campaigns.

What is targeted lead generation?

Targeted lead generation is the process of sifting through your market to identify leads with a higher potential for conversion than “regular” leads.

In its essence, it involves segmenting your audience based on criteria relevant to your business and ICP - such as demographics, behavior, industry, intent level, etc.- to recognize leads most likely to be interested in your products or services.

So, what makes targeted lead generation that much different from standard B2B lead generation?

General lead generation involves attracting and identifying potential customers from a wide audience. Think of it as casting a very wide net to capture high volumes of leads, regardless of their actual quality.

Ideally, every lead generation campaign will result in qualified leads, but it’s rarely so in practice.

This means that your marketing team has to filter out all the “false positives” and low-quality leads from primary results.

As a result, many turn to targeted lead generation.

Targeted lead generation is a more strategic and precise approach that focuses marketing efforts on a much narrower and well-defined audience with a higher likelihood of converting. 

This strategy improves the quality of generated leads and increases the chances of getting a better ROI faster while enabling you to save valuable time and money otherwise wasted on chasing and nurturing poor-quality leads. 

When should targeted lead generation be run instead of general lead generation?

Another question that bothers B2B marketing teams is when is the right time for a targeted lead generation approach.

There are several scenarios and business stages in which the targeted lead generation strategy proves to be most effective.

The best way to determine when’s the right time to go for targeted lead generation is to ask yourself a few questions:

1. Do I have a well-defined ICP? - Targeted lead generation can be run only if you have a clear understanding of your ideal customer profile. That lets you focus your lead generation efforts on that specific audience segment (e.g., you have a product geared toward compliance professionals at enterprise-level businesses in the banking industry).
2. Am I launching a new product or service? - If you’re introducing a new product or service to the market, targeting specific segments that have already shown interest in similar offerings can help build traction and enable you to tailor your brand messaging based on feedback from a relevant audience.
3. Is my sales cycle complex or long? - If your offering is highly specific and requires a longer decision-making process or involves multiple stakeholders, targeted lead generation can help pinpoint quality leads and nurture them through targeted strategies. As a result, you’ll move leads more quickly and efficiently through the sales funnel.
4. Is the market I’m operating in very competitive? - If you’re in a highly competitive industry, you’ll need all the help you can get to distinguish your brand and reach the right audience. Targeted lead generation lets you focus on high-potential leads, enabling you to achieve that faster and without wasting resources.
5. Do I have access to relevant data on potential leads? - Effective targeted lead generation relies on accurate and actionable data, so ensure your business can tap into relevant lead data and transform it into valuable insights to get the best results. 

As can be seen from this, businesses of all sizes and stages can benefit from targeted lead generation, each in their own way.

For instance, startups can break into the market more easily and achieve ROI faster, while larger businesses can use this strategy when expanding to new markets or looking to accelerate the sales cycle by narrowing down on targeted sales leads, etc.

In the following section, we’ll summarize some key advantages of running targeted lead generation campaigns.

What are the benefits of doing targeted lead generation?

The main benefits of doing targeted lead generation are:

#1. Improved conversion rates

By focusing on a specific audience segment, targeted lead generation helps attract higher-quality leads.

These target leads are usually much further along in their buyer’s journey, making them easier to convert than leads generated by a broader approach. 

Targeting a more relevant audience that consists of leads more likely to make a buying decision will increase conversion rates across levels.

#2. More effective campaigns

By segmenting your target market, focusing only on prospects that match your ICP and other relevant criteria, and designing a tailored approach for each prospect, you can run campaigns that resonate better with your target audience.

In turn, this increase in efficiency will lead to a better ROI by:

• Increasing conversion rates.
• We'll see below how you can spend your marketing budget better.

#3. Optimized marketing spend

Targeted lead generation allows you to allocate your marketing resources more efficiently. 

Directing resources towards segments with higher buying potential minimizes the waste of time, money, and effort on less relevant prospects.

#4. Personalized customer experience 

Because targeted lead generation focuses on specific audiences, all its tactics and activities must be tailored to that audience segment's needs and interests.

As a result, targeted sales leads will be provided with a much more personalized experience across channels, making them feel valued and appreciated.

Personalizing leads’ experiences with your brand helps with a number of things, including:

• Building trust and rapport.
• Increasing engagement rates, as leads are more likely to respond and interact with tailored messages and content.
• Enhancing the chance of conversion.

#5. Reduced sales cycle time

All these benefits combined result in one significant advantage - shortening the sales cycle.

By identifying and attracting target leads who are already interested in your product or need a solution similar to yours and creating a tailored approach for each lead, you’ll be able to close deals more easily and in less time.

Disadvantages of targeted lead generation

Although targeted lead generation is a powerful tool for efficient lead targeting and generating better-quality leads, it comes with a few disadvantages.

#1. Higher initial costs 

Implementing a targeted lead generation process requires:

• More investment in data analysis, as you’ll need a clearly defined ICP with all the relevant data attributes. 
• Sophisticated marketing and lead enrichment tools that enable you to identify potential leads that match relevant criteria and contact them.
• Personalized content creation because you’ll have to provide relevant and tailored resources and messaging across levels. 

These upfront costs are higher compared to general lead generation approaches, which might make targeted lead generation cost-prohibitive for smaller businesses or companies with tighter budgets.

2. Complexity and required resources

Targeted lead generation can be more complex to manage, as it involves a variety of processes, such as:

• Segmenting your audience.
• Crafting tailored messages.
• Continuously analyze data to refine your approach as your business expands. 

This complexity requires additional resources, including skilled sales and marketing professionals and advanced technology, to efficiently execute targeted lead generation campaigns.

3. Risk of a narrow focus 

While targeting highly specific audience segments can be beneficial, it also comes with the risk of excluding potential leads who might not fit perfectly within your defined criteria but could still be valuable customers. 

Setting a too-narrow focus might lead to missing out on opportunities from leads who fall outside your primary segments but are interested in your products or services.

How to do targeted lead generation

There are several steps to follow to ensure you’ll generate more targeted leads with your lead generation strategy. 

#1. Define your ICP

First things first - you can’t run targeted lead generation without defining your ICP first.

To do that, you should:

• Conduct thorough market research, including current and past trends, competitors’ performance, etc. 
• Analyze your existing customer data (e.g., best-performing deals and champions from your CRM) to find common traits.

Once you’re done, compile those common characteristics and attributes - such as industry, company size, job roles, geographic location, pain points, needs, etc. - into detailed buyer personas that will help you pinpoint which audience segment to focus on first.

#2. Invest in a lead enrichment tool

A lead enrichment platform is one key tool for efficiently conducting highly targeted lead generation campaigns.

Namely, lead enrichment platforms help you collect relevant data on each potential lead, enabling you to score, segment, and qualify leads accordingly.

However, data enrichment software comes in all shapes and sizes, so make sure you choose the one that’s both capable of accurate lead targeting and the best fit for your needs.

For instance, if your website is one of your main lead generation channels, Warmly might be the ideal choice, as it’s designed to capture and enrich targeted leads on your website.

The platform:

🎯 ‎ Identifies website visitors, including both companies and individuals.

🎯 Enriches them with B2B data (contact details, technographic, job roles, etc.), allowing you to contact them and personalize your approach accordingly.

🎯 Detect buying intent, meaning it enables you to identify website visitors who are most interested in your product from the get-go.

As such, Warmly is perfect for running targeted lead generation campaigns, as it provides you with all the essential insights into your website traffic, including:

• Who’s visiting your website right now.
• What pages they’re looking at.
• Details of their digital buyer’s journey, such as researched topics, interactions with competitors’ ads, etc.

All this helps you understand who your hottest leads are right now, enabling sales teams to prioritize and engage them while they’re still hot.

Pro tip: Warmly can help you build your ICP as well. By identifying website visitors and enriching them with relevant data, Warmly lets you get a better idea of who’s visiting your website the most, what they have in common, etc., enabling you to create a more detailed and precise ICP.

3. Create audience segments

The entire point of running targeted lead generation is to generate leads by focusing on specific audience segments that are most likely to convert.

Therefore, the next step is pinpointing high-possibility segments within your audience and focusing on them first.

You can do this by:

• Analyzing CRM data.
• Drilling down on intent data, which lets you identify high-intent leads on your website, social media, etc.

Segmentation is also important because different lead groups require different sales and marketing approaches tailored to their needs, behavior, and common traits (such as industry, seniority, job role, etc.).

Separating quality leads into specific segments helps you create unique campaigns that are sure to resonate with them and nurture them into conversion faster and with less effort.

4. Engage and nurture leads

Engagement is key for guiding leads to conversion, so you can’t afford to miss out on this.

It’s best to engage quality leads while their interest is at its peak, as time to lead is often a crucial factor in successful deal closing.

With Warmly, sales reps will get a real-time Slack notification when a lead fitting into your ICP or exhibiting high-intent behavior lands on your website or a relevant web page.

This allows reps to react in time by contacting these leads via video or text chat straight on your website. Moreover, they can use insights Warmly unearthed to craft unique messages, tailored to each lead’s interests, behavior, requirements, etc.

Moreover, Warmly lets you automate outreach and engagement by:

• Automatically adding leads that match predefined criteria in personalized LinkedIn and email sequences.

• Setting up AI-powered chatbots on your landing page or other web pages that send contextual messages, answer questions, book meetings, etc.

This way, no targeted lead will be wasted, as Warmly’s automated and semi-automated capabilities ensure that all quality leads are engaged with and nurtured in a way that’s most likely to resonate with them.

5. Rinse and repeat

Finally, repeat these steps with some adjustments over time for the best results.

Of course, you’ll have to tailor your targeted lead generation efforts accordingly as your business grows and expands or changes its initial offering to ensure you’re always targeting the most relevant audience.

Monitor your website and other channels to see who’s most interested in your offering, analyze existing customers, look into retention and churn rates, etc., to see what’s working and what should be enhanced.

You can use the insights you uncover to fine-tune further your targeting criteria, messaging, and channels for your high-value leads.

5 Tips for more effective targeted lead generation

Here are some tips and best practices for running efficient targeted lead generation that will turn you into a targeted leads generator in no time.

1. Leverage data and analytics for advanced segmentation

You should use data-driven insights to improve and adjust your targeting strategies. 

Analyze past interactions, relevant demographic data, and buyer intent. 

However, you’ll need to go beyond basic B2B demographics to better understand your audience and create more precise segments. Make sure to analyze data such as:

• Past interactions with your reps.
• Web search history.
• Interactions with your website and other owned channels, etc.

This is exactly why you need lead enrichment tools like Warmly, as they enable you to get relevant and accurate lead data, allowing you to build more nuanced segments and create bulletproof targeted lead generation strategies.

2. Personalize your outreach

Personalization is key to capturing the attention of your target audience. Craft tailored messages and content that speak directly to each segment's specific pain points and needs. 

Personalized communication not only enhances engagement but also increases the likelihood of converting leads into paying customers by taking notice of their concerns.

3. Optimize your website and landing pages

Since your website is one of the first things potential customers come in contact with when getting to know your brand, you should make sure that it’s customized to match the needs and interests of each audience segment. 

Ensure that your website and landing pages feature targeted messaging, compelling calls-to-action, and relevant content, as this will both improve user experience and increase the possibility of lead conversion.

Pro tip: To check how your leads interact with your website and identify potential churn areas and hidden opportunities, go to the “Warm Calls” section of Warmly’s dashboard and monitor their web sessions in real-time.

4. Streamline lead nurturing and engagement with automated workflows

Automate lead nurturing and engagement processes to maintain their interest throughout the buyer’s journey and build trust. 

Implement automated workflows that send personalized outreach and follow-up emails and LinkedIn or chatbot messages based on leads’ behavior and interactions. 

This ensures that leads receive relevant information and proper engagement at the right time, helping to guide them toward conversion while saving your sales team time on manual tasks.

Pro tip: Warmly’s Orchestrator lets you include specific audience segments in tailored outreach cadences based on the criteria you define. Learn more about it here.

5. Engage through multi-channel strategies

Make sure to reach your target audience through a combination of channels to reinforce your messaging and increase engagement.

Consistent messaging across channels is important as it helps position your brand and increase its visibility and enhances the chances of engagement.

Use everything from email marketing and social media to content marketing and other relevant channels to ensure your message reaches your audience wherever they are most active.

Wrap up

Successfully running targeted lead generation campaigns that result in high-quality leads isn’t that difficult when you know what you’re doing.

When deciding whether to use targeted or general lead generation, remember to weigh its pros and cons against your specific business objectives, size, and stage, as it’s not the best fit for everyone.

If you decide the time is right, remember our best practices and pro tips, based on the methods we tested and tried ourselves, and you can’t go wrong.

Want more help with your targeted lead generation campaigns? 

Subscribe to Warmly’s free plan and start revealing high-intent leads on your website today.

‎

AI has revolutionized virtually every vertical, and sales and marketing are no exception.

So, it’s no surprise that AI lead generation has become one of the industry’s hottest topics in 2024.

However, since this is still uncharted territory, many sales and marketing people are still figuring out how to make the most of AI lead generation.

In this guide, we’ll help you master the art of AI-powered lead generation by breaking down the essentials, from common use cases and best practices to the best AI lead generation software.

Let’s begin!

TL;DR

• AI lead generation is the process of attracting, capturing, nurturing, and converting leads enhanced by AI.
• AI can improve lead generation across levels, allowing marketers to run better-targeted and highly personalized lead generation campaigns on scale.
• AI has a wide range of use cases thanks to its ability to analyze large volumes of data and identify complex patterns.
• These include everything from building more precise ICPs to automating lead scoring and qualification, streamlining outreach and more.
• Businesses looking to implement AI in their lead generation can use one of three top AI lead generation tools:
• Warmly - For revealing and converting website visitors.
• Keyplay - For qualifying and scoring leads.
• Outreach - For automating email sequences.

What Is AI Lead Generation

We’ll start by answering the quintessential question:

What is AI lead generation?

