25 Must-Have B2B Lead Generation Tools to Dominate

How difficult is it for your organization to drive new leads? If you’re like 34% of today’s marketers, then it’s one of the most challenging feats to pull off. Maybe you tried the latest methods and tactics, but still aren’t getting the results you desire.

Not to worry — we’ve got you covered.

In this post, we’re going to dive into the world of B2B lead generation tools. We’ll discuss what they are and how you can use them to improve your lead gen campaigns. First, let’s talk about what you should look for in these tools.

Then we’ll supply you with a list of the best of the best in 2021.

What Are B2B Lead Generation Tools?

Every lead gen campaign should have two things: a clear strategy for targeting prospective customers. And the right tools to monitor and execute your strategy.

B2B lead generation tools consist of software designed to assist with capturing leads. It’s an automated process, so you can focus on developing campaigns, not manually inserting lead data.

What Makes a Good Lead Generation Tool?

Ideally, you want a lead gen tool that doesn’t come with a lot of “chores.” It should automate your processes and not require a bunch of coding on your end. In fact, the more user-friendly and intuitive it is, the better.

Now, this isn’t to say some of the top lead generation tools won’t have a bit of a learning curve. When it comes time to select your lead generation software, you should look for the following:

• Usability: How simple is it to get your campaign up and running?
• Integration: Does it integrate with the marketing tools you already have?
• Pricing: Do you get everything you need while staying within your budget? How do the rates compare to competitors?
• Features: Does it come with all the bells and whistles you need to streamline lead gen campaigns?
• Benefits: Will it help you to achieve your lead gen goals?

Lead generation software comes in many forms and serves many different purposes. You’ll find some that offer better features in certain areas than others. You’ll also need to consider price and find the right tool for your budget.

So it’s key to find a middle ground, so you’re getting the most benefits possible without breaking your marketing budget.

What Types of Lead Generation Tools Are There?

There are various types of lead generation platforms you can use for B2B lead generation. Here’s a look at several:

• Inbound lead gen tools: Helps to drive leads to your website.
• Outbound lead gen tools: Helps find and message leads via email, calls, social media, etc.).
• On-page lead gen tools: Helps capture leads via your website (lead capture forms).
• CRO tools to increase leads: Improves how many leads convert into sales-qualified leads.
• Marketing management tools: Measures performance to enhance lead gen campaigns , target quality leads and improve your sales funnel.
• Email marketing tools: Creates nurturing campaigns to keep prospects engaged and moving through the buyer’s journey.
• Search marketing tools: Helps increase traffic that stems from paid and organic search to increase on-site leads.

Which you decide to use all comes down to the type of lead gen campaign you run. For instance, if you’re still manually sending out emails to prospects, then it’s time to upgrade to an email marketing tool. Automation is key to making B2B lead gen seamless and practical.

Next, let’s review the top 25 lead generation tools in 2021.

1. LeadPages

Having a way to capture leads on your website is easier with tools like LeadPages. With this, you can create custom landing pages for specific audiences. Then it connects to your other software, so the leads drawn in are funneled into your CRM.

And don’t worry, you don’t have to do it all from scratch. There are hundreds of high-converting templates to select from. Then you can change the colors, add your logo, and choose the design to make it your own.

The cost for LeadPages is $27/mo for Standard, which is suitable if you have only one website. But if you have several, then opt for the $59/mo Pro plan for three websites. Or, if you’re an agency, then you can go to the Advanced plan for $239/mo for up to 50 sites. There’s also a 14-day free trial.

2. OptinMonster

After building an awesome landing page, it’s time to capture visitors using lead forms. Keep in mind that shorter forms perform the best. What’s great about OptinMonster is that it comes with a drag-n-drop builder. This enables you to quickly build different types of opt-in forms. This includes lightbox popups, fullscreen takeovers, floating bars, and slide-ins.

This tool comes with over 100 templates to choose from, so there’s no need to start from scratch. They’re visually stimulating, which is ideal for capturing attention and information from leads. There’s also a powerful segmentation and targeting engine to display the right popup.

Need to adjust your lead form in real-time? This platform makes it simple to adjust and test forms right away. A/B split testing opt-in forms has never been faster.

The price for OptinMonster starts at $14/mo for Basic for a single website. Then if you have several, you can choose the Plus plan at $30/mo for two sites or $47/mo for three sites. If you have five websites, then expect to pay around $80/mo.

There’s no free trial, but you get a 14-day moneyback guarantee.

3. Hello Bar

Ever see a bar show up at the top of a website page with a message? Maybe it’s to promote a sale or new product in the lineup. Hello Bar is a powerful widget because it grabs attention and converts targeted leads. Hellobar makes this process seamless by making A/B testing quick.

