Finding an advantage over your competition is something that every affiliate strives for in one way or another. One of the ways that affiliates manage to improve their chances is by utilizing all sorts of tools to optimize their work process. And one of the more important tools sets that marketers should know about is tools for lead gen!
Lead generation is something that most affiliates should know a thing or two about and utilize as much as possible. Earning new leads is one of the best ways to ensure your success. Leads are equal to customers so the fewer you have, the fewer sales you can expect overall.
This is why most affiliates chose to include lead generation tools in their arsenal. In this article, we will go over some of the top choices you can choose to start using today!
What are Lead Gen Tools?
Lead generation tools are software solutions that can help affiliates increase their customer base and optimize their marketing approach to get the most leads and thus sales at the end of the day. There are hundreds of various tools all over the internet that can help in all sorts of manners. Some of them are better and some worse, but they are all designed to help you reach your goals.
One of the more common features that many lead gen tools can offer is analytics and tracking software. This might include a variety of useful options such as:
eCommerce Tracking
Conversion Funnels
Automation Workflows
Email Marketing Metrics And Reporting, Etc
These are just some of the features that you can expect from lead gen tools. Some might offer more while others might focus on specific areas. What's important is that they can all help you improve your marketing strategy and get those leads that you so desperately need!
What Makes A Good Lead Generation Tool?
The best tools are ones that help you do your tasks faster and more efficiently without bothering you or hindering your work process in any way. This means that a good tool should have these traits:
Ease Of Use
No matter how good a tool is, if it's too complicated to utilize successfully, you will likely spend more time trying to learn it and use it than you will save due to its usage.
Ease of Integration
What good is your tool if it can't be integrated into the other software solutions you use? To be honest, most tools work fine with most other marketing tools, but there are always fringe cases for specific uses, where the tools just don't integrate properly. This is why you should always do a bit of research beforehand so you can avoid these situations as much as possible.
Features
Features are something most of us drool over when looking at new tools, but we should remember that most extra features are more of a marketing gimmick than actually useful features. Check exactly what features each tool offers and try to analyze exactly how useful these are to your use case.
Benefits
When comparing tools also take into account what part of the business it impacts the most, and how huge the benefit from it will be. Sometimes some tools seem like they can do all sorts of things and save you a bunch of time and money, but in reality, they end up being slow and not as beneficial as you might have expected. This is why you should weigh the benefits of each one of them before starting.
Pricing
Of course, the price of the tool is one of the most important aspects you should take into consideration when picking the right tool. If the tool costs more than you will save by using it, then it's something you shouldn't spend your money on. Always try weighing in the benefits of the tools and their monetary value to get a better idea of if you should use them or not.
What Are Some Of The Best Tools For Leadgen?
After all of this prep talk, we are sure you want to know what the best lead-gen tools are, so let's cover them right now!
Prospect.io
For lead data collection tools, Prospect.io is a thing you should consider. This app can provide you with additional data and help you understand your customers and prospects better, hopefully improving their conversion rates. It will help you find prospects and launch cold campaigns right away through the handy browser extension.
Pricing starts at $89/mo, which is a bit on the high end as far as tools are considered!
Unbounce
If you want to create a landing page and capture leads with it, Unbounce might be the right tool for you. This tool can help you create custom LPs that will hook audiences and hopefully make them convert later on.
Unbounce has a simple and intuitive user interface that is drag and drop based. So you don't need to be a master at coding or understand any of the underlying features to utilize it properly. You can utilize some of their custom templates for LPs, opt-in popups, and A/B testing pages.
You can get a great 30-day free trial after which you will have to pay at least $80 monthly to continue working with Unbounce.
HubSpot
If you are in the market for a complete marketing automation system or CRM then HubSpot is a name that you will come across multiple times!
HubSpot is one of the biggest CRM solutions out there. They have tens of thousands of customers that interact with the platform and they are constantly improving the platform with a bunch of additional features. HubSpot consists of three main platforms, CRM, Sales, and Marketing. Within those three you will surely find something that you can utilize for your marketing efforts.
Pricing is great since there is a free tier that you can use to ensure that the tool is something you can utilize. If you want additional features then you will have to pay upwards of $45/mo!
Discover.ly
If trying to discover leads faster on social media sites, then check out Discover.ly! This competitor to Prospect.io does mostly the same, but it utilizes a different approach. It is incredibly simple to use with its browser extension and in most cases, it finds all the details you need. There isn't a huge difference between it and its competitors so picking the right tool can be a bit hard.
OptinMonster
Managing, capturing, and sharing marketing leads in a mobile-friendly environment can be simple if you use OptinMonster. This powerful tool helps its users capture its leads and make the most out of them. This tool integrates with most email and CRM platforms so you don't have to worry about cross compatibility.
MailChimp
Email marketing is often neglected, but it's one of the best and most affordable ways to gain and utilize your leads properly. To make the most out of your email marketing you should utilize tools such as MailChimp!
This tool will help you to build engaging emails with clear images and enticing CTAs. It also automates sending those emails to your contacts in the form of a newsletter!
MailChimp offers a free version that is limited but good enough for basic use. If you want to make the most out of it you should get one of the plans that start from $9.99/mo!
SendinBlue
Another great email marketing tool is SendinBlue. This software solution positions itself as an affordable alternative to other services. With it, you can send up to 10,000 emails a month for only $25! This is great for newcomers and beginners who don't want to invest heavily into more expensive tools.
Reply.io
If you are into expanding your email marketing toolset with an email address lookup tool, Reply.io is the right thing for you! This app allows you to find prospect emails on platforms like LinkedIn in seconds. The tool automatically pulls data and finds the required contacts by their emails and gets you the info about them you need. It is also free, so it's worth at least trying!
ClickFunnels
SImilarly to Unbounce, ClickFunnels will help you create custom pages for your offers.
Most describe the platform as a great sales funnel and landing page builder. CF has a simple system that allows you to pick sales funnels and then build your pages upon that. This tool is used by many affiliates in the industry so it has something going for it!
ClickFunnels offers a great, yet short 14-day trial that you can utilize for completely free. After that their plans start at $97/mo if you want to still use it for your campaigns.
Gleam
Gleam is a great social media contest software. You most likely ran into it if you entered any contest or giveaway on social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and others.
This tool is great for collecting leads that expect to enter a contest in one way or another. Gleam can help you collect the right data, aggregate it, select a winner, inform them, and use the rest of the lead information to do with as you please. Its closest competitor is Vyper, but Gleam seems to be more popular even though it's less polished.
Gleam can be used for free, or with a $10/mo plan.
Conclusion
Finding the right tools for your lead generation needs doesn't have to be hard. Even if you have no idea what tools exist out there, this list should provide you with at least a couple of solutions that you could use!
What lead generation tools do you use? Share your experience with us in the comments below!
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