Simply put, AI lead generation is the process of attracting and nurturing leads into conversion by harnessing the power of AI, i.e., using AI engines or AI-powered tools.

Lead generation as such consists of several segments:

1. Attracting quality leads, i.e., leads that match your ICP.
2. Capturing them in various lead generation channels (e.g., your website, social media platforms, targeted ads, etc.).
3. Scoring and qualifying them to determine which leads are the hottest right now.
4. Nurturing them, i.e., building trust and rapport to increase their interest in your offering.

Anyone who’s ever dealt with lead generation knows how complex and painstaking it is, especially in today’s competitive landscape that requires speed, efficiency, and hyper-personalization for success.

AI helps B2B businesses tackle these modern challenges in several ways:

1. It saves valuable time - 33% of US marketing professionals surveyed in 2022 reported that one of the biggest benefits of AI is saving time. The same survey showed that most professionals use AI to quickly uncover trend insights and optimize content.
2. It can generate personalized content on scale - Certain AI models provide options for creating all kinds of content, from images to blogs, social media captions, etc. In 2023, one in five marketers was already using AI to generate content, and this number will continue to increase as AI becomes more sophisticated.
3. It streamlines various processes - Although sales and marketing automation is not new, AI can make it smarter, more precise, and overall better at what it does. In 2022, 77% of marketers reported using AI for automation.
4. It lets you understand your audience better - AI engines are excellent at uncovering patterns, which makes them an amazing asset in understanding and predicting buyers’ journeys, behaviors, and needs. This, in turn, lets you personalize their experiences.
5. It can leverage ad targeting - AI and ML models can be easily trained to analyze large volumes of data and match them against certain criteria. This makes them perfect for advertising and retargeting, as they can quickly detect leads that match your ICP or show high intent. This is why almost 50% of marketers use them for ad targeting, while 32% use them for perpetual optimization of paid ads.

So, it’s clear that implementing AI in lead generation gives you a significant competitive advantage by allowing you to run highly targeted, personalized, and efficient lead generation campaigns on a large scale.

However, approximately 45% of marketers are still hesitant to fully adopt AI because they feel they lack the necessary knowledge and capabilities.

To make sure you’ll join the other half, let’s look into common AI lead generation use cases, benefits, and best practices.

How to Use AI for Lead Generation

As we’ve seen above, AI can improve lead generation and overall sales and marketing efforts in various ways.

Here, we’ll explore the top 10 use cases of AI lead generation that every B2B marketer should include in their strategy.

1. Creating detailed ICPs

To create high-performing campaigns, you first must know who your ICP is. However, traditional market research can only get you so far, as there will always be insights and details you might miss.

Since AI excels at identifying patterns and uncovering bits of information that humans can’t detect as easily, you can have AI models analyze relevant data sources, such as:

• Your best-performing accounts and deals.
• High-intent leads detected in one of your lead generation channels (e.g., website, social media, etc.).

They will recognize the common traits and attributes that appear most frequently, providing a more detailed and accurate picture of your ICP and allowing you to create even better-targeted lead-generation campaigns.

2. Engaging leads

Even if you’ve been living under a rock these past few years, you must have heard about one AI engine - Generative AI.

It’s the AI model that powers popular engines such as ChatGPT, which are well-liked by broad audiences because of their conversational interface and ability to process natural language.

As such, this kind of AI is often used to create smart chatbots that you can set up on your landing page or any other relevant page (e.g., pricing, customer support, FAQ, etc.) to replace sales or customer support specialists.

Thanks to being powered by AI, these chatbots can be trained to perform a wide range of actions, including:

• Engaging leads in conversation by sending personalized messages or offering help.
• Providing simple product tours or case studies, whitepapers, etc.
• Booking meetings.
• Answering basic product questions that don’t require human attention, etc.

This way, you’ll reduce the time to lead and ensure that no high-intent lead goes under the radar just because no sales rep is available to engage them.

3. Scoring and qualifying leads

AI is perfect for scoring and qualifying leads because it can analyze large volumes of data and easily uncover valuable insights.

You can have it analyze your CRM records, website visitors’ behaviors, all correspondence leads have had with your reps or any other lead data source, and it will surface the hottest leads, followed by surging accounts and those still far from conversion.

As a result, you’ll be able to prioritize leads at the brink of conversion and use the insights pulled by AI to create high-converting strategies.

4. Automating prospecting and outreach

AI also helps you run lead generation campaigns on scale by putting various sales processes on autopilot.

AI models have made automation tools and capabilities smarter and more powerful than ever before, allowing them to efficiently handle a wide range of operations, such as:

• Recognizing businesses and key stakeholders that match your ICP and automatically adding them to outreach sequences.
• Finding leads’ contact information (e.g., email addresses, LinkedIn profiles, etc.) with higher accuracy and matching rates.
• Segmenting leads according to the criteria you specify and ensuring they’re included in the right sequence based on their segment.
• Drafting hyper-personalized emails and messages.

5. Predictive analytics

As mentioned above, many marketers use AI algorithms for predictive analytics and forecasting, and for a good reason.

AI’s pattern-recognition capabilities enable it to accurately predict a number of relevant factors by analyzing historical data and performance, including:

1. How leads might behave in a certain situation or react to a certain product.
2. How market trends will shift in the future.
3. Total customer lifetime value based on their purchase history and behavior.
4. Churn rate, allowing you to detect and improve high-churn areas.

6. Delivering personalized content at the right time

AI allows for real-time personalization of various content, ranging from web pages and chatbot conversations to providing customized offers and relevant blogs and case studies.

Real-time personalization was possible even before AI (think of providers like OptinMonster). However, AI further innovated the space, enabling smarter and optimized personalization.

Thanks to its ability to identify behaviors and analyze large quantities of data in seconds, AI can quickly discern who your leads are and what they’re most interested in.

This opens the door to a range of personalization possibilities. For example, you can:

• Ensure that each website visitor is shown a specific set of images, web copy, CTAs, and case studies that resonate the most with them based on relevant criteria (industry, job role, buyer intent, etc.).
• Make personalized sales offers that increase the likelihood of conversion (e.g., give them a special discount, offer a product package tailored to their industry or position, etc.).
• Have chatbots shoot highly personalized, contextual messages that look like they’ve been sent by actual humans, improving the chance of getting a reply.

7. Optimizing email campaigns

We mentioned email personalization and outreach automation before, but AI has improved cold email campaigns in so many ways that it deserves to be covered separately:

1. AI has revolutionized name matching, reducing false positives to a minimum. This makes it a valuable asset in scraping for email addresses, increasing the possibility of finding the right match every time and helping you clean up email lists.
2. It can personalize email copy to a greater extent than traditional automation tools. While it still cannot match human creativity, AI-generated content is much more original and personalized compared with what was possible before AI adoption.
3. It’s enabled smarter automation. AI lets you apply more complex conditional logic in workflows, makes smart recommendations on creating better-performing campaigns, and more.

8. Ad targeting and audience segmentation

AI can help you make highly targeted ad campaigns optimized for conversions.

By analyzing user data, including browsing behavior, purchase history, and social media activity, AI algorithms can identify patterns and predict which audiences are most likely to respond positively to specific ads. 

This lets marketers deliver ads tailored to individual users' interests and needs. For instance, an e-commerce company can use AI to target users who have shown interest in similar products but have yet to make a purchase, presenting them with personalized ads at the optimal time to encourage a sale. 

Additionally, AI can continuously optimize ad performance by adjusting targeting parameters in real-time based on user interactions, ensuring that advertising budgets are spent efficiently. 

9. Lead enrichment

AI-driven lead enrichment enhances the quality and depth of lead information by automatically gathering and integrating additional data from various sources, such as public databases, social networks, and other online resources. 

This data goes beyond basic B2B contact data and goes into more detail, including actionable insights such as job changes, interactions with social media posts, and other details of their digital journey.

As a result, you’ll get a more nuanced understanding of your leads, allowing sales reps to:

• Score, qualify, and segment them more efficiently.
• Tailor their approach, addressing each individual lead's specific needs and interests.

10. Monitoring lead generation channels

Some AI-powered tools can continuously scan the web—especially social media and similar networking platforms, where most leads can be found—for mentions of specific keywords, brand names, and industry-related topics.

By analyzing this vast amount of data, AI can identify potential leads discussing relevant products, services, or pain points, even if they haven't directly interacted with the brand.

For instance, if someone tweets about needing a new project management tool, an AI-driven monitoring system can flag this company or individual as a potential lead for a software company.

Beyond identifying leads, AI can also categorize and prioritize them based on influence, engagement levels, and sentiment, enabling businesses to focus their efforts on the most promising prospects.

At the same time, you can leverage AI-powered tools to monitor your owned channels, such as your website, to detect high-intent behavior there as well, ensuring that no quality leads will fall through the cracks.

Examples of Companies That Use AI to Generate Leads

An increasing number of businesses from all industries have become aware of all the benefits of implementing AI in sales and marketing, leading to an expansion of AI adoption across verticals.

Unsurprisingly, major players are at the forefront of AI innovation, as they have the most resources to invest in AI implementation.

Here, we’ll look into well-known companies that have successfully incorporated AI in their lead-generation processes.

Sephora

Sephora was one of the first brands to recognize the power of AI, launching their first AI-powered chatbot back in 2016.

Fast forward to today, and the chatbot is much more sophisticated, helping Sephora’s buyers sift through its massive product base to find the exact items they need more easily.

The chatbot can answer questions, offer tailored suggestions or recommendations based on specific queries, etc., providing a smoother and more satisfying customer experience across levels.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola also dabbled with AI last year, taking it one step further and creating its own platform powered by ChatGPT 4 and DALL.E.

The platform enabled users to generate customized AI content featuring Coca-Cola’s assets, such as its bottle, logo, etc., with the best artwork appearing on digital billboards in New York’s Times Square and London’s Piccadilly Circus.

This innovative marketing approach helped increase brand presence and popularity and engaged leads in a highly creative process, creating stronger and lasting relationships.

Netflix

Did you know that Netflix also uses AI to improve customer experiences?

All those highly personalized watching recommendations you got based on your previous searches and the content you enjoyed the most are actually powered by AI that processes your preferences to provide a tailored experience. 

Although this isn’t a lead generation technique in the narrowest of senses, it’s still a useful tool for:

• Nurturing existing customers by providing great experiences and increasing retention rates.
• Pushing users to upgrade to higher-tier plans.
• Getting free brand advocates, as satisfied users are sure to spread the word among their peers.

StraightIn

It’s important to note that you don’t necessarily have to be an industry giant to leverage AI in lead generation.

With so many powerful AI-driven tools on the market, you don’t have to make your own AI model from scratch.

For example, StraightIn, a LinkedIn marketing agency, opted to buy a ready-made customizable AI-powered solution instead of investing in its own platform—and the results were just as good.

StraightIn used Warmly, which enabled it to:

• Identify high-intent website visitors.
• Add specific visitor segments to a particular outreach sequence.
• Personalize each part of their LinkedIn and email outreach strategy while running it on autopilot.

The result? 

$10K revenue in just 2 weeks, which speaks volumes about AI's value in sales and marketing.

What Are the Best AI Lead Generation Software Solutions?

If you want to harness the power of AI in your lead generation processes, then you’ll need AI lead generation software optimized for your specific use case.

Here, we’ll offer three AI-powered B2B lead generation platforms for various user types and needs:

1. Warmly

Best for: Identifying and converting website visitors.

Who is it for: B2B companies of all sizes looking to unlock their website’s full conversion potential.

Full disclosure: While Warmly is our own product, we aim to provide an unbiased perspective on why Warmly is truly one of the best AI lead generation platforms.

Warmly is a signal-based revenue orchestration platform that leverages AI and intent data to help users:

• Identify website visitors.
• Recognize the ones that are most likely to convert right now.
• Streamline prospecting, outreach, and engagement.

Let’s get a closer look at its key features.

Feature #1: Website intent

Adding a snippet of Warmly’s code to your website lets you identify the companies and individuals visiting your website.

The platform will provide all the essential B2B information on every identified visitor, such as:

• Contact details (company names, phone numbers, email addresses, job titles, LinkedIn profiles, etc.).
• Firmographic data (industry, size, employee count, location, and other company details).
• Technographic data (a company’s full tech stack).
• SEP data (engagement with other sales and marketing campaigns, chatbot interactions, etc.).
• CRM data (ongoing and closed deals, account owners, previous interactions with your sales professionals, etc.).

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In addition to that, each lead will be enriched with detailed intent data, enabling you to easily recognize the hottest leads in real-time.

This data includes:

1. First-party intent data, i.e., insights into leads’ web sessions, such as:

• Pages they visited.
• High-intent questions they asked the chatbot.
• Time spent on each page.
• The content they downloaded (such as playbooks, whitepapers, etc.) or forms they filled out.

2. Third-party intent data, i.e., details of their entire digital buyer journey, including:

• Other websites they visited (with a focus on your main competitors).
• Social media activity.
• Ads they interacted with.
• Recently researched topics.
• Job change intent.

Feature #2: AI Chat

Warmly’s AI Chat is an AI-powered chatbot with all the functionality you’d expect from an innovative chat solution.

Since it’s AI-driven, it can be trained to perfectly match your needs, business goals, brand messaging, and tone of voice.

The chatbot will leverage the intent and B2B data Warmly identified to provide each lead with a personalized experience. It can handle a range of actions, including:

• Answering leads’ questions.
• Booking qualified meetings.
• Engaging high-intent leads.
• Offering valuable resources to visitors, such as product tours, case studies, playbooks, etc.

You can configure it to appear on all web pages or only on high-intent ones, such as pricing pages, case studies, BOFU blogs, etc.

Most importantly, Warmly’s AI Chat ensures that a human stays in the loop in case a hot lead requires to speak with an actual human or makes a high-intent query.

When that occurs, sales reps will be notified via Slack, allowing them to react promptly.

Feature #3: Orchestrator

Warmly’s Orchestrator, formerly AI Prospector, is another AI-powered feature enabling you to automate prospecting and outreach on LinkedIn and email.

