9 Lead Generation Tools That Will Help You Increase Your Sales

by Robert Clough

When you’re running a business, leads are everything. The problem is that they’re just as important to every other business, so attracting clients has become a challenge. This leaves us with the question of how do you generate leads. Is there any way to make it easier?

Actually, yes, there is a whole array of lead generation tools. Lead generation tools are websites and apps that, whether specifically designed to or not, can help with bringing in potential customers. We’ll outline just a few of them below.

1. Social Media

Let’s get the most well-known method out of the way first. Businesses everywhere are using social media to advertise, and it makes perfect sense why. Social media was created to help people connect, and isn’t the whole point of advertising to connect with your clients? Social media works for business because of its grapevine structure.

You start making friends, who in turn have friends who also have friends, so through the grapevine, you might end up being seen by people who you wouldn’t otherwise have been able to reach. In particular, LinkedIn is a great tool for finding clients since it’s a business-centered website. Everybody is there for career purposes, so they may be more receptive to businesses contacting them. Plus, LinkedIn has a Sales Navigator tool designed to help people find clients.

2. Quora

Less of a social media site and more of a question/answer forum, Quora can be used strategically to help grow your business. The advantage comes from the fact that Quora has a search function. You simply need to search for a question that your business can provide an answer to, or for a problem you know how to solve. Being able to provide consistent, detailed, and accurate answers to people’s questions will make them trust you more and could win you some clients.

3. Active Campaign

One of the most common and effective methods companies use to drum up new business is email campaigns. The thing about an email campaign is that you don’t want to go in blind. You could, but that means you’re targeting people randomly, most of whom probably won’t be interested in whatever you’re advertising.

This is where sites like Active Campaign come in. Instead of advertising to people at random, Active Campaign, and other sites like it,, advertise by tracking who’s already been to your website and emailing them. Thus, instead of a pool of random people, you’re now advertising to people who are more likely to be familiar with your service and have some interest in it.

4. Live Chat

A tool to help keep existing customers rather than recruit new ones, Live Chat is a function much like tech support, where an actual human being who works for the company is available on the website whenever you need help. This will probably seem as annoying to your clients until they have a problem they need to deal with.At that point, it becomes essential.

5. Qualaroo

Another underutilized site in terms of advertising, Qualaroo is a service that allows a company to post surveys on its website. Its most common use is for optimizing a company’s website and making it more user friendly. However, some use Qualaroo to ask questions for lead generation.

One such question would be ‘what would make you more likely to buy this product?’ You might also ask ‘What factor is most important to you when deciding whether or not to use a service?” Based on the answers to these questions, you can better tailor your marketing strategy to your clients and generate more business.

6. Sales Dialer

Sales Dialer is a great service that allows you to better organize all communication with clients. It allows you to place calls, generate emails and recorded voicemails in a single click. Not only that, but it can also better analyze lists so that you’re more likely to contact clients who will be interested in your product or service.

7. Sumo

There are a lot of different ways to advertise online, and one of the most common ways is to use pop-ups. Sumo is a great tool for creating pop-ups. However, the reason it really makes this list is because it does a lot more. In addition to creating pop-ups, Sumo also uses what are known as heat maps, which tracks your website to determine which links are pulling in the most visitors.

Knowing this could help tailor more of your content towards these customers, as long as you can figure out what that link was so popular in the first place. The true icing on the cake, though, is that it’s all free. Sumo lets customers use its service at no cost, and attracts new customers by putting their brand on their pop-ups.

8. Leadpages

Leadpages is another popular tool for lead generation and customer retention tool. It’s what is known as a landing page builder, which allows you to customize your homepage, or any other page attached to a hyperlink. Landing page builders are useful because they help cut down on bounce, which is when someone visits a website and then clicks off before exploring the site any further. However, Leadpages does more than just that. It can also be used to create ads for Facebook, which can definitely help generate business.

What really makes this particular site remarkable is that you don’t have to be a tech guru to figure it out. The design system is built around a drag-and-drop feature, so no messing around with code just to make something work.

9. Blogs

Blogs may seem like they have nothing to do with most businesses, but that’s just not true. The reality is that a lot of businesses these days are using blogs, because having interesting content is a great way to keep people coming back for more. Granted, the blog has to be in some way related to your industry, but that still leaves a lot of things to write about. Chances are, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to learn how curious we tend to be as a species.

Lead Generation Tools for the Modern Business

Lead generation is a huge part of advertising, but a lot goes into running a business, so much that you may not have much time to use on lead generation. The good news is that other people are aware of this, too, and have designed services and tools to help make things easier. We’ve only been able to discuss a handful of them here, but there are plenty out there, so feel free to explore.

If you want to learn more about running a business, and how to use searches to your advantage, please visit our site. Maybe you’re an aspiring writer who wants to know how to make a living at it. We’ll introduce you to a thing called SEO. Maybe you want to bring in a web designer, but aren’t sure how to tell the good from the bad. We can help with that, too.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.