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Lead Generation Software Buyer's Guide
Table of Contents
- » What is the meaning of lead generation?
- » What is Lead Generation Software?
- » How does Lead Generation Software work?
- » Is it worth investing money in Lead Generation Software?
- » What are the features of Lead Generation Software?
- » What are the benefits of using Lead Generation Software?
- » Before you choose any Lead Generation Software
- » How to select the best Lead Generation Software?
- » Questions to ask a vendor when buying Lead Generation Software
- » Pricing plan of the Lead Generation Software
- » Lead Generation Statistics
- » Conclusion
Lead generation is one of the primary tasks involved in every company for running long term business. However, there is a big difference between leads and potential leads. If you know how to capture the right leads, you will not require much effort to convert them into sales. However, many just fall over there. They exercise their marketing efforts against wrong types who either bounce off after a few approaches or remain non-responsive to your emails and messages. Actually, drawing potential leads calls for a smart approach where you choose leads based on their interest and behavior patterns best complementing your product or service. Does that sound doable? If not, all you require is the best Lead Generation Software by your side.
» What is the meaning of lead generation?
In simple terms, lead generation is the procedure where you identify and try to acquire potential consumers for your business products or services. You can also call it an activity that helps you gain the interest of your prospects to boost the future sales of your business.
» What is Lead Generation Software?
Lead Generation Software is a cloud-based marketing suite that helps you capture the right type of leads required for your business and converts them into sales easily without demanding your much effort. The lead management system is suitable for small and mid-sized businesses for handling daily lead generation chores such as contact management, form customization, running polls and surveys, social media marketing, and post-sale follow-ups, amongst many others. You can easily manage your marketing campaigns from a single dashboard while auto synchronizing every new data with the system on a daily basis. The moment you pay a visit to your page, you come to know about them such as who they are, what they do, what their interest levels are, etc.
» How does Lead Generation Software work?
Lead generation software offers you beautiful and high-converting customizable forms to capture leads from websites. You can use them as in-mail or in-person forms as well to collect lead data from third parties. The software can seamlessly integrate with your other business tools without requiring any coder. It pulls data about your leads through various lead generation tools from their social media pages, professional database, and other websites to give you a detailed view of their interests and niches. Lead management software also ensures your team gets the required information on a real-time basis while keeping rest information secured under privacy shield compliance. The software can be well explored to witness a steep rise in lead conversion with the help of machine learning and AI.
» Is it worth investing money in Lead Generation Software?
If you are a solo entrepreneur, then probably you should not invest in something that costs you higher than your current monthly income. However, you can go for free versions available in the market to get as much help as you can. Once you expand your horizons and step up to a small and mid-sized level company status, go for a premium lead management system software where you can get maximum benefits of capturing quality leads as output against less effort as input.
» What are the features of Lead Generation Software?
Generating a lead and carefully managing them is one of the essential points of the lead generation software. Apart from this, the software is also used for transforming the way companies, and businesses acquire their leads. It is achieved by providing them with new potential customers, partners, and stakeholders. But one question may arise: how can a single software be able to manage so many things? Let’s have a look at the same.
› Leads Discovering Tools
The lead generation software efficiently manages the art of searching through massive lists of customers and organizing them based on their behaviour. Based on the specific set of keywords, the software automatically filters the most desirable candidates without less or no user interference. After screening, the contacts or leads are tagged separately for easy retrieval when needed.
› Import/Export Tools
Be it importing the extensive contacts list or exporting the details to the sales or another department, the lead generation tools handle everything. One has to set the preference along with the speed of import/export of the location, and bingo, the work is done. It tackles the need for going through every contact information in detail and then sending/receiving them manually.
› Collaborative Tools
Nowadays many lead generation tools also come with collaborative tools which help employees to stay updated with the progress of lead capturing, nurturing, and their scoring details. Using the feature, the approved members can comment, edit, or reject the points when desired without any worries.