Its workflow is simple to set up:

1. Specify the workflow trigger (i.e., a lead heads to the pricing page, a visitor matching your ICP lands on your website, etc.).
2. Decide on the lead segments you want the Orchestrator to target (filter companies by size, industry, employee count, technographic, etc.).
3. Choose the actual stakeholders from these companies you want to be contacted (filter them by role, seniority, etc.).
4. Specify the action you want the Orchestrator to take (send a personalized email/contextual LinkedIn message/LinkedIn connection request, or all three combined).

The Orchestrator also uses intent data to segment leads and to personalize each email and LinkedIn message accordingly.

Pros & Cons

✅ Identifies companies and individuals visiting your website.

✅ Enriches visitors with intent and B2B data.

✅ AI-powered sales automation.

✅ AI-driven lead engagement.

✅ Live engagement options.

✅ Includes all features in all paid plans.

❌ Annual pricing options only.

2. Keyplay

Best for: Automated lead scoring and qualification.

Who is it for: Account-based marketing and sales teams that need a more efficient way of finding high-intent accounts.

Keyplay is an AI-powered lead generation platform that uses AI to find, score, and qualify leads.

It enables you to set up custom lead scoring and qualification rules, allowing you to tailor it to your specific target market and ICP.

Features

• AI Lookalike helps find potential leads that match your best-performing customers and deals.
• Leverages AI and ML to find accounts that match your ICP the best and qualify them accordingly.
• Provides a wide range of advanced filters for highly specific searches, including recruiting velocity, industry categories, online presence, technographic, etc.
• Lets you set up custom ICP scoring based on the signals and criteria relevant to your business and target market.

Pros & Cons

✅ Advanced filtering options.

✅ Tracks custom signals relevant to your ICP and business objectives.

✅ Puts lead qualification on autopilot.

❌ Offers only annual paid plans.

❌ Integrates with just two CRMs.

3. Outreach

Best for: AI-powered email outreach.

Who is it for: Larger B2B teams looking to run cold email campaigns on scale.

Outreach is an AI-powered sales execution platform that focuses on automating email outreach.

In addition to automation features, it also provides actionable insights into deals, customer-facing interactions, etc.

Features

• Provides AI-generated actionable summaries of each deal and account, allowing you to identify hidden opportunities and potential risks, and decide on the next steps. 
• Adds quality prospects to outreach lists and sends personalized emails based on the context, prior interactions, CRM data, etc.
• AI-powered sales assistant that records, transcribes, and analyzes live meetings, uncovering opportunities for growth, identifying buyer sentiment, providing live suggestions during meetings, etc.

Pros & Cons

✅ Intuitive interface.

✅ Solid range of integrations with CRM and other popular sales tools.

❌ Non-transparent pricing.

❌ If you want more than sales automation, you’ll have to buy several product packages.

Wrapping Up

As we’ve seen, AI has a wide range of use cases in marketing and sales and the potential to transform lead generation for the better.

So, if you haven’t already started using AI in lead generation and other sales and marketing processes, now’s the right time to change that if you want to stay ahead of the curve.

If your website is one of your critical lead generation channels, Warmly might be the best way to begin your AI lead generation journey.

Its intuitive interface, wide range of features, and good value-for-money ratio make Warmly an ideal choice for both beginners and experienced AI users.

Sign up for its free plan and unlock your website’s full lead generation potential today.

Or, if you’d like to see it in action first, you can always book a live demo with our team.

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Although RocketReach is a solid lead intelligence platform, it doesn’t do the trick for everyone, urging users to search for RocketReach alternatives.

In this article, we’ll explore the 9 best RocketReach competitors to help you find the perfect solution for your specific use case.

We ensured that only the best options made it to our list by:

• Testing dozens of RocketReach alternatives.
• Interviewing their real-life users.
• Going through software rating sites to get the hang of the general user experience for each platform.

As a result, we hand-picked the best-in-class RocketReach alternatives for different user types, needs, and budgets.

Before we delve into the top 9 list, let’s get a closer look into why users switch from RocketReach or avoid it altogether.

Why Look for a RocketReach Alternative?

RocketReach has a B2B contact database with 700M+ people and 60M+ companies, which makes it a viable solution for prospecting and obtaining essential lead intelligence.

The platform also offers a few handy features, such as:

• Chrome extension for finding email addresses and other basic lead details in LinkedIn search results and company pages.
• AI-powered recommendations that find lookalikes of the prospects you already searched for based on various criteria, helping you expand and scale your prospecting efforts.

However, there are quite a few downsides to RocketReach worth considering:

1. It’s expensive

One of the first things ex and current RocketReach users mention is the price, which makes the platform cost-prohibitive for smaller companies.

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Most users believe that its pricing is far too high given its offering, especially because:

1. Its lowest tier reveals only email addresses, so you must upgrade to a more expensive plan for phone numbers.

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2. The platform offers limited functionality, with no sales automation or engagement features.

2. No outreach and lead engagement options

RocketReach can be used only for finding essential B2B lead info, as it offers no options for engaging leads or orchestrating sales processes.

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This can be a dealbreaker for many users, as most modern platforms include a wider set of functionality in their standard offering.

3. Data inaccuracies

Another common complaint is RocketReach’s data quality and accuracy.

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Numerous users reported issues with high email bounce, inaccurate phone numbers, and similar problems.

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And now, time for our curated list of the best RocketReach alternatives.

What Are the Best RocketReach Alternatives & Competitors in 2024?

1. Warmly - Reveals, enriches, and converts website visitors.

2. Apollo - Sales intelligence and engagement platform.

3. Lead411 - B2B database that runs data through several layers of verification.

4. UpLead - B2B contact database with real-time email verification.

5. Cognism - Sales intelligence platform with international data coverage.

6. Keyplay - Lets you build targeted lead lists through custom filtering and lead scoring.

7. Hunter - All-in-one email outreach platform.

8. Adapt - Advanced industry-based filtering for vertical-specific prospecting.

9. Kaspr - Chrome extension for LinkedIn prospecting.

1. Warmly 

Disclaimer: Although Warmly is our platform, we reviewed it objectively, just like all other RocketReach alternatives. Warmly made it to our list because some of our customers have switched to our solution from RocketReach, which is why we’re confident at least some of you will find it to be a match as well.

Warmly is a revenue orchestration platform that reveals website visitors, detects those most likely to buy right now, and provides options for engaging them while they’re still hot.

Three features in particular make Warmly a strong RocketReach competitor:

Feature #1: Reveals website intent

Warmly identifies anonymous website visitors at both company and individual level, uncovering businesses as well as individual stakeholders that landed on your website.

Pasting a piece of Warmly’s code into your website is all it takes. The platform will start revealing potential leads in minutes.

Once Warmly identifies a website visitor, it pulls all the relevant information on them, providing you with a complete data profile, including:

• Contact details (company names, phone numbers, email addresses, job titles, LinkedIn profiles, etc.).
• Firmographic data (industry, size, employee count, location, and other company details).
• Technographic data (software tools and technology a company uses).
• CRM data (ongoing and closed deals, account owners, previous interactions with your sales professionals, etc.).
• SEP data (engagement with other sales and marketing campaigns, chatbot interactions, etc.).

However, Warmly is more than a website traffic deanonymization platform - it also uncovers visitors’ buyer intent.

The tool tracks buying signals your visitors left on your website and other places on the web, delivering a complete picture of their readiness to buy.

The insights Warmly provides include:

1 - Web session details, such as:

• Pages they visited, with a focus on high-intent pages (e.g., pricing, specific features, comparison with competitors, etc.).
• Time spent on each page.
• The content they downloaded (such as whitepapers, playbooks, etc.) or forms they filled out.
• High-intent questions they asked the chatbot.

2 - Details of their customer journey across the web, including:

• Recently researched topics.
• Job change intent.
• Visits to competitors’ websites.
• Interactions with ads and social media posts.

All this data combined lets you understand who your hottest leads are right now and provides you with all the information you need to craft a personalized approach.

Feature #2: Automated outreach

Unlike RocketReach, Warmly provides several options for streamlining essential sales processes, including:

1. Orchestrator

Warmly’s Orchestrator is used to put prospecting and outreach on autopilot.

It automatically adds website visitors that match the criteria you set up in automated LinkedIn and/or email sequences.

Building workflows with the Orchestrator is easy, as all you have to do is follow through several steps:

1. Set up the workflow trigger (e.g., a lead lands on a high-intent page).
2. Choose which companies you want to target (you can filter them by size, industry, deal stage, etc.).
3. Specify which stakeholders you want to target from each company (filter by role, seniority, etc.)
4. Decide which action the Orchestrator should take (send a personalized email, connect with them on LinkedIn, send a LinkedIn DM).

2. AI Chat

AI Chat will automatically engage your website visitors by firing a contextual message.

This way, you’ll ensure that no potential leads fall through the cracks just because no sales rep was available to take care of them at the right time.

You can instruct it to:

1. Engage all website visitors.
2. Only visitors that land on high-intent pages or match other relevant criteria.

In addition to chatting leads up, the AI Chat can also:

• Answer their questions.
• Book meetings.
• Offer collaterals like case studies, playbooks, interactive product tours, etc.

Having AI Chat to engage website visitors lets your sales reps focus only on matters that demand their attention, such as nurturing hot leads and closing more deals.

3. Lead routing

Finally, Warmly lets you automate lead routing to ensure that every valuable lead is assigned to the most appropriate sales rep.

You can set up Slack notifications that will alert a specific rep based on the criteria you specify whenever:

• A high-intent lead or lead that matches your ICP lands on your website.
• A lead asks a high-intent question in the chatbot or requires to speak with an actual human.
• A website visitor takes any other relevant action that qualifies them as a potentially warm lead.

The rep can take it from there, engaging leads via one of Warmly’s live engagement features.

Feature #3: Live engagement

Although automation can efficiently handle quite a few sales processes, it can’t replace the good old human touch when it comes to especially delicate operations such as lead nurturing and conversion.

This is why Warmly lets you engage leads straight from your website via:

1. Text chat.
2. Live video call.

In the “Warm Calls” section of Warmly’s dashboard, you’ll find all the visitors surfing your website in real-time.

Clicking on a visitor will reveal their enriched profile (B2B information and intent data) and let you tune into their web session and monitor how they interact with your website.

Once reps assess that a visitor is qualified enough, they can:

1. Send a personalized chat message, making it clear that they’re a real human.
2. Initiate a video call.

Check out our Warm Calls best practices to ensure high response rates.

Pricing

Warmly offers a free forever plan that lets you reveal up to 500 people and companies visiting your website. It’s the perfect plan for getting a taste of one of the platform’s essential features.

If you expect higher traffic volumes and need additional features, you can upgrade to one of three premium tiers:

1. Startup: $700/mo, includes 3 users, up to 10,000 monthly visitors.
2. Business: From $1,440 to $1,740 per month, depending on the number of visitors you expect to have. It includes 10 seats.
3. Enterprise: Custom plan. Created for users with an estimated traffic of 100,000+ visitors per month who need more customization. Includes 20 seats, advanced AI personalization, custom integrations, etc.

Note: All paid plans provide access to all of Warmly’s features and include deep integrations with data tools such as Clearbit, Bombora, and 6Sense, allowing you to get a bundle of products at the price of one.

Integrations 

Warmly integrates with OpenAI and most modern SEP and CRM software, in addition to the data solutions mentioned above, allowing it to easily fit into any business’s tech stack.

How does Warmly compare to RocketReach?

RocketReach focuses on one use case.

Warmly is a more versatile solution that helps you manage the entire sales pipeline - from lead generation and initial outreach to lead engagement and conversion.

Also, it’s worth noting that RocketReach charges a hefty price considering its offering and keeps its best features behind a paywall.

Warmly, on the other hand, includes all features in every pricing tier, allowing businesses of all sizes to make the most of its capabilities.

Furthermore, while Warmly reveals website-generated leads and provides accurate B2B contact information paired with first and third-party intent data, RocketReach delivers only third-party intent and essential B2B data with varying accuracy rates.

Finally, RocketReach’s Chrome extension and static B2B database make it a better option than Warmly if you’re looking for a solution that can help you handle prospecting on multiple web channels (LinkedIn and company websites).

However, if you want a more complete sales solution optimized for enhancing website lead generation and conversions, then Warmly is your best pick.

Sounds like you? Sign up for Warmly’s free plan and try it out for size.

Pros & Cons

✅ Identifies companies and individuals visiting your website.

✅ Enriches each identified lead with detailed B2B intelligence.

✅ Reveals buying intent data.

✅ Sales engagement and orchestration options.

✅ Includes all features in all paid plans.

✅ Integrates with several lead and sales intelligence solutions, enabling you to get a bundle of products at the price of one.

❌ Only annual pricing options.

❌ No static B2B database.

2. Apollo 

Best for: Managing the entire sales funnel.

Apollo is a B2B sales intelligence and engagement platform with a vast B2B contact database.

It boasts a wide range of features for streamlining various sales processes, from prospect engagement to booking meetings, making it a good RocketReach alternative for more advanced users.

Features

• B2B database with 275M contacts and 73M companies with solid international coverage.
• Robust analytics dashboards and reports for tracking sales performance.
• Lets you create automated and semiautomated outreach sequences across email, LinkedIn, and phone.

Who is it for?

Sales teams that want to handle the entire sales cycle from a single platform.

Pricing

Apollo has a free forever plan that includes unlimited email finder credits, 5 phone number credits, and 10 contact export credits.

If you need more, you can upgrade to one of three paid plans:

1. Basic: $59 per user per month
2. Professional: $99 per user per month
3. Organization: $149 per user per month

Professional and Basic plans offer a 14-day free trial.

Pros & Cons

✅ Strong filtering and overall prospecting capabilities.

✅ Versatile functionality.

❌ Dual credit system (one credit is spent for revealing an email address and another for the phone number of the same contact), meaning the costs can easily add up.

❌ Issues with finding accurate phone numbers.

3. Lead411 

Best for: Getting verified and up-to-date B2B contact data.

