Learn the differences between leads, prospects, and opportunities. Understand how to turn leads into prospects and opportunities.
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Business leads are potential customers you can generate yourself or buy from various sellers, including lead gen companies that find and qualify leads for you, lead databases that aggregate leads from all over the internet, and social media ad agencies that manage campaigns on social platforms to drive visitors to your website. The top sources quickly and affordably deliver leads that fit your customer profile. To help you choose, we’ve evaluated the best sources and their use cases.
Here are the six best places to buy quality business leads:
The above is a mix of options that provide the best overall places to buy business leads. If you'd like a list of the top companies or the top databases, check out our guides on the best lead generation companies, the best social media advertising agencies, and the best B2B lead databases.
To determine the best sellers of business leads, we split key scoring criteria into six weighted categories, each of which also contained multiple weighted subcategories. Then, we assigned scores out of five for each category and totaled the companies' overall scores, also factoring in primary use cases. The company with the highest total score was considered the overall winner.
We first looked at each company’s core offerings, qualification and targeting capabilities, and cost to ensure that the options we evaluated give businesses quality leads with accurate information at a fair price. We then checked integrations and ease of use to see whether users can easily save their new leads in their current systems.
We evaluated offerings such as number of leads in the database, inbound and outbound lead generation, and appointment setting.
Criteria Winner: CIENCEWe examined how far these companies take leads through the qualification phase before passing them along to their clients.
Criteria Winner: CIENCEWe assessed the technology and data points the companies use to find or deliver leads that match your ideal customer profile.
Criteria Winner: Multiple winnersWe took into account each option's pricing, a la carte options, and duration of their free trial.
Criteria Winner: Multiple winnersWe checked if each option's tools integrate with popular software and CRMs.
Criteria Winner: UpLeadWe looked over real reviews from users regarding ease of setup and use.
Criteria Winner: UpLeadNote: All per-month prices are with a one-year commitment unless noted.
At the end of the analysis, CIENCE came out on top, partially because they provide qualified leads rather than access to a database, so they take much of the work off of the user. Ultimately, every option on this list has its strengths and weaknesses. They’re all solid, trustworthy places to purchase leads, and the one you choose should depend on your specific needs. Read on to learn more about each lead source and how they scored in each category.
Offers both inbound and outbound lead generation services to help you attract the best leads for your business.
Price Range: Call for quote
Pros:
Cons:
CIENCE is a lead gen company offering both inbound and outbound services for a well-rounded, personalized approach to finding good-fit leads. Their inbound marketers reach and qualify marketing leads via campaigns and website data. On the other hand, the sales prospecting team identifies and contacts leads via calls, emails, LinkedIn messages, and more to set appointments for you. Both services are designed to save you time by delivering qualified leads to you.
CIENCE offers a great full-service way to buy pre-qualified leads with little effort on your end. However, this type of service can be expensive, so if you're trying to stick to a budget, go with a more traditional database like UpLead and plan to qualify them yourself.
Robust database that sells access to leads and provides many search filters to find the best ones.
Price Range: $74 to $299+ per month (7-day free trial)
Pros:
Cons:
UpLead is a B2B contact database containing 85 million B2B leads and their verified contact info. Beyond the number of leads in its database, it offers all the key data (such as demographics and firmographics) and contact information (such as verified emails and phone numbers) you'll need to reach out to leads directly or to add them to a campaign. Pricing starts at $74 per user, per month, and you can upgrade for more credits plus more offerings like data enrichment.
UpLead is a solid database to buy business leads from, but because their cost is so low, they don't provide certain useful tools like lead scoring. If this is important to you so you can reach out to the most relevant leads, try ZoomInfo, which does provide scoring.
Provides access to all LinkedIn users plus exclusive insights and contact information.
Price Range: $79.99 to $125+ per user, per month (30-day free trial)
Pros:
Cons:
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a prospecting tool for sellers who want to buy business leads on LinkedIn. In the Core level, you can search for unlimited leads using advanced filters, save leads to custom lists, and get recommendations for others to contact. To reach out, view the contact info associated with their account or InMail message 50 leads per month. Upgrading to a higher tier allows you to auto-save leads in certain CRMs and access a dedicated account manager.
The 50 monthly InMails are useful to sellers who contact leads via their LinkedIn profile, but those who call or email leads might pay for something they don't need. In this case, check out UpLead, which offers similar pricing but focuses on emails, phone numbers, and direct dial.
Builds and executes highly targeted social media ad campaigns to reach and attract relevant leads.
Price Range: $650 to $1,150 monthly management fee plus $500 to $9,999 monthly ad spend
Pros:
Cons:
LYFE Marketing is a social media ad agency that attracts B2B and B2C leads via targeted ads on Facebook, Instagram, and more. An account manager learns about your business, then develops and executes an advertising strategy for you — writing the copy, creating the imagery, and A/B testing the ads. They'll watch your ad performance and make tweaks as needed, keeping you in the loop via reporting and getting your feedback on the new leads that reach out to you.
LYFE's campaigns are a great option to advertise on major social platforms, but paying their monthly management cost plus the minimum monthly ad spend can get pricey. As an affordable alternative, think about hiring a Fiverr lead gen freelancer specializing in social media.
Offers detailed data on corporate decision makers as well as insights into their buyer intent.
Price Range: Call for quote (14-day free trial)
Pros:
Cons:
ZoomInfo is a B2B lead database offering access to a large number of quality decision makers plus third-party verified lead insights and contact info. At the Advanced level, you can use ZoomInfo Intent, which will consider your customer profile and track relevant leads' online searches for product reviews, news, blogs, and more. This helps identify interest, create targeted lists, and personalize and prioritize your outreach.
ZoomInfo is a great option for companies with a substantial budget, but their pricing isn't transparent and can be too high for certain users. For a database that still provides access to many quality leads and offerings but comes at a lower cost, take a look at UpLead.
Helps you find a freelancer to build lists of relevant leads and/or generate them via cold call or email.
Price Range: $20 to $1,000 per list of leads
Pros:
Cons:
Fiverr is an affordable online gig marketplace that gives you access to freelancers who will find and/or contact relevant B2B or B2C leads for you. To find the right freelancer, you can filter by languages, industries, delivery time, budget, and the quality level they've earned from past projects. You can ask them to create a spreadsheet of relevant leads and their contact info or to also call or email the leads they find and direct the interested ones to you.
Fiverr is an affordable way to buy leads, but you run the risk of receiving bad leads or damaging your brand if a freelancer doesn't perform well. If you're on a budget but want to buy only relevant, correct lead info, check out UpLead, which offers 95% accuracy and a fair price.
Whether you’re willing to pay top dollar for a lead generation service or just need some quality databases to help you build lists, you’ve got all of the best options you need here to buy business leads. Measure your budget and needs, figure out how much time you have available to qualify the leads you gather, and choose accordingly. And remember, one of the best ways to learn more about these companies is by hopping on the phone and asking their sales team some questions.
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