Lead generation is one of the vital factors affecting the growth of any business. As a small business owner, sourcing and nurturing potential customers to patronize your brand is important. 
The lead generation process can be often difficult for small business owners with little or no digital marketing experience.

It can also be quite tricky for businesses with a good marketing team. 

A report showed that 61% of marketers consider leads and traffic generation as the biggest challenge in their marketing efforts. However, with the right lead generation technique and tools, every e-commerce brand has the potential to generate leads that will sway customers and make them stay with the brand. This article will explore some lead generation tools to help small businesses. 

What Is Lead Generation?

A lead is an individual who has shown interest in your business’s services or products. Lead generation is the aspect of marketing that involves attracting prospective customers to build mailing lists and/or generate sales. 

Many businesses make the mistake of casting a wide net to anyone and everyone while trying to generate leads. Such action is not advisable because it presents your brand to many uninterested people. 

In searching for leads, quality should come over quantity. Quality leads are those that intend to patronize your brand, have the finances and means to do so, and fit the established lead criteria. The likelihood of converting a lead to a client significantly increases if small businesses focus on quality leads. 

Higher conversion rates will allow your brand to focus on quality leads which will ultimately increase your return on investment (ROI). You can generate quality leads with the right techniques and tools. Some techniques that have been proven to generate quality leads are discussed below. 

1.  Search Engine Optimization 

Prospective clients begin their product research via different search engines. Search engines are one of the leading channels to generate organic leads. Anyone with a smartphone turns to them for solutions to their problems. SEO complements lead generation by increasing brand awareness via organic traffic to websites. 

2.  Pay-Per-Click Advertising 

This is a way of utilizing search engine advertising to generate traffic for your website, rather than earning the traffic organically. PPC lead generation is an easy way to draw the right type of customers to your website. 

After designing an ad, you can strategically place these ads on a website that shares similar values with your brand. This attracts leads that have a higher chance of patronizing or engaging your brand. 

3.  Influencer Marketing 

Influencer marketing is the aspect of digital marketing that involves collaborating with a social media influencer or content creator who influences a large audience. Influencer marketing is an avenue to generate organic leads that is relatively cheap and faster. 
Social media influencers and content creators tend to be experts in their niche and usually have a loyal fan base. If you can collaborate with them, you can reach out to their audience easily. With them promoting your brand, you are likely to generate more quality leads.

4- Cold Calling

Cold calling is a marketing technique that involves contacting a potential customer or client who has not previously expressed interest in speaking with a customer service representative or patronizing your brand. 

Marketing and sales experts usually gather contact details used for cold calling through non-standard means like searching for and collecting information from public records. Contact lists for cold calls can also be purchased from list brokers. 

Cold calling is one of the best methods to utilize for lead generation. Unlike other marketing strategies, it puts you into direct contact with potential consumers.

5- Email Marketing 

Email marketing may be old but it is still one of the top marketing strategies. Email marketing is a form of direct marketing that utilizes personalized emails to enlighten your email list about a brand's product or services. 

It can also be used to encourage your email list to take a specific action like making a purchase, booking a trip, signing up for a trial, or donating to a cause. Email lead generation, executed well, is a great way to improve your business.

Top Lead Generation Tools for Small Businesses 

Below are some top lead generation tools available for small businesses to explore.

1-  123 Form Builder

123 Form Builder is one of the top lead generation tools available to marketers. 123 Form Builder is a powerful online tool that allows small businesses to easily create forms online.

123 Form Builder allows eCommerce brands to create web and mobile forms to automate workflows, increase productivity and optimize internal processes.

This powerful tool allows users to create their forms visually, obtain the output and start receiving data on their websites in no time. It enables businesses to build different form types, including lead generation forms, contact forms, registration forms, surveys, online forms, etc. 

123FormBuilder integrates with several third-party apps, including Google Docs, SalesForce, MailChimp, etc. It provides a Facebook application and plugins for popular publishing platforms like Blogger, WordPress, and Google Sites.

2-  Optinmonster

Optinmonster is a top marketing tool for lead generation and conversion optimization tool for bloggers, eCommerce websites, marketing agencies, and small businesses. It assists small businesses in building email lists that quickly generate leads who are likely to become paying customers. 

The tool provides several templates for lead generation campaigns. Brands can create tons of campaigns on their website, including lightbox popups, floating bars, scroll boxes, and gamified wheels.

Optinmonster integrates with several email marketing platforms like MailChimp, AWeber, GetResponse, ConstantContact, CampaignMonitor, etc. It reduces cart abandonment and improves sales conversions with smart targetings like Exit-Intent, Onsite Retargeting,

Geo-location, and more. A/B test is also available to assist in making data-driven decisions.

3-  Leadfeeder

Leadfeeder is a sales lead generation tool for small businesses, helping them convert promising visitors into paying customers. Leadfeeder gives you more information about your website's visitors. It displays a list of companies that have visited your website, shows what pages they visited, and how they discovered your brand. 

This lead generation tool seamlessly integrates with Google Analytics using the API and fetches information about website visitors. It also integrates with Slack, Zoho, Zapier, Active Campaign, MailChimp, Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. 
The lead list generated by Leadfeeder is automatically scrubbed of bots, ISPs, and other useless traffic.

4-  Proof

Proof is a SaaS-based lead generation tool that encourages website visitors to take action by including social proofs and experiences on a website. It shows how people interact with your website and products in real time, making it a perfect tool to boost brand credibility and trust among leads.

The platform shows the total number of people who have recently taken action on your site. This is great for high-traffic pages such as content opt-ins, webinar registrations, and free trials. It’s a powerful plugin tool that is easy to use (perfect for beginners) and has proven to increase sales and conversions for small businesses. Pricing for Proof begins at $29 a month. 

5-  Constant Contact

Constant Contact is an email marketing lead generation tool that helps small business owners to manage and boost their online presence. It helps to connect with leads as soon as they sign up with an automated email series. Constant Contact is an easy-to-use and affordable email marketing service that helps to create email marketing templates, manage and automate campaigns, build contact lists, and improve customer relationships. 

The platform's lead generation landing pages are designed to collect visitor information in exchange for a promotion or incentive. It allows brands to customize the form to collect information such as name, email, phone number, birthday, and more.

Constant Contact's email marketing features provide advanced functionality to small businesses seeking to improve their business, boost sales, and nurture leads with email campaigns. 

6-  Myphoner

Myphoner is cold calling Software-as-a-Service that enables sales agents to quickly call through a list of leads. 

This lead generation tool enables sales teams to easily manage their prospects with a simple-to-use cold outreach CRM. It makes it easier to follow up and drive leads to make purchases. 

Myphoner offers a variety of tools that enable marketing teams to get the job done. It provides tools to manage client campaigns independently for agency clients, ensuring that all data is separate. This implies easier management and provides the opportunity for clients to have complete transparency over their campaigns.

7-  Intercom

Intercom is a useful lead generation communication software tool that offers a variety of features. Its most important feature, however, is the live chat, also called the business messenger, which offers digital functionalities. 

Furthermore, it assists in creating help centers, custom chatbots, inbound and outbound emails, A/B testing and objectives, etc. With Intercom, you can enhance your customer support efforts and provide exceptional service to leads and clients. 

Conclusion 

The lead generation process is quite tricky. However, the right combination of tools and techniques makes it easier and improves your chances of generating leads that will turn into paying customers. This article discusses lead generation tools that can help small businesses find new leads and potential customers.

Author Bio:

Lydia Iseh is a writer with years of experience in writing SEO content that provides value to the reader. As someone who believes in the power of SEO to transform businesses, she enjoys being part of the process that helps websites rank high on search engines.