Lead411 is a B2B sales leads database that stands out from similar platforms due to its multi-step data verification that ensures high accuracy rates.

It provides good value for money compared to RocketReach and is one of the more affordable solutions on our list.

Features

• Triple-verifies each data point, running it through its algorithm, AI engine, and human verification process and reverifies the entire database every 90 days.
• Lead scoring that leverages growth intent data enables you to quickly find and prioritize high-intent accounts that match your ICP.
• Lets you create multichannel outreach sequences.

Who is it for?

Smaller businesses and startups that need a good B2B database and solid outreach features but don’t want to break the bank.

Pricing

Lead411 has a 7-day free trial with 50 data exports.

Once it expires, you can upgrade to one of two plans:

1. Basic Plus Unlimited: $99 per user per month
2. Enterprise Limited: Custom pricing

You’ll get a few extra options if you opt for annual billing. In addition to getting a discount on the Basic Plus Unlimited Plan, you can also subscribe to:

1. Pro with Bombora Intent: Custom pricing 
2. Unlimited: Custom pricing

While all of Lead411’s plans include a decent range of features, if you want the most advanced functionality, such as Bombora intent data or automatic CRM enrichment, you’ll have to subscribe to one of its highest tiers.

Pros & Cons

✅ Good data accuracy.

✅ User-friendly interface.

❌ Limited filtering capabilities.

❌ Regions apart from the US, Canada, and EU are poorly covered.

4. UpLead 

Best for: Verifying email addresses in real-time.

UpLead is a B2B database that finds and verifies email addresses in real-time, providing higher accuracy rates than RocketReach.

It also has a Chrome extension that allows users to find contact data on LinkedIn and B2B websites.

Features

• Tracks 155M+ individual contacts and 16M+ company profiles.
• Real-time email address verification to ensure you’ll get only accurate addresses.
• Data enrichment with 50+ relevant B2B attributes.

Who is it for?

Sales teams that need a large database of verified email addresses.

Pricing

UpLead has a 7-day free trial with 5 credits for revealing a contact or exporting it.

After the trial expires, there are 3 plans to choose from:

1. Essentials: $99 per user per month with 170 monthly credits
2. Plus: $199 per user per month with 400 monthly credits
3. Professional: Custom pricing

Since the paid plans offer limited reveal/export credits, you’ll probably have to buy more. One extra credit costs $0.60 per credit on the Essentials plan and $0.50 on the Plus plan.

Pros & Cons

✅ One credit unlocks both the email address and the phone number of an account, so you won’t have to spend two to reveal the entire contact profile.

✅ Tracks 16,000 technology data points, providing deep insights into a company’s tech stack.

❌ The best features, such as buyer intent data and advanced filtering, are available only on the Professional plan.

❌ Limited international coverage.

5. Cognism 

Best for: Finding B2B data for international contacts.

Cognism is a sales intelligence platform with a solid database of GDPR-compliant data.

Cognism might be the best RocketReach alternative in the contact data provider category if you aim to cover international markets.

Features

• B2B database with 70M verified mobile phone numbers (47 million cell phone numbers in the US alone) and global data coverage.
• Provides phone-verified mobile numbers for best accuracy in some of its data packages.
• Several CRM enrichment options for keeping your data accurate and up-to-date.

Who is it for?

Larger businesses that run sales operations across borders.

Pricing

Cognism doesn’t have one-size-fits-all pricing packages. Instead, the price is tailored to each customer’s needs.

However, there are several things we can tell you about the price:

• There are two types of data to choose from: Platinum and Diamond, with the latter being more accurate as it goes through several verification layers.
• Each plan has a flat platform fee that includes support, maintenance, onboarding, and initial setup. 

For more details, it’s best to contact its sales team.

Pros & Cons

✅ Global data coverage with high matching rates.

✅ More verified phone numbers than most B2B contact data providers.

❌ Opaque pricing.

❌ You need a more advanced data package to access phone-verified phone numbers.

6. Keyplay 

Best for: Finding companies that fit your ICP by setting up custom scoring and qualification systems.

Keyplay is best known for enabling users to create custom lead scoring and qualification models without using code.

This makes it an ideal RocketReach alternative for building highly targeted lead lists and prioritizing surging accounts.

Features

• AI Lookalike helps you find potential leads that match your best-performing clients and deals.
• Provides a wide range of advanced filters for highly specific searches, including online presence, tech stack, recruiting velocity, industry categories, etc.
• Enables you to define your unique ICP scoring based on the signals and criteria relevant to your business and target market.

Who is it for?

Account-based sales and marketing teams that need to discover ideal accounts and prioritize the ones most likely to convert.

Pricing

Keyplay has a free forever plan that provides access to its basic features. Moreover, subscribing to the PeerSignal community lets you access a more limited number of records. 

If you need more records and additional features, you can upgrade to one of two paid plans:

1. Growth: $12,000/year
2. Scale: Custom pricing

Pros & Cons

✅ Advanced filtering options.

✅ Lets you track custom signals relevant to your ICP and business objectives.

✅ Enables you to create custom ICP scoring systems to easily identify matching companies.

❌ Offers only annual paid plans.

❌ Integrates with just two CRMs.

7. Hunter 

Best for: Finding email addresses and automating email outreach.

Hunter helps you find verified B2B email addresses and lets you set up email cadences that run on autopilot.

Its solid accuracy rates and automated outreach options make it a good alternative to RocketReach.

Features

• Lets you find qualified leads in its database by applying your ICP attributes.
• Domain Search allows you to find who to contact within a company by unearthing publicly available email addresses of key stakeholders.
• Enables you to create, personalize, schedule, and send targeted email campaigns on scale.

Who is it for?

B2B sales and marketing teams that mostly rely on cold email outreach to find leads.

Pricing

Hunter has a free plan with 25 email search credits and 50 verification credits.

If you need more than that, you can subscribe to one of three paid plans:

1. Starter: €49 per month, includes 3 email accounts, additional account is €10/mo
2. Growth: €149 per month, includes 10 email accounts, additional account is €10/mo
3. Business: €499 per month, includes 20 email accounts, additional account is €10/mo

The plans differ in the number of email search and verification credits and the number of prospects you can include per campaign.

Pros & Cons

✅ Easy to use.

✅ Provides an all-in-one email solution in a single platform.

❌ Limited functionality and use cases.

❌ The costs can quickly skyrocket, especially for bigger teams.

8. Adapt 

Best for: Precision targeting of companies within a specific industry.

Adapt lets you run company searches based on their industry and helps you identify high-growth companies by revealing key growth signals.

It’s a good RocketReach alternative if your ideal prospects are in a niche vertical.

Features

• Tracks more than 3,000 industries and has a B2B database with 250M+ verified contacts.
• Enriches data with 50+ B2B attributes.
• Advanced filtering for targeted prospecting, including funding insights, job change alerts, etc.

Who is it for?

Teams that need to drill down on leads in specific verticals.

Pricing

Adapt has a free plan with 25 email credits, 25 enrichment credits, and 25 contacts per day.

For more credits and features, you can sign up for one of three plans:

1. Starter: $49 per month
2. Basic: $99 per month 
3. Custom: Custom pricing

Pros & Cons

✅ Robust technographic filters.

✅ User-friendly interface.

❌ Phone credits available only on the two most expensive plans.

❌ No outreach and engagement options.

9. Kaspr

Best for: Simple and affordable LinkedIn prospecting.

Kaspr is a Chrome extension built to retrieve contact info from LinkedIn.

It also offers options for connecting and engaging prospects from its dashboard, giving it an edge over RocketReach.

Features

• Has a solid database of verified emails and phone numbers (500M+).
• Scrapes prospect data from anywhere on LinkedIn (search results, groups, posts, etc.).
• Enables automating LinkedIn outreach, including sending connection requests and personalized DMs.

Who is it for?

Small B2B sales teams whose main prospecting channel is LinkedIn.

Pricing

Kaspr has a free forever plan with:

• Unlimited email credits
• 5 phone credits
• 5 direct email credits, and
• 10 export credits

It has three plans for users who want more:

1. Starter: Starting at $49/user/mo
2. Business: Starting at $79/user/mo
3. Organization: Starting at $99/user/mo

Every plan includes unlimited B2B email discovery, but there are differences in the number of direct email, phone number, and export credits. 

The plans also differ in features and customization options.

All plans are annual.

Pros & Cons

✅ User-friendly interface.

✅ Easily integrated with CRM tools.

❌ Can get your LinkedIn account flagged and suspended for suspicious activity.

❌ Limited to LinkedIn-based prospecting and lead generation.

Next Steps: Choose the Ideal RocketReach Alternative for Your Use Case

Every platform on our list is there for a reason, as they’re all good at what they do.

However, as shown above, each has a specific use case at which it excels, so it’s best to focus on platforms that:

1. Are geared toward your outreach channel or specific target market.
2. Offer the tools you need the most for your use case.

If your website is your primary lead generation channel, look no further than Warmly - the solution built to discover qualified leads on your website and help you convert them.

The best way to find out if Warmly is right for you?

Sign up for its free plan and take it for a test ride - no strings attached.

Or, if you’d like to see it in live action first, book a personalized demo with our team.

If you want to crush your lead generation goals, there are several questions you need to answer:

1. Who are your leads?
2. What problems are they looking to solve?
3. Where can you find them?
4. How can you contact them?
5. When is the best time to reach out?

However, this is no easy task, given that everyone competes to get your leads’ attention on every channel.

This is exactly why you need lead intelligence software. It can help answer all these questions quickly and accurately, allowing you to run high-performing lead-generation campaigns at scale.

We researched and tested dozens of lead intelligence platforms firsthand, interviewed real users, and reviewed user reviews on reputable software rating sites, resulting in this detailed list of the 12 best lead intelligence software.

But first, let’s look at some factors you should consider when deciding.

What Makes a Good Lead Intelligence Tool?

🏆 Is the data high-quality and accurate?

This one’s a no-brainer - the whole point of getting a lead intelligence tool is to access relevant, accurate, and up-to-date data on your leads.

Look for tools with high accuracy, matching rates, and regular data updates for the best results.

🏆 Are features complementing your stack?

Some are designed for highly specific use cases and target markets, while others provide more versatile possibilities.

Evaluate each tool you consider against your unique needs to find the best match.

🏆 Will Sales love it or hate it?

Sales and marketing people use lead intelligence software.

By default, they’re not the most technical user type, so try to find a tool that won’t require months of training and frequent sessions with its customer support team later.

🏆 Can cost scale without surprises?

Does the lead intelligence tool you’re interested in have transparent pricing? 

Does it include all its features in its regular pricing packages, or do you have to pay extra for add-ons?

How do costs scale when higher volumes?

These questions can help you determine whether a lead intelligence platform is worth it.

🏆 Does it play well with others? 

Make sure that the tool you choose fits in well with your existing tech stack and has the out-of-the-box integrations you need to get going.

What Is the Best Lead Intelligence Software in 2024?

1. Warmly - Reveals leads on your website and enriches them with B2B and intent data.

2. Clay - Waterfall lead enrichment

3. Zoominfo & Apollo.io - All-in-one sales platforms with large B2B databases.

4. Bombora - Intent data provider.

5. 6Sense - Identifies accounts most likely to convert right now.

6. Clearbit - HubSpot native lead intelligence data provider.

7. Cognism - Lead and sales intelligence solution with international data coverage.

8. Dealfront - B2B database and website traffic tracking platform built for the European market.

9. LeadIQ - B2B prospecting and lead intelligence solution that tracks key leads and data in real time.

10. BuiltWith - Provides technographic lead intelligence.

11. CrystalKnows - Analyzes leads’ personality profiles, allowing you to create tailored sales strategies.

1. Warmly

‎

Disclaimer: Although Warmly is our solution, we reviewed it as objectively as any other lead intelligence platform on our list. We included it here because we’re confident it will be the perfect match for some of you.

Warmly is a website traffic deanonymization platform that goes beyond just revealing the companies that land on your website.

It enriches all identified visitors - companies and individuals alike - with granular data that lets you recognize who your hottest leads are right now.

The signal-based revenue orchestration platform also enables you to automate outreach, prospecting, and lead engagement by leveraging the buying signals and data it picked up.

However, three features stand out the most in the context of lead intelligence.

Feature #1: Identifies website visitors

Your company website is a potentially rich source of qualified leads, as it’s likely that the individuals and businesses visiting it are interested in your offering.

Warmly lets you tap into that lead pool by identifying website visitors.

Unlike similar software, Warmly uncovers both companies and individuals, revealing the name and LinkedIn contact of actual stakeholders.

Just paste a snippet of Warmly’s code into your website to start revealing website visitors, and watch as the platform identifies anonymous visitors in minutes.

Pro tip: Add Warmly’s code snippet to email campaigns to track leads that come to your website through them. This improves marketing attribution and lets you identify warm leads more easily.

Feature #2: Enriches visitors with B2B intelligence

Warmly provides essential B2B intelligence on each identified visitor, including:

1. Contact details (company names, phone numbers, email addresses, job titles, LinkedIn profiles, etc.).
2. Firmographic data (industry, size, employee count, location, and other company details).
3. Technographic data (software tools and technology a company uses).
4. CRM data (ongoing and closed deals, account owners, previous interactions with your sales professionals, etc.).
5. SEP data (engagement with other sales and marketing campaigns, chatbot interactions, etc.).

With this data at hand, you’ll be able to:

• Contact leads.
• Identify buying committees and key stakeholders.
• Assess how well your solution fits in with the technology the lead is already using.
• Tailor your approach based on previous interactions.

Feature #3: Reveals buying intent data

In addition to B2B intelligence, Warmly uncovers buyer intent insights that tell you who your hottest leads are right now.

It reveals two types of buyer intent data:

➡️ ‎ First-party intent data (buying signals coming from leads’ interactions with your website) that includes:

• Pages they visited, with a focus on high-intent pages (e.g., pricing, specific features, comparison with competitors, etc.).
• Time spent on each page.
• The content they downloaded (such as whitepapers, playbooks, etc.) or forms they filled out.
• High-intent questions they asked the chatbot.