You can customize the message, CTA, and position. So if you don’t want the bar at the top, you can opt for a full-page takeover, sliders, modals, and alert bells.

There’s a free version of HelloBar, then you can upgrade to a paid version starting at $29/mo. The free version allows up to 5,000 sessions per month. Then goes up to 500K sessions and unlimited popups for $99/mo. Annual plans are also available, saving you a few dollars monthly.

4. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Now, if you’re using LinkedIn to connect with B2B audiences, then this tool is for you. LinkedIn Sales Navigator enables you to target specific people and companies, track leads, and engage with prospects.

It also comes with advanced lead and company searches to find the most relevant prospects. The platform even recommends leads based on your preferences. This is ideal for finding the right contacts within target accounts. Plus, it integrates with your CRM platform.

It’s possible to build custom lead and account lists. And there are helpful alerts and insights. For instance, you’ll know when a lead or account changes jobs, job titles, or witnesses company growth.

There’s a free trial available for a month. Then it begins at $65/mo for annual plans. There are two options — Sales Navigator Professional and Sales Navigator Team ($103/mo for annual).

5. Qualaroo

Learning about your audience is possible when you conduct thorough research. And what better way to gather intel than to get it directly from the horse’s mouth? With Qualaroo, you can create unobtrusive mini customer surveys to collect information from leads and accounts.

It works by popping up on visitors’ screens when they come to your website. For instance, it may pop up with a small window on the side asking questions. You may see these on websites all the time — they’re like chatbots, asking what you’d like to do next (schedule a demo, call a sales agent, or begin a free trial).

Of course, you can use it in various other ways, such as asking questions to learn more about their needs. It’s an excellent way to get insights to personalize their experience.

There’s a free 15-day trial and demo to test how it works. Monthly and annual plans are available starting at $100/mo or $960/yr.

6. Everwebinar

Creating webinars is big business today, especially when it comes to driving new leads to your business. With Everwebinar, you can schedule and automate webinar footage and lead capturing. It even enables you to play content in intervals to recreate the live experience.

The idea is to boost engagement and attendance numbers by using countdown timers. Of course, this is triggered by the user, so no one misses out.

It works across all devices and has high definition quality. You get to choose whether the webinar is only available on specific dates or on recurring days of the week.

There’s the option to pay $199 x 3 annually or $499/yearly. Or you can save money by paying $799 every two years.

7. HubSpot

There are a lot of pieces within a lead generation campaign. With HubSpot, you can manage most of the processes in a single platform. For instance, you can create and schedule blog posts, attach and automate social profiles. It also helps with driving organic traffic by improving your SEO campaigns.

It’s an all-in-one solution designed for inbound marketing. The platform comes with valuable insights to measure and improve your campaigns. Some of its features include landing pages, ad management, conversational bots, forms, and live chat.  

And best of all, it’s free to get started. It comes with a pay-as-you-grow model to make it more affordable for startups and small businesses. Once you’re ready to start paying, $45/mo or $540/yr.

8. Drift

Speaking to your website visitors in real-time drives engagement and potential conversions. This is possible using Drift’s live chat tool. It’s ideal, especially with the rise of conversational marketing. But it doesn’t just enable you to communicate with leads in real-time.

It also offers a calendar scheduling feature to book calls and meetings with prospects. The platform also enhances account-based marketing by aligning sales and marketing data. This helps build personalized conversations for different groups.

There’s also Drift Video, which empowers you to start conversations using visual content. In other words, there are plenty of ways to use this platform to enhance your lead-generating efforts.

You can test it out by requesting a demo. Then plans start at $400/mo for the Pro and $1,500/mo for more advanced automation features.

9. Leadfeeder

Collecting data about prospects helps with decision-making for lead generation campaigns. With Leadfeeder, you’re getting more than just first-party information from prospective customers. You’re also seeing which companies are visiting your site.

Imagine learning about a potential new market to target after seeing several companies from an industry you’re not focused on. You can take this data and apply it to your ABM campaigns and outreach efforts.

Leedfeeder does this by connecting with your Google Analytics account. After installing it, you’ll have access to insights about industries, employee count, contact details, and behavioral data. This includes which sites a visitor views and the source of all your traffic.

There’s a free version of this tool you can sign up for. But the data is limited to showing only the last three days’ worth of leads. You can upgrade to Premium for $63/mo. It comes with a two-week free trial to determine if it’s right for you before committing.

10. Hootsuite

Establishing your brand’s presence on social media is critical today. Everyone’s looking for humanized experiences with companies, making social networks the ideal place to connect. But as a B2B marketer, there’s a lot on your plate already. Adding social media posting into the mix may be time-consuming.