› Tagging Leads
Considered as the latest trend in the lead generation tools, tagging leads according to their behaviour helps in streamlining them into their respective niches. During the lead generating process, a potential customer’s details go through multiple phases of development, thus, not maintaining tags on them can be very confusing later. Hence, tagging them under the respective niches is highly advisable to enhance efficiency in the lead generation process.
› Reporting Tools
The analytics and reporting tools come in handy as they provide a complete and profound layover of the customer’s interest while catering to keep them hooked to your service. By understanding the customer’s orientation, one can merely divest to create more tailor-made products to keep them surprised.
› Customizable Platform
Most lead gen software comes with a highly customizable platform which enables the users to design it as they want. The simple drag and drop functionality, along with customizable themes, fonts, and more help the users to sketch their dreams into reality without much headache. Rather than investing in professional already-used design, this will surely help entice the audience more fabulously.
» What are the benefits of using Lead Generation Software?
The Lead gen software has been witnessing a steady rise in its popularity owing to offering lesser risks when compared to conventional lead capturing methods. Blindly following conventional footsteps may not provide you profitable results. When a company makes use of its workforce for discovering leads, they waste almost 85% of their time in performing repetitive tasks. However, they can simply save that time by using lead gen software. Let’s have a look at the list of benefits that this software has to offer as a minimum.
› Cutting Down the Unnecessary Tasks
While the lead generation process comprises many repetitive tasks, regularly performing them is not required. Lead management software automates those repetitive tasks. It not only helps you to reduce the wastage of time but also saves your money and human resources.
› Detecting the Right Audience
No matter what your products and services are, if you are not able to find the right audience, all your efforts are worth nothing. The most important aspect of sales is finding the perfect audience which is automatically done by the lead management software. From gathering the data to set priorities, the software does everything within a couple of hours. On the other hand, the time saved can be used to design more customer-engaging products.
› Single Storage
Arranging huge lists of customer information from various sources as per specific folders is undoubtedly an intimidating task. However, the lead management software efficiently gathers, sorts and then stores them automatically in the company server giving you freedom from daily chores. You can quickly retrieve the files when needed without any head churning.
› Tracking Employee Activities
It is always essential to follow employee activities in the business to effectively tackle any potential fraudulent activities. Moreover, this also helps in discovering poorly performing employees in real-time and re-training them for enhancing work productivity in the company.
» Before you choose any Lead Generation Software
Although you may think that hiring the lead management system can mean that you will see a continuous uprise in your company profits, the result may not always be as expected. When it comes to analyzing if the software will be the best for the company, there are some points which are worth considering.
› Set your priorities in order
You will come across an array of options while choosing the lead management system. Hence, you must select the software which stands tall on your basic requirements, both in technical and non-technical sections. It is perfectly okay to ask questions like, ‘Does my company need to increase lead generation?,’ ‘Do I need to better access my data?,’ ‘Do I need to increase my employee efficiency?’ etc. to your vendor. The more you ask the better you will get confirmed whether the software is good for you or not.
› Continued Assistance
During the course of time, you will continuously require help, for a few days initially, to better understand different attributes of the software. Hence, before choosing the software you must ensure that the vendor has a dedicated team ready for you all the time to help you understand the tools better. This helps in reducing the time required for mastering the software.
› Choosing the Operators List
Not everyone in your company needs to have access to the lead management system. The ones who deal with the leads generation or in charge of the sales department should only be given access to the software. As the price varies according to the number of users assigned, sorting this out in advance will help you finalize your budget for sure.
» How to select the best Lead Generation Software?
Until now, one must have grasped the gist that hiring a lead generation software can work out the process to achieve exceptional results. Thus, no wonder many companies and businesses are moving forward with their idea of subscribing to the software. But here the main question is how one can find out if the software one is looking at will be the best lead generation software. Hence, in this list, we have listed some of the essential ideas to get you started. Check them out now.