➡️ ‎ Third-party intent data (buying signals they left on other places on the web), such as:

• Recently researched topics.
• Job change intent.
• Visits to competitors’ websites.
• Interactions with ads and social media posts.

Such actionable lead intelligence can significantly improve your conversion rates by enabling sales reps to:

• Identify leads most likely to buy at this moment.
• Personalize their approach using the data Warmly revealed.
• Find the perfect time to reach out to specific leads.

Pricing

Warmly offers a free forever plan that lets you reveal up to 500 people and companies visiting your website. 

If you expect higher traffic volumes and need more functionality, you can upgrade to one of three paid options:

1. Startup: $700/mo, includes 3 users, up to 10,000 monthly visitors.
2. Business: From $1,440 to $1,740 per month, depending on the number of visitors you expect to have. It includes 10 seats.
3. Enterprise: Custom plan. Created for users with an estimated traffic of 100,000+ visitors per month who need more customization. Includes 20 seats, advanced AI personalization, custom integrations, etc.

Note: All paid plans provide access to all of Warmly’s features and include deep integrations with lead intelligence tools such as Clearbit, Bombora, and 6Sense, allowing you to get a bundle of products at the price of one.

Integrations 

Warmly integrates with OpenAI and most modern SEP and CRM software, in addition to the data solutions we mentioned above.

As a result, Warmly will easily fit into various tech stacks.

Pros & Cons

✅ Identifies companies and individuals visiting your website.

✅ Enriches each identified lead with detailed B2B intelligence.

✅ Reveals buying intent data.

✅ Sales engagement and orchestration options.

✅ Includes all features in all paid plans.

✅ Integrates with several lead and sales intelligence solutions, enabling you to get a bundle of products at the price of one.

❌ Only annual pricing options.

2. Clay

Best for: Dynamic lead enrichment.

Clay is a waterfall data enrichment solution that collects and cross-references data from 50+ sources, providing high accuracy rates.

It can be used to find B2B contact data as well as other relevant data attributes, such as tech stacks, job openings, etc.

Features

• Provides multiple data waterfalls for looking up various data across sources, such as contact information, company news, industry, leads’ social media profiles, etc.
• Artificial Intelligence-powered web scraper Claygent that you can train to do detailed lead research anywhere on the web.
• Automatic CRM enrichment.

Who is it for?

Clay is best suited for GTM leaders and revenue teams that need accurate B2B contact data and other types of lead intelligence.

Pricing

Clay has a free forever plan that provides 90 monthly search credits and limited access to its essential features.

If you need more, you can choose from 4 paid plans:

1. Starter: $149-$229/mo
2. Explorer: $349-$699/mo
3. Pro: $800-$2,000/mo
4. Enterprise: Custom pricing

A 14-day free trial lets you try Clay’s Pro plan.

Pros & Cons

✅ Compares data from dozens of sources to find the right match, ensuring high accuracy rates.

✅ Solid number of CRM integrations.

❌ Complex user interface, not suitable for sales and marketing reps.

❌ The costs can add up quickly.

3. Zoominfo & Apollo

Best for: Getting lead intelligence and options for managing the entire sales cycle.

Both Zoominfo and Apollo are popular sales tools best known for their massive B2B contact database and a wide range of sales pipeline management options.

This is why we chose to showcase them together. They’re fairly similar, and it's just a matter of nuances deciding which is better for you.

Apollo and Zoominfo are good choices if you’re looking for a solution that offers lead intelligence, sales engagement, and automation.

Features

Zoominfo

• Large B2B databases with over 260M professional and 100M company profiles and 135M verified phone numbers.
• Identifies companies visiting your website.
• Tracks buying intent signals, such as researched topics and keywords relevant to your business.

Apollo

• B2B database with 275M contacts and 73M companies and solid international coverage.
• Versatile filtering options to drill down on leads who match your Ideal Customer Profile the best.
• Apollo Chrome extension for unearthing lead intelligence anywhere on the web.

Who are they for?

Both solutions are best suited for medium-sized and large businesses looking for vast B2B databases and versatile functionality that lets them handle the entire sales process from a single platform. 

Pricing

Zoominfo has separate plans for Sales, Marketing, and Talent teams.

No prices are disclosed, so you’ll have to contact its sales team for a custom quote.

The final price depends on:

• Features and functionality you need.
• Number of licenses.
• Credit usage.
• Other factors.

On the other hand, Apollo has a free forever plan that includes unlimited email finder credits, 5 phone number credits, and 10 contact export credits.

If you need more, you can upgrade to one of three paid plans:

1. Basic: $59 per user per month
2. Professional: $99 per user per month
3. Organization: $149 per user per month

Professional and Basic plans come with a 14-day free trial.

Pros & Cons

✅ Both platforms have large B2B databases with good matching rates.

✅ Both offer a wide range of features for sales management across levels.

❌ Both are expensive. (Apollo has a dual credit system, meaning you spend one credit for revealing an email address and another for getting a phone number).

❌ Zoominfo doesn’t cover regions other than North America well and can’t identify individual-level website visitors.

❌ Apollo has issues with finding accurate phone numbers.

4. Bombora

Best for: Revealing buying intent signals across the web.

Bombora is an intent data provider that tracks leads’ digital journeys across 5,000+ B2B websites to help you understand what they’re looking for and how ready they are to convert.

Many platforms, like Warmly, embed Bombora to provide their clients with quality intent data combined with their native capabilities for the best results.

Features

• Tracks more than 5,000 premium B2B websites, 86% of which are exclusively covered by Bombora.
• Market Insights that visualizes the intent data the platform revealed, delivering actionable and easy-to-navigate intelligence reports.
• Identifies and tracks 15,000+ B2B intent topics.

Who is it for?

Businesses of various sizes that want to make data-driven sales decisions by being enabled to recognize and prioritize the hottest leads easily.

Pricing

Bombora chose not to publish prices or details about its packages.

You can request a demo or contact its sales for more details.

Note: Integration with Bombora is included in all of Warmly’s paid plans.

Pros & Cons

✅ Tracks a wide range of intent topics and has high accuracy rates.

✅ Robust integrations with numerous sales and marketing tools.

❌ Its reports are somewhat unintuitive.

❌ Judging by user reviews, it’s expensive, especially for smaller teams.

5. 6Sense

Best for: Building highly-targeted data-driven lead lists.

6Sense provides a vast database of B2B contact data in addition to collecting intent data.

This combination makes it ideal for creating lead lists, uncovering accounts that exhibit the most interest in your offering, and tailoring your sales efforts accordingly.

Features

• Tracks 65M+ companies, 600M+ buyer profiles, and 35K+ technologies.
• Detects website intent and connects it with the rest of the visitor’s customer journey online, enabling you to recognize leads most likely to convert based on their level of intent.
• Predictive analytics identifies the leads most likely to convert right now.

Who is it for?

Sales, GTM, and account-based marketing teams that need to accurately identify the hottest leads and figure out the best way to convert them.

Pricing

6Sense has a free plan with 50 credits for accessing its database and limited functionality.

You can upgrade to one of three plans for additional features:

1. Team
2. Growth
3. Enterprise

6Sense doesn’t disclose prices for any of the plans.

Note: 6Sense is one of the data solutions included in Warmly’s premium plans.

Pros & Cons

✅ Has advertising capabilities, letting you build targeting and retargeting campaigns based on its intent data.

✅ Insightful and actionable data.

❌ Unintuitive interface.

❌ Expensive.

6. Clearbit

Best for: HubSpot data enrichment.

Clearbit is a real-time data enrichment tool that pulls data from over 250 proprietary and external sources and translates it into 90+ B2B attributes for individual and company profiles.

Since HubSpot acquired it last year, some of its features have been discontinued, and the data solution has become primarily geared toward HubSpot lead and data enrichment.

Features

• Real-time data enrichment with over 100 B2B attributes aggregated from 250+ data sources, providing an in-depth view of leads’ vital data.
• Automatically refreshes HubSpot records as soon as a relevant data change occurs.
• Instant lead scoring and routing thanks to granular industry categorization, corporate hierarchies, job roles, seniority tags, etc.

Who is it for?

Clearbit is a good option for HubSpot users who need detailed lead intelligence and want to keep their CRM data fresh and accurate.

Also, if you want to improve a SaaS product by embedding a rich B2B database, Clearbit might be a good choice because it can be white-labeled. 

Pricing

Clearbit doesn’t disclose prices, meaning you’ll have to contact its team for accurate pricing details.

The volume-based plan can include add-on packages like Forms, Advertising, and Capture. (The add-ons are probably charged extra).

Remember that Warmly's pricing tiers include access to Clearbit’s vast B2B contact and intent data database.

Pros & Cons

✅ Accurate data.

✅ Integrates with various platforms and CRMs.

✅ User-friendly.

❌ Opaque pricing.

❌ Some of its features are available only as add-ons that are charged extra.

❌ Uncertain future as part of the HubSpot family.

7. Cognism

Best for: Uncovering intelligence on international leads.

Cognism is best known for its large B2B database with good international coverage.

If your business operates internationally, Cognism might be a good choice for gathering relevant lead data.

Features

• B2B database with 70M verified mobile phone numbers (47 million cell phone numbers in the US alone) and global data coverage.
• Offers phone-verified mobile numbers in some of its packages, ensuring 100% accuracy.
• Chrome extension for pulling lead intelligence from LinkedIn and LinkedIn Sales Navigator search results.

Who is it for?

Large teams that run sales and marketing operations on an international market.

Pricing

Cognism doesn’t have one-size-fits-all pricing packages. Instead, the price is tailored to each customer’s needs.

However, there are several things we do know regarding the price packages:

• There are two types of data to choose from: Platinum and Diamond, with the latter being more accurate as it goes through several verification layers.
• The price comes with a flat platform fee that includes support, maintenance, onboarding, and initial setup. 

For more details, it’s best to contact its sales team.

Pros & Cons

✅ Global data coverage with high matching rates.

✅ Chrome extension for LinkedIn sales prospecting.

✅ More verified phone numbers than most lead intelligence tools.

❌ Complex pricing.

❌ Phone-verified mobile numbers are available only on its most expensive data package.

8. Dealfront

Best for: Finding relevant lead intelligence for European-based leads.

Dealfront is a B2B lead intelligence tool built for sales and marketing teams focused on the European market.

The platform was born through the merger of Echobot (sales intelligence software) and Leadfeeder (website visitor identification software), combining their key features into a single solution.

Features

• Provides data on 40M+ companies and 180M+ contacts, with 30M+ companies and 83M+ contacts in Europe alone.
• In-depth data from specific European regions, such as DACH, Benelux, Nordics, etc.
• Lets you set up alerts to follow relevant changes in key leads’ profiles, such as changes in management, increases in employee count, mergers and acquisitions, etc.

Who is it for?

Sales and marketing teams whose leads are mostly located in Europe. 

Pricing

Dealfront has separate pricing for its sales intelligence and website traffic deanonymization.

Its sales intelligence plan does not have flat fees, so you’ll need to contact its team for precise pricing details.

When it comes to website visitor identification, there’s a limited free plan that only lets you identify up to 100 anonymous website visitors per month, omitting all other Dealfront features.

The paid plan starts at €99 per month, with the final price depending on the number of identified companies.

You also get 25 free credits for revealing contact details like email addresses and phone numbers. If you exceed the limit, you’ll pay extra.

The website visitor identification plan has a 14-day free trial.

Pros & Cons

✅ Solid international coverage.

✅ GDPR-compliant data.

❌ Separate and non-transparent pricing plans for sales intelligence and website visitor identification.

❌ Users report frequent inaccuracies with its website traffic deanonymization.

9. LeadIQ

Best for: Tracking high-value leads and potential sales triggers in real-time.

LeadIQ is a B2B lead intelligence platform that tracks buying signals and sales-relevant changes in your key leads’ accounts.

It has a solid range of CRM integrations, enabling seamless record enrichment.

Features

• Covers millions of verified profiles, emails, and mobile numbers aggregated from various sources.
• Lets you track real-time insights and changes in important prospects’ profiles, such as job changes, promotions, etc.
• Chrome extension for 1-click LinkedIn prospecting.

Who is it for?

LeadIQ is geared toward smaller B2B teams looking to track buying signals and relevant account changes in real-time,and enrich their CRMs on autopilot.

Pricing

Lead IQ has a free forever plan that provides:

• 20 verified work emails per week
• 10 mobile phone numbers
• 40 email generations per month
• 10 accounts tracked

There are three paid plans for users who need more:

1. Essential: $45 per user per month
2. Pro: $89 per user per month
3. Enterprise: Custom pricing, annual subscription only

Pros & Cons

✅ User-friendly interface.

✅ Lets you monitor relevant changes and other important factors, allowing you to pounce on leads while they’re still hot.

❌ Emphasis on North America, limited European coverage.

❌ Contact tracking is an add-on whose price starts at $5,000 per year.

10. BuiltWith

Best for: Finding out what tools and technology a lead uses.

BuiltWith reveals “what websites are built with,” i.e., provides deep insights into a company’s tech stack.

As a result, you’ll be able to find ICPs more easily and adjust your sales and marketing efforts based on what you know of each lead.

Features

• Tracks 100,000+ web technologies and 670M+ websites, providing valuable insights into which sites use shopping carts, hosting, etc.
• Lets you search for potential customers by applying various filters relevant to your business, such as specific keywords used on their website, industry, technology, revenue, and more.
• Helps you find higher-quality leads by identifying B2B companies that use technologies similar to your best-performing records or companies that might benefit from your product.

Who is it for?

Given its wide range of features geared toward e-commerce, BuiltWith is best suited for e-commerce businesses looking to improve their lead generation process.

However, since the platform offers nuanced technology-based filtering, it can also be used by companies operating in a specific niche or offering a highly unique product.