So to counter this, you can use a tool like Hootsuite to manage all of your profiles in a single dashboard. This platform connects to your social accounts and allows you to schedule posts in advance. All you need is time to create a month’s worth of posts and then set it and forget it (or at least, until the following month).

Hootsuite also comes with analytics about your social campaigns to see how well they’re performing. Plus, you get to see what your audience thinks by monitoring conversations, brand mentions, and trends.

There’s a 30-day free trial, giving you plenty of time to test all of its features. Afterward, plans start at $49/mo for Professional and $129/mo for Team.

11. SlideShare

Creating visual content that’s informative is key to building visibility in the B2B community. This is what makes SlideShare a powerful tool for B2B marketers. Surely, you’ve watched more than a few SlideShares yourself.

It’s an excellent platform for displaying your expertise in the industry. Use it to educate your audience about a problem, topic, or solution. You can also use it as accompanying content for a webinar, video, or blog post.

The tool joined LinkedIn back in 2012, making it perfect for sharing content with your B2B audience. And best of all — it’s free to use.

12. ActiveCampaign

Managing customer relationships is a part of turning leads into long-term customers. When you take the time to build meaningful connections, it increases the odds of them sticking around. In some cases, customers may even turn into brand advocates.

Maintaining good relationships with your clients will help retention rates and generate referrals. ActiveCampaign is a CRM platform, which means you can automate customer relationship management.

All of your lead data is in a single platform, making it easy for marketing and sales to collaborate. It’s also capable of managing your pipeline, following up with leads, creating segmented email campaigns, and keeping deals fresh. The platform has a user-friendly interface, and it’s cost-effective.

Plans start at only $15/mo or $9/mo annually for the Lite plan.

13. LinkedIn Helper

If you’re thrilled about using LinkedIn, Slideshare, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator, then you’ll find this tool a big deal. LinkedIn Helper combines with Sales Navigator, which enables you to acquire thousands of targeted contacts. This is possible by sending out personalized invites to 2nd and 3rd connections.

You can develop automated messages, auto-responders, and message sequences to 1st connections on your account. The process of gathering lead information is also streamlined with automated profile visits. You can export lead lists to CSV for Excel or Google Sheets. Then use that to form targeted mailing lists.

It’s also possible to create a lead generation funnel to prevent intersections between campaigns.

If you’re not sure of its benefits, then you can sign up for a free trial. Otherwise, you can choose to pay for one month ($15), three months ($40), six months ($60), or one year ($99).

14. Quora

Sometimes, you can generate leads from unlikely sources. Quora presents a great opportunity to do two things: build visibility and gain traffic. Quora is useful because it allows you to ask and answer questions.

These questions and answers are emailed to people who’ve shown interest in the topic. The one with the best answer will get followers, and if you include links in your answer, it’ll drive traffic to your website.

The idea is to pose and answer questions your audience cares about.

15. MobileMonkey

Reaching your audience across channels isn’t only useful to your brand. It’s expected by your customers. This is what makes omnichannel marketing a win-win. B2B buyers want convenience, just like any other customer today. And one way of offering this is by sending messages via text message.

Smartphones are widely used in business settings and travel with professionals wherever they go. So it makes sense to target leads via mobile devices. With text message marketing, you can.

MobileMonkey Omnichat technology makes it easy to send out SMS promotions, surveys, and other marketing collateral to target audiences. Of course, they’ll have to opt in to receive messages from you. Otherwise, your brand will become an annoyance.

With this platform, you can chat live with website visitors, and send messages on Facebook and Instagram.

16. Outreach.io

Not all lead generation has to stem from inbound marketing efforts. Outreach tactics should definitely be a part of your strategy. You can do this by adding account-based sales to your nurturing campaigns. For example, you can identify target companies based on highly-defined buyer personas.

Outreach.io is a valuable tool you can use to manage the entire account-based sales process. Especially if you integrate it with data-enrichment tools like Hull.io, which provides further insights about your prospects.

This platform comes with a sales dialer, real-time enablement, email sequences, sales engagement, task management, tracking, and AI-driven reports.

To get your hands on it, you’ll need to request a demo and special pricing.

17. Mailchimp

Email marketing (and building an email list) should be a part of every lead generation campaign. But you need a tool to automate it so you can maximize results. Mailchimp is a popular email marketing tool, which you can connect with your landing page tools.

And it does more than send out automated emails. It also comes with its own lead capture forms, which you can design with exit-intent technology. Plus, you can include shareable URL links for your newsletters, so leads can share them with others. It’s also useful for transactional emails for those who’ve already converted into customers.