› Lead Conversion Tools
The best lead gen software must have excellent lead conversion tools to facilitate the process. The list may include tools like A/B Testing, Integration with Google and Facebook’s Ad Builder, and more. Furthermore, if the software also readily integrates with other business tools, then it is an add-on.
› Provision to Choose Callback Timing
Many best lead gen software enables their users to leave their contact numbers, or email IDs if they want a call back from the company. However, nowadays various software is also allowing their users to specify callback timing according to their preference along with their details. It helps in reducing the chances of missed leads in case if the customer is not available during the call.
› Global Call Routing
If your business covers customers from around the world, then the global call routing is a must-have for your company. Not only it helps save lots of money, but also increases the efficiency of the calls.
› Tag Manager
The most important constituent of the lead management system software is its ability to sort the leads in separate folders. While almost all software helps in doing so, investing in software which additionally allows smart inbox filters, multi-channel marketing, and provides data-driven insights is indeed more beneficial.
› Easy Learning Curve
The top lead generation software must have an easy to use interface. It will allow the users, both beginners, and professionals, to quickly grasp the working of the software. Apart from that, the software developers must provide quality assistance until the software is launched with full functionality in the company.
» Questions to ask a vendor when buying Lead Generation Software
1. How user-friendly is your lead generation software?
2. How does the form builder work?
3. How many templates are there? Can I customize them?
4. Is the software capable of detecting anonymous traffic?
5. Does the solution pack in the tools necessary for lead monitoring, call tracking, as well as for analytics?
6. Can your software help identify the source of the leads?
7. Does this software allow me to create curated and targeted lists?
8. Is the system capable of removing duplicates and redundant data?
9. What security measures do you implement?
10. Does the software offer smooth integrations with third-party solutions, such as CRM?
11. How does your system map visitors?
12. Do you leverage advanced technologies, such as AI, into your product for a better outcome?
13. Can the system scale in the future?
14. Can you provide a walkthrough of your implementation procedure?
15. How long is the training period?
16. Do you offer 24/7 support? If yes, through which channels?
17. Are support services included in the subscription?
18. What all reports will the system generate?
» Pricing plan of the Lead Generation Software
The pricing structure of the lead management system software varies from one another depending on many factors as discussed in the above parts. However, to give you a detailed insight, the lowest rate of the software starts from $9/month and can reach a high of $259/month. Although one can choose from any of the premium plans, experts state using the free basic version initially to be beneficial. As one uses the basic version, they can easily understand the quality of the services provided along with their characteristics and efficiency. Hence, it serves as an eye-opener before suffering loss from hiring poorly functioning software.
» Lead Generation Statistics
- B2B companies that have mature lead generation processes in place enjoy 133% more revenue than the average firms. [Intellistart® Law Firm Marketing]
- The priority goal for 79% of global marketers is generating more quality leads. The second most priority goal at 75% is attracting more website traffic, followed by enhancing brand reputation (57%), and improving consumer engagement & loyalty (47%). [Semrush]
- The biggest challenge for 61% of marketers is to generate traffic and leads. [HubSpot]
- Over a third (34%) of respondents reveal that the biggest challenge for salespeople is prospecting & lead qualification. [Pipedrive]
- A huge challenge for marketers is to reach prospects since, on average, it takes 18 calls to connect with them. [Gartner]
- 85% of marketers are of the belief that customers expect a personalized experience. [evergage]
- Lead nurturing can grow sales by 50%. [Writer's Block Live]
- 53% of marketers opine that emails have been the most effective channel for early-stage lead generation activities. [Demand Gen Report]
- In spite of shrinking overall marketing budgets, 26.6% of CMOs express they’ll expand their budget for marketing technologies, such as automation tools. [Gartner]
- 39.5% of marketers believe that access to more precise data can enhance their marketing efforts. [Ruler Analytics]
» Conclusion
Now that you have fully understood the software, it will be easy for you to select the top lead generation software for your business. In order to make this your fastest and last effort, take as much time as needed and select the one that weighs high on pros and stands tall on most of the criteria stated in this guide for an ideal lead gen software.