Pricing

BuiltWith doesn’t have a free trial or a plan, meaning you have to subscribe to one of its three plans from the start:

1. Basic: $295/mo
2. Pro: $495/mo
3. Team: $995/mo

Pros & Cons

✅ Solid data accuracy.

✅ Delivers a nearly 360-degree view of a company’s technology stack.

❌ Its most affordable plan is very limited, pushing you to upgrade.

❌ Limited to technographic data only.

11. CrystalKnows

Best for: Leveraging personality data to find quality leads, landing more qualified meetings, and getting more conversions.

CrystalKnows analyzes publicly available data points across the web to assess potential customers’ personality traits.

It provides insights into a person’s tolerance to risk, preferred way of communication, and more, allowing you to tailor your approach accordingly.

Features

• Identifies your leads' personality and communication style, letting you understand what strategy and approach work best, the tone of voice, and even specific words you should use, etc.
• Lets you build marketing segments based on personality traits, ensuring that your campaigns will resonate with your target audience without exception.
• Chrome extension for uncovering personality insights while you surf LinkedIn.

Who is it for?

Can be used by sales and marketing teams of various sizes to create better-targeted and personalized experiences for potential customers.

It’s also suitable for internal use, as HR departments and team leaders use it to create best-performing teams.

Pricing

CrystalKnows offers a free trial with 5 profile credits and 5 assessments.

Once you spend those credits, you can upgrade to one of three plans:

1. Premium: $49/mo, billed annually
2. Business: Custom pricing
3. Enrichment: Custom pricing

Pros & Cons

✅ Delivers actionable insights that enable personalization and customization.

✅ Nifty Chrome extension for pulling personality data from LinkedIn.

❌ Expensive.

❌ Personality assessments are not an exact science, so caution is advised.

Next Steps: Start Generating More Quality Leads Today

Now that you’ve read through this entire piece, a question remains:

Which lead intelligence software solution can boost your lead generation?

All the detailed information we provided is bound to help you decide, but the best way to know for sure whether a tool is suitable for your specific use case is to test it yourself.

While you’re here, you might as well start with Warmly, as it:

• Identifies leads most likely to convert right on your website.
• Provides options for engaging them while they’re still hot.
• Includes several top-performing lead intelligence tools in its paid plans without extra costs.

Sign up for Warmly’s free plan and unlock your website’s full lead generation potential.

Need more convincing? Book a live demo with our team and see Warmly in action first.

‎

If you’re looking to introduce a new product or service into the market, there’s one thing you shouldn’t go without - a good set of GTM tools.

We tested hundreds of go-to-market tools, sifted through user reviews, and interviewed real users to find the best GTM products.

Consequently, we ranked the winners in each of the ten most important categories for go-to-market solutions.

We’ll break down each platform’s features, pros and cons, pricing, and more, giving you everything you need to make an informed decision 👇 ‎

Must-Have GTM Tooling

1. Signal-based GTM platforms - They help you uncover ICPs and the hottest leads in your marketing and lead generation channels.

2. Sales engagement solutions - They provide personalized engagement tools for tailoring your outreach strategy to every individual lead.

3. Data tools - They deliver the data you need to optimize your GTM approach based on your target market, ICP, etc.

4. Marketing operations solutions - They streamline customer journeys across channels.

5. Customer messaging tools - They let you build interactive messaging experiences for customers.

6. System of record platforms - They enable efficient data management.

7. CRM software - Allows you to manage all ongoing and prospective deals, alongside relevant customer data, from a single point of truth.

8. Attribution and analytics tools - These let you track the progress and performance of GTM campaigns.

9. Product adoption platforms - They enable you to track and improve product and feature adoption, provide personalized onboarding, and enhance overall customer experience.

10. Content creation software - Lets you create content optimized for raising product awareness and promoting it.

Factors to Consider when Buying a GTM Tool

Before we dive into the list, let’s quickly look into the features you should look for in go-to-market software to ensure that it’ll allow you to create and execute winning GTM strategies.

💡 ‎ Good scalability

If you choose the right tool, your business should grow and expand steadily, generating new leads and more conversions.

However, if scaling your business significantly increases the cost of your GTM tool - or it turns out that it can’t handle large data volumes - you’ll find yourself in quite a pickle.

Make sure that the tool you buy offers a wide range of features in its packages and doesn’t base its pricing on usage alone.

💡 ‎ Strong integration capabilities

GTM teams are composed of various professionals, including sales and marketing people, customer success representatives, and product managers.

To ensure seamless team collaboration, find a tool that plays well with other platforms these professionals use on a day-to-day basis, such as CRMs, SEPs, productivity software, etc. 

💡 ‎ Orchestration features

The fast-growing and ever-more competitive market demands speed and efficiency across levels.

To help your GTM team keep up with this fast-paced landscape and keep delivering excellent results, look for go-to-market strategy tools that can automate essential sales and marketing processes, such as outreach, follow-up campaigns, prospecting, etc.

What Are the Best GTM Tools in 2024?

1. Signal-based GTM: Warmly - Reveals the hottest leads on your website and helps you convert them.

2. Sales engagement: Apollo.io - Sales engagement platform with a large B2B database for finding the contacts you need.

3. Data: Clay - Waterfall data enrichment solution.

4. Marketing operations: HubSpot - All-in-one marketing platform.

5. Customer messaging: Customer.io - Streamlines customer journeys across channels.

6. System of record: HubSpot - Lets you store all essential data on your product, customers, and prospects in one place.

7. Modern CRM: Attio - Highly customizable CRM platform.

8. Attribution and analytics: HockeyStack - AI-powered attribution platform that provides a holistic approach to customer journeys.

9. Product adoption: Appcues - Measures product adoption across web and mobile apps.

10. Content creation: Veed - User-friendly video content creator.

🥇 ‎ Signal-based GTM: Warmly

Click the image below for a tour of the Warmly platform 👇 ‎

First on our list is Warmly, which is the leading solution in the signal-based GTM category.

Warmly is a revenue orchestration platform that identifies website visitors, enriches them with relevant data, and provides options for engaging them when they’re ripe for conversion.

Disclaimer: Warmly is our solution, but that doesn't change the fact that Warmly is the best platform for signal-based GTM on the market.

Want to try it firsthand instead? Try Warmly’s free plan and start generating new leads in minutes.

Let’s explore which features resonate most with GTM teams.

Feature #1: Reveal website traffic

Given that your website is the first thing most of your leads encounter when finding out or exploring your brand, having a website traffic tracking tool is something GTM teams shouldn’t forego.

Unlike most other website traffic identification tools that reveal only companies, Warmly can detect both businesses and individual prospects that land on your website.

The platform reveals about 65% of companies and 15% of individuals, which can be very helpful in finding the exact stakeholder you should reach out to when dealing with enterprise-level companies with hundreds of employees.

To start identifying website visitors, just paste Warmly’s code snippet on your site. 

The tool will reveal website visitors in minutes and let you monitor their web sessions in real time, enabling you to understand how they interact with your website.

This lets GTM teams track campaign performance, handle attribution, and tweak their strategies to drive more pipeline. 

Feature #2: Waterfall enrichment and buying signals

Warmly enriches each identified visitor with B2B data that lets you understand who they are, how to best engage to drive qualified conversations, etc.

This data includes:

• Contact details (phone numbers, email addresses, job titles, etc.).
• Firmographic data (industry, size, employee count, location, annual revenue, etc.).
• Technographics (software tools and technology a business uses).
• CRM data (account owners, ongoing and closed deals, previous interactions with your sales and marketing reps, etc.).
• SEP data (e.g., interactions with certain marketing and sales campaigns).

In addition, Warmly detects buying signals that help you determine which website visitors are ready to buy right now and which need more coaxing.

It captures two types of buying signals:

💠 ‎‎ Signals coming from visitors’ interactions with your website, such as:

• Pages they visited, with a focus on high-intent pages (e.g., pricing, specific features, comparison with competitors, etc.).
• Time spent on each page.
• High-intent questions they asked the chatbot.
• The content they downloaded (such as whitepapers, playbooks, etc.) or forms they filled out.

💠 ‎‎2️⃣ ‎ Signals from third-party sources that indicate their readiness to buy, like:

• Recently researched topics.
• Interactions with ads and social media posts.
• Job change intent.
• Visits to competitors’ websites.

All of this combined provides you with a deeper understanding of:

➡️ ‎ Does your GTM strategies attract the right audiences?

➡️ ‎ How successful are they in pushing leads down the sales funnel?

➡️ ‎ Who are your hottest leads right now?

➡️ ‎ What’s the best way to engage?

Feature #3: Streamlines outreach

You can use Warmly picked up buyer intent signals to automate outreach and ensure that quality prospects won’t go under your sales reps’ radar.

Warmly’s Orchestrator takes care of that by adding specific website visitors to outreach sequences, such as:

• Sending a personalized email.
• Connecting with them on LinkedIn.
• Sending a contextual DM on LinkedIn.
• Combining all of the above.

You decide which companies and individuals will be added to these automated campaigns by setting up the criteria and signals you want the Orchestrator to monitor.

For example, you can:

• Decide which action or signal will trigger the automation (e.g., a visitor lands on a high-intent page, such as pricing).
• Set up company and individual-level filters (e.g., add only companies of a certain size or from a particular industry, focus on profiles with specific roles or seniority levels, etc.).
• Choose the maximum number of people you want included in the sequence from each company.

Pricing

Warmly has a free forever plan that lets you reveal up to 500 people and companies visiting your website. It’s the perfect plan for getting a taste of one of the platform’s key features.

If you expect higher traffic volumes and need more advanced capabilities, you can upgrade to one of three paid options:

1. Startup: $700/mo, includes 3 users, up to 10,000 monthly visitors.
2. Business: From $1,440 to $1,740 per month, depending on the number of visitors you expect to have. It includes 10 seats.
3. Enterprise: Custom plan. Created for users with an estimated traffic of 100,000+ visitors per month who need more customization. Includes 20 seats, advanced AI personalization, custom integrations, etc.

Note: All paid plans provide access to all of Warmly’s features and include deep integrations with powerful tools such as Clearbit, Bombora, and 6Sense, allowing you to get a bundle of products at the price of one.

Integrations 

Warmly integrates with OpenAI and most modern SEP and CRM software, in addition to the data solutions we mentioned above, allowing it to easily fit into any business’s tech stack.

Pros & Cons

✅ Identifies both companies and individual website visitors.

✅ Enriches each visitor with detailed B2B data.

✅ Detects intent signals across levels.

✅ Automates outreach.

✅ Includes all features in all paid plans.

✅ Deep integrations with data solutions enable you to get a bundle of products at the price of one.

❌ Annual pricing only.

🥇 ‎ Sales Engagement: Apollo

Best for: Sales engagement.

Apollo is a go-to-market software platform optimized for sales engagement that lets you streamline a range of processes to help you land qualified meetings.

Its massive B2B database comes in handy as well, allowing you to find the contact info you need.

Features

• International B2B database with 275M contacts and 73M companies.
• Lets you build automated email sequences coupled with an AI-powered email writing assistant that generates personalized email copy.
• Built-in dialer for making cold calls that automatically records, transcribes, and logs each call in your CRM.

Who is it for?

GTM teams looking for a powerful tool for handling sales engagement and other sales and marketing operations.

Pricing

Apollo has a free forever plan that includes unlimited email finder credits, 5 phone number credits, and 10 contact export credits.

If you need more, you can upgrade to one of three paid plans:

1. Basic: $59 per user per month
2. Professional: $99 per user per month
3. Organization: $149 per user per month

Note: Professional and Basic plans come with a 14-day free trial.

Pros & Cons

✅ Lets you contact potential customers via email or phone straight from the platform.

✅ Automation capabilities.

❌ Dual credit system (you spend one credit for revealing an email address and another for getting a phone number), which scales badly.

❌ Issues with retrieving accurate phone numbers.

🥇 ‎ Data Tooling: Clay

Best for: Dynamic data enrichment.

Clay is a waterfall data enrichment solution that cross-references data from 50+ sources to find the right match.

This helps GTM teams save time on uncovering relevant data without compromising its quality and accuracy.

Features

• Analyzes and cross-references 50+ data sources to find accurate matches, optimizing data coverage while saving time.
• It can search for any data point besides basic B2B data, including job openings, tech stacks, funding rounds, etc.
• Integrates with a solid number of CRM, enabling automated enrichment.

Who is it for?

GTM leaders who decide the criteria for lead enrichment, segmentation, and outreach, and GTM team members who implement them into their operations.

Pricing

Clay has a free forever plan that provides 90 monthly search credits and limited access to its essential features.

If you need more, you can choose from 4 paid plans:

1. Starter: $149-$229/mo
2. Explorer: $349-$699/mo
3. Pro: $800-$2,000/mo
4. Enterprise: Custom pricing

A 14-day free trial lets you try Clay’s Pro plan.

Pros & Cons

✅ Dynamic data enrichment, with data collected from dozens of sources.

✅ AI-powered assistant, Claygent, that scrapes the web for relevant data.

❌ Complex interface.

❌ The costs don’t scale that well.

🥇 ‎ Marketing Operations: HubSpot

Best for: Controlling all your marketing operations from a single platform.

HubSpot is an all-in-one marketing, sales, and customer service software platform designed to help businesses attract, engage, and nurture customers.

Its suite of marketing tools lets GTM teams streamline and optimize marketing processes.

Features

• Lets you build personalized automated marketing workflows, including email campaigns and chatbot flows, and provides a wide range of triggers and filters.
• AI-powered assistant that can generate marketing content and social media post captions, provide SEO recommendations, summarize customer-facing activities into actionable reports, etc.
• Options for creating and tracking personalized ad campaigns, which let you target the right people across channels.

Who is it for?

Enterprises looking to run marketing campaigns on scale.

Pricing

HubSpot has a free plan with up to 5 users and limited access to its marketing tools.

If you want additional features and more users, you can upgrade to one of the following plans:

1. Starter: Starts at $15/mo/seat
2. Professional: Starts at $800/mo, includes 3 users, additional seats start from $45/mo
3. Enterprise: $3,600/mo, includes 5 users, additional seats start from $75/mo

‎The total price depends on the number of users and monthly marketing contacts you need.