Mailchimp comes with multiple plans, including a free version with a 2,000 contact limit. The premium plans start at $9.99 for 500 contacts and go up to $299 for 10,000 contacts.

18. Intercom

Conversational marketing helps generate interest and gather feedback from your core audience. You can take this information and build a knowledge base for prospects. With Intercom, you’re able to chat with leads visiting your site.

You can set up rules of engagement where the message won’t pop up until a visitor is on a pricing page for at least X seconds/minutes. Or if someone visits your site a second time. With this in your toolkit, you can segment messages based on visitor behaviors.

It’s also helpful for collecting information about potential customers. And uses custom bots to provide quick response times to customer questions. There’s also an email follow-up feature to promote continued engagement.

Intercom has a demo you can request. You’ll have to speak with a sales rep to get special pricing for your business.

19. Zapier

Doing repetitive tasks is time-consuming and inefficient. This is especially true when you’re running dozens or even hundreds of SaaS tools on any given day. With Zapier, you can gain control over your time and tech stack. It works by connecting all of your apps, creating a seamless experience. The platform is compatible with over 1,500 apps and can integrate them without technical knowledge needed.

From here, automation is simplified so you can focus on innovating your processes. You can get started with Zapier for free. Then once you’re ready to upgrade, you’ll pay $29.99/mo for Starter plans or $19.99/mo when billed annually.

20. HotJar

What if you were able to see exactly what your visitors viewed on your website. With this “superpower,” you could understand what attracts visitors and what doesn’t. Well, this is somewhat possible using a heatmap tool like HotJar.

Then you can use the tool to give surveys and polls to learn why people bounce away so you can better optimize your site. The platform is user-friendly and comes with pricing plans for all business sizes.

21. Turnstile

You’re hosting webinars to attract your target B2B audience. But are you capturing their names and emails too? If you’re publishing your content for anyone to watch anytime, then this will be challenging to do. Unless you adopt a tool like Turnstile.

This platform allows you to gather information about your viewers after they finish watching. Or you can request their contact information at the start or in the middle of the video. It also integrates with email marketing tools like Mailchimp and CRMs like Marketo and HubSpot.

You can start using it for free, then upgrade later to a Pro plan starting at $99/mo.

22. Datanyze

If you want to amplify your outbound sales, then you need better data. With Datazyne, you can decrease the time spent prospecting. This tool collects information about the technologies used by various companies. So if you’re a SaaS company, this will be useful to have.

It also gathers data, such as email addresses, and direct and mobile phone numbers collected from LinkedIn profiles. You can even export profiles you view on Google Chrome.

You can test it out first using the free trial for 90 days before upgrading to $39/mo for the annual Nyze Pro plan.

23. Lead Forensics

How many visitors complete your lead capture forms? Or better yet, how many aren’t? If you’re driving a lot of traffic to your website, but only get a fraction of conversions, then it’s time to use countermeasures.

Conversion rate matters, and with Lead Forensics, you can still learn about your visitors via their IP addresses. This will determine what companies they work for (in real-time). When armed with this information, you can alert your sales team to reach out to the hottest leads via LinkedIn or email.

The potential of getting more conversions increases because these leads are already familiar with your business.

There’s no cookie-cutter price for this platform. So you’ll have to contact them to receive a package tailored to your business needs.

24. SEMrush

If you’re looking for a tool to combine with Google Analytics, then this may be for you. SEMrush is an SEO tool you can use to conduct on-site audits and health checks. This will identify any issues with your technical SEO.

It’s also used for finding keywords to target and drive more qualified leads to your site. SEMrush can even monitor and execute your PPC ads campaigns and social media strategies. It allows you to build PPC campaigns and draft and schedule social posts.

There’s a 7-day free trial. Afterward, it costs $119/mo or $99/mo for annual plans.

25. Sendoso

If you’re not already using corporate gifting, then it’s a strategy worth considering adopting. By sending gifts to prospects, you can improve the odds of converting them. This is especially possible when you use a sending platform to personalize your gift.

Sendoso is a B2B sending platform designed to enhance account-based marketing. It’s proven to help engage, acquire, and even retain customers. So not only does it generate leads, it helps to keep them around for the long-term.

You can request a demo to see how it works. Then when you’re ready, you can speak to a rep to receive a custom quote

Build a B2B Lead Generation Tech Stack

Your B2B lead gen strategy is only as good as the tools you use. Without the proper platforms in place, you’ll waste time and effort that could go towards more productive, revenue-building tasks.

With the above list, you should be able to put together a tech stack that yields positive results.

But if you’re curious to see what a successful lead gen strategy looks like, then watch the on-demand webinar “How Siteimprove saw 15x ROI from a Single Campaign” today!