Lead Generation Tools

Plain and simple, people go into business to generate sales and profit. This fact is easier said than done. In order to accomplish those two goals, there are litany of fundamental steps, good business practices and sometimes a right place right time sense of intuition or luck involved. One common trait of successful businesses is the ability to generate a steady stream of inbound quality leads. If you have no leads or the leads you generate do not have a high rate of conversation, you are going to face significant challenges on your road to success. In this blog, I am going to cover online lead generation tools that will help you to accelerate your rate of inbound leads as well as how to enhance the quality score and conversion rates of the leads that you generate. Business is challenging but, it all begins with sales and sales originate from quality leads.

Lead Generation Books

David T Scott’s book, The New Rules of Lead Generation provides details on how to execute the most fundamental and proven lead generation strategies. In a methodical manner, David breaks down the key offline and online tactics as well as the analytics behind tracking the results of a campaign. In addition to the primary approaches, David intelligently offers suggestions for setting aside a budget that can be applied to testing innovative lead generation strategies.

Maximizing Lead Generation by Ruth P. Stevens takes a scientific approach to deciphering complex lead generation processes. Ruth draws from her executive level marketing background at IBM, Ziff Davis, and Time Warner to outline a systematic model that can be applied to lead generation campaigns. She does an excellent job of educating on how to design campaigns that help to move leads deeper into the funnel and ultimately turning them into a sales conversation.

Lead Generation Certification

Unlike most of the other online marketing disciplines that I cover that offer a university program or a specialized certification for individuals, the lead generation industry focuses its lead generation certification on businesses. The LeadsCouncil is an independent association whose mission is to ensure best practices and help to ensure transparent and honest tactics in the space. Their lead generation certification platform verifies business web pages that comply with a LeadsCouncil approved set of industry standards for conducting lead generation. The most prominent businesses in the lead generation industry are members of LeadsCouncil and that speaks to the quality of the organization as a whole.

Lead Generation Conferences

In addition to being my personal favorite of all of the Internet marketing conferences, LeadsCon is the preeminent lead generation conference. While the number of attendees continues to grow year-over-year, LeadsCon remains an intimate group of performance marketing specialists. The featured speakers and respected panelists offer up valuable insights on a mixture of general and industry specific tracks. In terms of networking, from the hallways to the exhibit hall, the intimacy of this conference provides an engaging atmosphere that encourages chatting and deal making with the influencers.

Lead Generation Software

The lead generation software market is dominated by a few key players at the top of the food chain. While there are numerous other software and service vendors in the space, these companies take the cake in terms of their expertise and experience. Particularly in the area of mobile marketing, their technology platforms have proven to be nimble and they have evolved as rapidly as any companies I am aware of in that segment. From the standpoint of monetization, you cannot go wrong with these three lead generation software options:

Velocify (formerly Leads360) – Intelligent Sales Software
DoublePositive – Serves Lead Buyers, Lead Sellers, and Direct Response Advertisers
Datalot – Web and Mobile Customer Acquisition

Lead the Way with the Right Tools

At the end of the day, lead generation is like all the other Internet Marketing disciplines. If you invest the time into reading books that explain the discipline, educate yourself on the ethical strategies and tactics through the top industry organizations, network with the influencers, and use the top software platforms, you put yourself in the best possible position to succeed. Lead the way with the right tools and your lead generation campaigns will result in sustainable and healthy sales growth.

Lead Generation Tools