Pros & Cons

✅ Wide range of features for complete marketing management.

✅ Robust integrations with other CRMs, SEPs, and other relevant tools.

❌ Has a learning curve.

❌ Expensive for larger teams.

🥇 ‎ Customer Messaging: Customer.io

Best for: Providing personalized customer journeys across channels via compelling messaging.

Customer.io enables you to manage and tailor customer messages across web and mobile channels.

It's an excellent tool for customer retention, cross-selling and upselling, onboarding, and other customer interactions.

Features

• Lets you personalize in-app customer journeys via push notifications and in-app messages, in addition to providing options for sending SMS and emails.
• Leverages behavioral data to help you tailor each message for every individual customer.
• Has an email coding interface that lets you further personalize email campaigns, control deliverability, collaborate with your entire team, etc.

Who is it for?

Customer.io is best suited for SMBs with a dedicated development team as more technical users will benefit the most from the platform’s versatile capabilities.

Pricing

Customer.io has three pricing plans for users who need its customer interaction capabilities:

1. Essentials: Starts at $100/mo
2. Premium: Starts at $1,000/mo, billed annually
3. Enterprise: Custom pricing

The final price depends on the volume of profiles you want to contact and the number of emails you send per month.

Pros & Cons

✅ Visual workflow builder.

✅ Options for mobile customer engagement.

❌ The costs can quickly skyrocket.

❌ Geared toward more tech-savvy users, other user profiles will find it overwhelming.

🥇 ‎ System of Record: HubSpot

Best for: Providing a centralized source of truth for marketing and sales data.

In addition to streamlining marketing operations, HubSpot provides handy tools for syncing, cleaning, managing, and curating relevant customer and marketing data.

You can combine it with the marketing tool suite for a more thorough overview of campaign performance and customer-relevant data.

Features

• Automatically cleans stale and inaccurate data and syncs quality data across apps.
• Lets you set up custom roles and permissions, allowing the entire team to collaborate on vital processes.
• Custom report builder pulls relevant data from HubSpot and integrated apps and delivers actionable insights.

Who is it for?

Businesses of all sizes that want a centralized view and control of relevant data and look to enable collaboration across operations, marketing, and sales teams.

Pricing

HubSpot Operations has a free plan that offers limited access to the platform’s functionalities.

When it comes to premium plans, there are three to choose from:

1. Starter: Starts at $20/mo per user
2. Professional: Starts at $800/mo, 1 user included
3. Enterprise: Starts at $2,000/mo, 1 user included

Pros & Cons

✅ Good connectivity with various apps, allowing you to make a custom GTM tool ecosystem.

✅ Seamless data sync between apps, enabling efficient team collaboration and ensuring data freshness.

❌ Most advanced features are hidden behind a paywall.

❌ Requires technical expertise to master it.

🥇 ‎ Modern CRM Software: Attio

Best for: Data-driven customer relationship management.

Attio is a flexible and customizable CRM platform that can be tailored to any business’s unique data structure and needs.

It also lets the whole team collaborate on tasks, making it an excellent tool for customer relationship management for GTM teams.

Features

• Lets you create custom fields, objects, and attributes, enabling you to fine-tune the platform to your use case and data structure.
• Automatic record enrichment and 1-click relationship intelligence for every ongoing deal and customer.
• Robust analytics reports that can be further customized, allowing you to drill down to the metrics that matter the most to your business.

Who is it for?

Companies of all sizes that need a customizable platform for handling customer-relevant data.

Pricing

Attio has a free plan that includes up to 3 seats and limited features.

For more, you can upgrade to one of three premium plans:

1. Plus: $34 per user per month
2. Pro: $69 per user per month
3. Enterprise: $119 per user per month

All plans have no seat limits, meaning you can include as many team members as you want.

Pros & Cons

✅ Has a mobile app, allowing GTM teams to access it whenever and wherever.

✅ Intuitive and customizable interface that can fit into various teams’ needs and SOPs.

❌ Limited integrations with other sales and marketing platforms.

❌ It can get expensive for larger teams.

🥇 Attribution and analytics: HockeyStack

Best for: Marketing attribution and tracking KPIs.

HockeyStack is a marketing attribution platform that provides full visibility of your marketing funnel.

Its no-code interface is easy to implement into any system - although it has a slight learning curve - making it a favorite among GTM teams.

Features

• Measures the influence of specific marketing activity on return on investment, conversions, demo bookings, etc., enabling you to understand what performs well and what needs improving.
• Tracks the entire buyer journey across multiple touchpoints, matches each activity to revenue impact, and uncovers the influence marketing efforts had on outbound sales.
• Uses AI models to measure, forecast, and predict contributions of individual marketing activities across channels.

Who is it for?

GTM teams of various sizes that want to closely monitor and understand the impact and performance of their marketing efforts across multiple channels.

Pricing

HockeyStack has 2 plans:

1. Growth: $1,399 per month
2. Enterprise: Custom price

The Enterprise tier offers options for adding custom features and add-ons, including forecasting, AI insights, ML-powered attribution, and more

Pros & Cons

✅ Robust analytics and forecasting features.

✅ Provides powerful insights that enable GTM teams to make data-driven decisions.

❌ Most of its best features are available as add-ons that are charged extra.

❌ Slow loading time for reports.

🥇 ‎ Product Adoption: Appcues

Best for: Measuring and improving product adoption.

Appcues lets you track and enhance product adoption on web and mobile apps without a developer.

This makes it a great addition to your GTM tool stack, allowing you to track and analyze product usage and create personalized user onboarding experiences without technical knowledge.

Features

• Lets you create personalized onboarding flows and targeted checklists to shorten users’ time to value and reduce churn rates.
• Enables you to enhance feature adoption through in-app walkthroughs and prompts, ensuring new and key features are used to their full potential.
• Tracks key product events to help you measure overall product and feature adoption or how a specific persona or customer segment interacts with it.

Who is it for?

Non-technical product teams who want to understand and improve product adoption across levels.

Pricing

Appcues offers a 14-day free trial that lets you experience its interface and track up to five events. If you install its SDK, you can extend the trial by another 14 days.

Once the trial expires, you can subscribe to one of three paid options:

1. Essentials: Starts at $249 per month, includes one app and 3 users
2. Growth: Starts at $879 per month, also includes one app and 10 users
3. Enterprise: Custom pricing, custom number of apps and users

The total cost will depend on the number of your product’s monthly users and the number of apps whose usage you want to monitor.

Pros & Cons

✅ Lets you target specific user segments with announcements, feature tours, surveys, etc.

✅ Can be used for mobile and web apps with equal ease.

❌ Limited customization options when it comes to creating surveys, announcements, etc.

❌ Can be difficult to navigate when handling larger projects.

🥇 ‎ Content Creation: Veed

Best for: Creating videos that convert.

Veed is an intuitive video editor that lets you create professional-looking videos regardless of your experience and expertise with video production.

It also offers a variety of AI-powered features, enabling many nifty tricks and effects.

Features

• Magic Cut significantly reduces editing time by automatically cleaning up filler words, cutting out awkward silences, picking the best takes of different sequences, and merging them into one seamless video.
• 50 pre-made AI avatars and options for creating custom ones with various genders, attires, personalities, and voices that you can easily add text to.
• AI-powered video generator creates custom videos based on your prompts.

Who is it for?

GTM teams that rely on video content for marketing and don’t want to spend a fortune on creating and editing videos.

Pricing

Veed has 4 plans:

1. Basic: $18 per user per month
2. Pro: $30 per user per month
3. Business: $70 per user per month (for up to 5 users)
4. Enterprise: Custom pricing

There’s a free trial for prospective users of the Enterprise plan with a minimum of three users.

Pros & Cons

✅ Excellent transcription, caption, and subtitle capabilities.

✅ Easy to use.

❌ The costs can quickly add up if you want access to more advanced features.

❌ Issues with some of its tools like audio cleaning, background removal, auto voice translation, etc.

Next Steps: Enhance Your GTM Strategy Across Levels

All GTM tools that made it to our list will help you address a certain aspect of your GTM strategy, allowing you to get your product to market faster while making it more likely to appeal to your target customers.

Regardless of your unique GTM approach, however, you shouldn’t forget about your website.

It’s at the forefront of every sales and marketing effort and one of the first things prospects encounter, making it a powerful source of high-quality leads and a good starting point for GTM operations.

To ensure you’ll harness your website’s full potential, make Warmly one of the cornerstones of your GTM tool stack.

To get the hang of Warmly’s capabilities, sign up for its free plan and start revealing qualified visitors today.

Or, book a live demo to see it in action first.

Show me your data, and I’ll show you how efficient your sales and marketing campaigns will be. 

Modern sales teams need the best company research solutions so that reps can know who to focus on and how to engage in a way that drives qualified meetings.

The landscape has evolved, so we explored dozens of popular B2B account platforms, testing them firsthand and interviewing real users. 

Solutions that can help you: 

1. Discover companies that match your ICP.
2. Enrich them with firmographics and intent data.
3. Find the right contacts at those companies.
4. Capture buying signals to help you understand how likely they are to want to buy your product (and why).
5. Uncover other actionable insights that help reps craft tailored outbound strategies.

Below is the result of our search. The 11 best Company research tools for 2024.

We broke down each solution’s key features, strengths, weaknesses, price, etc.

Before we begin, a few pointers to help you make the best decision.

What Makes a Good Company Research Tool?

This question has no simple answer, as it all depends on your goals and requirements.

However, regardless of your specific use case, there are a few things to keep in mind when buying a company research tool.

1. Is it accurate and has the data coverage you need?

Some company research tools cover international data, while others focus on specific regions.

Make sure that the platform you choose is optimized for your market and the regions where most of your customers are based.

Also, high accuracy and matching rates are a must. There is nothing worse than a good campaign wasted on leads that have outdated information.

2. Can you filter records precisely enough?

Good filtering capabilities are vital for targeted company research, especially when dealing with more specific markets or ICPs.

This is especially important if you want to automate some of your processes without using generic criteria. 

Focus on tools that can be tailored to fit your needs and fine-tuned to your ICP.

3. Do you have the insights you need? 

Tools that go beyond basic B2B contact data can provide a huge competitive advantage.

For example, Keyplay (listed below) can tell you if an account has a free trial or a product tour available on their site, which can be used by reps to hyper-personalized campaigns and stand out from the noise

4. Can it power the rest of your tech stack?

Once prospecting accounts is done, you’ll likely want to do something with the accounts you’ve identified.

Make sure that your company research software connects easily with your existing stack.

5. Can it scale with you?

Look for a tool that:

• Provides good value for money (e.g., includes a wide range of features regardless of your plan, has native integrations with various CRMs and SEPs, etc.).
• Doesn’t break the bank at large data volumes.

For example, solutions like Dirft and Cognism start at appealing price points, but costs will rise exponentially as you scale.

Now that you’re equipped with all the basics, time to start reviewing our 11 best company research tools.

What Are the Best Company Research Tools in 2024?

1. Warmly - Reveals and enriches leads on your website.

2. Zoominfo - Sales operating system with a large B2B database.

3. Crunchbase - Vast database of private company data.

4. Cognism - Sales intelligence platform with international coverage.

5. UpLead - B2B database with email verification capabilities.

6. SalesIntel - B2B contact and intelligence provider with human-verified data.

7. LinkedIn Sales Navigator - Native LinkedIn prospecting solution with advanced filters.

8. Keyplay - Enriches contacts with relevant data and lets you set up custom lead scoring.

9. LeadIQ - B2B prospecting solution with real-time tracking of key accounts and data.

10. Apollo - Sales intelligence and engagement platform.

11. Dealfront - B2B database with GDPR-compliant data.

1. Warmly

Warmly is a revenue orchestration platform that identifies website visitors, enriches them with granular data, and helps you convert them.

It has a wide range of features, including automated prospecting and outreach, live engagement capabilities, etc., but three features are vital in the context of efficient company research:

1. Website traffic deanonymization.
2. B2B data enrichment.
3. Intent data enrichment.

Let’s break them down one by one.

Reveal accounts and leads visiting your site

When designed to attract your target audience, your website can be a rich source of potential customers.

You can use it to capture B2B accounts who come to you - as the fact they’re on your website alone can signal that they’re interested in your offering - instead of relying solely on outbound sales. It’s a must-have for any B2B sales strategy.

Warmly can reveal about 65% of companies and 15% of individuals that visit your website. Try it below ⬇️

As a result, your SDRs can design highly personalized outreach.

All it takes is pasting a snippet of Warmly’s code into your website, and new website-generated leads will start trickling down your pipeline in no time.

If you want to identify the companies that interacted with your cold email campaigns as well, you can add Warmly’s code to emails just as easily. 

Enrich visitors with B2B data

Warmly goes beyond basic website visitor identification, enriching each visitor with detailed B2B data, like:

• Contact details (phone numbers, email addresses, job titles, etc.).
• Firmographic data (industry, size, employee count, location, and other company data).
• Technographic data (software tools and technology a company uses).
• CRM data (ongoing and closed deals, account owners, previous interactions with your reps, etc.).
• SEP data (engagement with other sales and marketing campaigns, chatbot interactions, etc.).
• And more.

Leverage intent data and buying signals

Warmly comes included with 2 types of intent data.

Firstly, the platform delivers first-party intent data by monitoring how website visitors interact with your site, and capturing key buying signals such as:

• Pages they visited, with a focus on high-intent pages (e.g., pricing).
• Time spent on each page (the longer they stayed on high-intent pages, the better).
• Asking high-intent questions in the chatbot.
• Downloading relevant content (such as whitepapers, playbooks, etc.) or filling out forms.

In addition to monitoring website sessions, Warmly pulls third-party intent data from tools such as Bombora, 6Sense, HumanDataLabs, and more.

Insights like:

• Recently researched topics on the web.
• Interactions with ads and social media posts.
• Job change intent.
• Visits to competitors’ websites.

By uncovering both first- and third-party intent, you better understand which accounts are most likely to convert right now.

Moreover, this approach lets you qualify and score leads more accurately and efficiently allocate sales and marketing resources. Here’s one example ⤵️

Pricing

Warmly offers a free forever plan that lets you reveal up to 500 people and companies visiting your website. It’s the perfect plan for getting a taste of one of the platform’s key features.

If you expect higher traffic volumes and need more advanced capabilities, you can upgrade to one of three paid plans:

1. Startup: $700/mo, includes 3 users, up to 10,000 monthly visitors.
2. Business: From $1,440 to $1,740 per month, depending on the number of visitors you expect to have. It includes 10 seats.
3. Enterprise: Custom plan. Created for users with an estimated traffic of 100,000+ visitors per month who need more customization. Includes 20 seats, advanced AI personalization, custom integrations, etc.

Note: All paid plans provide access to all of Warmly’s features and include deep integrations with sales intelligence tools such as Clearbit, Bombora, and 6Sense, allowing you to get a bundle of products at the price of one.

Integrations 

In addition to these data platforms, Warmly integrates with OpenAI and most modern SEP and CRM software, which will easily fit into any business’s tech stack.

Pros & Cons

✅ Identifies both companies and individual website visitors.

✅ Enriches each visitor with detailed B2B data.

✅ Reveals first- and third-party intent.

✅ Provides options for engaging and routing leads.

✅ Includes all features in all paid plans.

❌ Annual pricing only.

❌ No static B2B database.

2. Zoominfo

Best for: Finding North American B2B data.

Zoominfo is a sales operating system with a wide range of features for handling various sales processes, from prospecting to engagement.

It’s most widely known for its massive B2B database with solid accuracy rates.

Features

• Large B2B database with over 260M professional and 100M company profiles and 135M verified phone numbers.
• Provides detailed org charts for companies in its database to help you pinpoint vital stakeholders more easily.
• Tracks buying intent signals, such as researched topics and keywords relevant to your business, letting you uncover potential customers.

Who is it for?

Enterprise-level businesses whose target market is primarily NAM-based.

Pricing

Zoominfo has separate plans for Sales, Marketing, and Talent teams.

No prices are disclosed, so you’ll have to contact its sales team for a custom quote.

The final price depends on:

• Features and functionality you need.
• Number of licenses.
• Credit usage.
• Other factors.

Pros & Cons

✅ Massive B2B database with good matching rates.

✅ CRM enrichment.

❌ Expensive.

❌ Regions outside of North America aren’t covered as well.

3. Crunchbase

Best for: Researching private company data, especially financial information.

Crunchbase has one of the largest B2B intelligence databases for private companies, with a special focus on financial data (funding rounds, investors, etc.).

This makes it a valuable tool not only for B2B sales and marketing teams but also for investors looking for good investment options or startups looking for eligible investors.

Features

• Holds data on more than 2M companies.
• Provides a wide range of valuable insights, from a company’s financial health to industry trends and good investment opportunities.
• Browser extension for collecting data from company websites and LinkedIn search results.

Who is it for?

B2B teams that focus their sales and marketing efforts on the North American private sector.

Pricing

Crunchbase has 2 pricing packages:

1. Pro: $99 per user per month when billed monthly or $49 on the annual plan
2. Enterprise: Custom pricing

The Pro plan has a 7-day free trial.

Pros & Cons

✅ Accurate data.

✅ More detailed financial information than any other B2B database.

❌ Most of its data is on North American companies, EMEA is not covered that well.

❌ Real-time updates and automated CRM enrichment are available only on the Enterprise plan.

4. Cognism

Best for: International B2B sales prospecting.

Cognism boasts a solid database of B2B data with good international coverage.

This makes it a great option for conducting company research and finding relevant contact data for businesses worldwide.

Features

• B2B database with 70M verified mobile phone numbers (47 million cell phone numbers in the US alone) and global data coverage.
• Diamond Data Verification is used to verify phone numbers via calls, ensuring accuracy.
• Several CRM enrichment options for keeping your data fresh and accurate.

Who is it for?

Large teams with an internationally based target audience.

Pricing

Cognism doesn’t have one-size-fits-all pricing packages. Instead, the price is tailored to each customer’s needs.

However, there are several things we can tell you about the price:

• There are two types of data to choose from: Platinum and Diamond, with the latter being more accurate as it goes through several verification layers.
• The price comes with a flat platform fee that includes support, maintenance, onboarding, and initial setup. 

For more details, it’s best to contact Cognism’s sales.

Pros & Cons

✅ Global data coverage with high matching rates.

✅ Chrome extension for LinkedIn prospecting.

✅ More verified phone numbers than most B2B intelligence tools.

❌ Non-transparent pricing.

❌ You need a more advanced data package to access phone-verified phone numbers.

5. UpLead

Best for: Real-time B2B email verification.

UpLead is a B2B database and business contact provider with a real-time email verifier and an email finder tool.

It also has a handy Chrome extension for 1-click prospecting and company research anywhere on the web.

Features

• 155M+ B2B contacts with email addresses and 16M+ company profiles.
• Real-time email address verification to ensure you’ll get only valid addresses.
• Tracks 16,000 technology data points, providing insights into a company’s tech stack.

Who is it for?

Smaller teams who rely primarily on cold email outreach and need verified email addresses.

Pricing

UpLead has a 7-day free trial with 5 credits for revealing a contact or exporting it.

After the trial expires, there are 3 plans to choose from:

1. Essentials: $99 per user per month with 170 monthly credits
2. Plus: $199 per user per month with 400 monthly credits
3. Professional: Custom pricing

Since the paid plans offer limited reveal/export credits, you’ll probably have to buy more. One extra credit costs $0.60 per credit on the Essentials plan and $0.50 on the Plus plan.

Pros & Cons

✅ One credit unlocks both the email address and the phone number of an account, so you won’t have to spend two to reveal the entire contact profile.

✅ Advanced filtering for more detailed company searches.

❌ The most advanced features, such as buyer intent data and advanced filtering, are available only on the Professional plan.

❌ Limited international coverage.

6. SalesIntel

Best for: Human-verified B2B contact info.

SalesIntel is a B2B data provider that boasts high accuracy rates thanks to having each contact run through a layer of human verification every 90 days.

If you need highly accurate and double-checked data, SalesIntel might be a good option.

Features

• Large database of 90M+ contacts with 17M+ contacts that are human-verified.
• Research On Demand provides human-verified contact information on any company you need on request.
• In-depth technographic and firmographic filters.

Who is it for?

GTM teams working with specific or difficult-to-access markets that need verified contact data they can’t find anywhere else.

Pricing

SalesIntel has three pricing plans:

1. Individual: $69 per month, 1 user only
2. Teams: $199 per user per month, up to 5 users
3. Professional: Custom pricing, custom number of users

Pros & Cons

✅ User-friendly.

✅ High data accuracy.

❌ Intent data is available on its highest tier only.

❌ Issues with integrations.

7. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Best for: LinkedIn-based company research.

Sales Navigator is LinkedIn’s designated sales prospecting tool.

As such, it provides nuanced filters and insights, allowing you to deep-dive into company and individual profiles.

Features

• 14+ account filters that let you run segmented and precise searches across industries.
• Account IQ provides Artificial Intelligence-generated profile summaries packed with actionable insights.
• Data validation ensures that you get only up-to-date contact information.

Who is it for?

Businesses that mainly use LinkedIn for prospecting and company research.

Pricing

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is one of LinkedIn’s most expensive solutions.

It has three pricing tiers:

1. Core at $74.31 per month when billed annually. 
2. Advanced at $125.87 per month when billed annually.
3. Advanced Plus at a custom price.

If you need access to features such as CRM integrations, data verification, etc., you'll have to upgrade to the Advanced Plus plan.

Pros & Cons

✅ Optimized for LinkedIn prospecting.

✅ Nuanced filtering for more advanced searches.

✅ CRM integrations that let you enrich CRMs and view LinkedIn info about leads, contacts, and accounts directly in your CRM app.

❌ Can be used on LinkedIn only.

❌ Key features are hidden behind a paywall.

❌ Too expensive given its limited use case.

8. Keyplay

Best for: Finding companies that match your ICP through custom scoring systems.

Keyplay is an account-based sales and marketing platform that lets you build targeted lead lists, find ICPs across the market, and track relevant buying signals.

It’s an excellent tool if you need a customizable solution that can be tailored to your specific ICP, letting you run highly targeted searches.

Features

• AI Lookalike helps you find accounts that match your best-performing clients and deals.
• Lets you build custom account-scoring systems for better account prioritization.
• Provides a wide range of advanced filters for highly specific searches, including online presence, tech stack, recruiting velocity, industry categories, etc.

Who is it for?

Account-based sales and marketing teams looking to optimize lead generation and prospecting for target companies.

Pricing

Keyplay doesn’t have a free trial for its paid plans.

However, it has a free forever plan that provides access to its basic features, and subscribing to the PeerSignal community lets you access a more limited number of records. 

If you need more records and advanced features, you can subscribe to one of two paid plans:

1. Growth: $12,000/year
2. Scale: Custom pricing

Pros & Cons

✅ Advanced filtering options.

✅ Lets you track custom signals relevant to your ICP and business objectives.

✅ Enables you to create custom ICP scoring systems to identify matching companies more easily.

❌ Offers only annual paid plans.

❌ Doesn’t deliver contact data.

9. LeadIQ

Best for: Tracking relevant contacts and sales triggers in real-time.

LeadIQ is a B2B prospecting platform that lets you find contact data on LinkedIn searches and sync it with your CRM.

Its key strength, however, is its ability to track buying signals and sales-relevant changes in key accounts.

Features

• Lets you track relevant insights and changes in important prospects’ profiles, such as job changes, promotions, etc.
• Monitors buying signals, including funding rounds, company news, web searches, etc.
• Covers millions of verified profiles, emails, and mobile numbers aggregated from various sources.

Who is it for?

Smaller teams more interested in tracking buying signals than gaining access to a static B2B database.

Pricing

Lead IQ has a free forever plan that provides:

• 20 verified work emails per week
• 10 mobile phone numbers
• 40 email generations per month
• 10 accounts tracked

There are three paid plans for users who need more:

1. Essential: $45 per user per month
2. Pro: $89 per user per month
3. Enterprise: Custom pricing, annual subscription only

Pros & Cons

✅ User-friendly interface.

✅ Lets you monitor relevant changes and other important factors, allowing you to pounce on leads while they’re still hot.

❌ Emphasis on North America, limited European coverage.

❌ Contact tracking is an add-on whose price starts at $5,000 per year.

10. Apollo

Best for: B2B sales intelligence combined with sales engagement options.

Apollo is a B2B database and sales engagement platform with solid international coverage of B2B data.

Its wide range of features makes it attractive for users looking for an all-in-one sales solution.

Features

• B2B database with 275M contacts and 73M companies with solid international coverage.
• Robust filtering options for running precise searches.
• Apollo Chrome extension for researching companies anywhere on the web.

Who is it for?

Sales teams of various sizes that need a well-rounded prospecting solution with additional features for managing other parts of the sales cycle.

Pricing

Apollo has a free forever plan that includes unlimited email finder credits, 5 phone number credits, and 10 contact export credits.

If you need more, you can upgrade to one of three paid plans:

1. Basic: $59 per user per month
2. Professional: $99 per user per month
3. Organization: $149 per user per month

Note: Professional and Basic plans come with a 14-day free trial.

Pros & Cons

✅ Advanced filtering options for more targeted prospecting.

✅ Good data accuracy.

❌ Dual credit system (you spend one credit for revealing an email address and another for getting a phone number), which scales badly.

❌ Best features available only on its higher tiers.

11. Dealfront

Best for: Researching European companies.

Dealfront is a B2B sales intelligence tool built for sales and marketing teams focused on the European market.

The platform was created by merging Echobot (sales intelligence software) and Leadfeeder (website visitor identification software), combining their key features into a single solution.

Features

• Provides data on 40M+ companies and 180M+ contacts, with 30M+ companies and 83M+ contacts in Europe alone.
• In-depth data from specific European regions, such as DACH, Benelux, Nordics, etc.
• Identifies companies visiting your website.

Who is it for?

GTM teams whose target companies are located in Europe.

Pricing

Dealfront has separate pricing for its sales intelligence and website traffic deanonymization.

Dealfront's sales intelligence plan does not have flat fees, so you’ll need to contact its team for precise pricing details.

When it comes to website visitor identification, there’s a limited free plan that only lets you identify up to 100 monthly website visitors, omitting all other Dealfront features.

The paid plan starts at €99 per month, with the final price depending on the number of identified companies.

You also get 25 free credits for revealing contact details like email addresses and phone numbers. If you exceed the limit, you’ll pay extra.

Note: The website visitor identification plan has a 14-day free trial.

Pros & Cons

✅ Solid international coverage.

✅ GDPR-compliant data.

✅ 30+ trigger events you can set up to alert you when a relevant change in a prospect’s profile occurs (e.g., job changes, bankruptcy notices, etc.).

❌ Separate and non-transparent pricing plans for sales intelligence and website visitor identification.

❌ Issues with website traffic deanonymization, as users report frequent inaccuracies.

Next Steps: Identify Who Your Hottest Leads Are Right Now

By now, you should have a clearer idea of what company research tool is good for you.

Zoominfo and Apollo are good options if you need massive B2B databases, while platforms like Keyplay and LeadIQ deliver a more dynamic company research experience.

Some are focused on a single channel only—like LinkedIn Sales Navigator—while others, like SalesIntel and UpLead, can tackle any lead source on the web.

In the end, it’s up to you to make the call. 

If you decide that you need a solution that goes beyond basic company research and prospecting, then Warmly’s the ideal choice, as it allows you to detect companies that:

1. Best fit your ICP.
2. Are most likely to convert right now.

Why take just our word for it?

Sign up for Warmly’s free plan and experience its capabilities firsthand.

Or, book a personalized demo with our team to see it in action first.