12 Actionable Lead Generation Strategies for Startups

Building and managing a startup can be really daunting. Been there – felt that! 

When you have limited resources and a lean team juggling multiple tasks, finding quality leads can be overwhelming. At this point, you can’t take risks by investing in slow strategies.

You need to grow rapidly. But which lead generation strategy is going to work? You can’t test all the techniques in the book, right?

If this remotely resembles what you’re caught in, then we are here to help.

Here, we have a list of 12 lead gen strategies that are proven to bring results, especially for startups.

We have gone in detail for each strategy explaining – what it is, how it works, the pros and cons, and finally, how you can implement it in your startup.

So, let’s dive in and find the right strategy (or a mix of strategies) for your startup.

Lead Generation for Startups: Table Of Contents 

• What Does it “Actually” Mean to Generate Leads for Startups
• Top 12 Lead Generation Strategies for Your Startup
• 4 Lead Generation Tools Helpful for Startups
• Recap of Best Lead Generation Strategies for Startups!!!
• FAQs

What Does It “Actually” Mean to Generate Leads for Startups

Now, before discussing strategies, let’s clarify some basics so that there won’t be any confusion.

What are leads? » Anyone who is interested in what you have to offer is a lead. 

What are high-quality leads? » These are the leads who match your ideal customer profile (ICP) and are actively looking for a solution. They are the ones who have the highest potential to become long-term customers.

Hence, if you want your startup to grow quickly, you should focus on bringing these types of leads.

This can only happen when you have created your ICP. If you haven’t, then refer to our ICP guide and create a buyer persona to support your lead generation strategy.

5 Common Mistakes That Startups Make While Generating Leads

Knowingly or unknowingly, you and your team are prone to make mistakes. In lead generation, one wrong lead means missing out on revenue. Here are some common errors one can make,

1. Not defining your target audience: Can you throw darts on target blindfolded?? No, right? The same is the case with executing sales and marketing strategies without clearly defining your target audience. You can save time, money, and effort if you know who to target. 
2. Buying leads from 3rd parties: One of the biggest mistakes startups can make is paying for leads. It’s a trap because the quality of leads will be extremely poor and you’ll end up wasting money as well as time to target those useless prospects.
3. Forgetting your customers after they pay: A paid customer is also a lead that can contribute to your recurring revenue. So, your work doesn’t quite end after you have converted a lead into paying customers. Try to regularly contact them to see if they are facing issues, if they need help or if any improvements can be made. 
4. Overpromising: ​​Never promise something you are not sure you can deliver. Your customers will eventually leave, and there is a high chance they will leave bad feedback on review sites. 
5. One-size-fits-all approach: Your product or service can have different use cases for businesses of various sizes. Tailor your value propositions to meet the specific needs of each customer segment. 

In short, lead generation is not something that you do casually. Now, are you ready to unlock the secrets of lead generation? Let’s explore some proven strategies that can drive consistent leads and revenue for your startup.

Top 12 Lead Generation Strategies for Your Startup

This is where things get really exciting. In each section, we’ll break down every lead generation strategy, explain how it works, and discuss its potential benefits.

Here’s the entire list of strategies. Feel free to click on anyone to read in depth. However, we recommend going through them one by one to get the full picture. 

1. Use Cold Emailing (Recommended)
2. Try Cold Calling
3. Create Lead-magnet Pages
4. Tap Into Search Engine Optimization & Content
5. Host Webinar & arrange podcasts
6. Leverage Social Media Marketing
7. Go for Video Marketing
8. Community Building and Engagement
9. Host & Attend Networking Events (Works wonders)
10. Run Paid Ad Campaigns
11. Set Up an Affiliate Program
12. Work With Influencers

1. Use Cold Emailing

The first strategy we will be taking a look at is cold emailing.

Cold emailing is a high-return outreach strategy in which you send highly personalized emails to targeted people (matching your ICP).

It’s “Cold” because you will be reaching out to people with whom you have not previously interacted.

Your main motive here is to reach out to potential customers and show them that you have a solution for their problems, and get them interested in having a conversation with you.

Pro Tip: Though it is a sales strategy, don’t be too salesy with your emails. Instead, look at them as a way to build a relationship with them.

Check these pros and cons to understand what awaits you if you choose cold email as your prime lead generation strategy.

Pros of Using Cold Emails for Your Startup:

1. High returns: Cold emails have the potential to increase your per capita revenue (earnings per person in your startup) because of its scalable nature and ability to bring high paying customers.  
2. Extremely affordable: When you’re growing your startup, you can’t rashly use funds to experiment. But with cold emailing, you can generate leads at a very minimal cost.
3. Scalability: Depending on your needs, you can send 100 – 10,000 cold emails to prospects daily. You simply need to add more prospects to your mail sequence, and boom!!
4. Can be fully automated: It can be quite a hassle if your team were to send emails manually. But thanks to cold email software, you can easily automate the entire process.

If we shared only the pros, it would make us look biased toward cold emailing. So here are the honest drawbacks to this strategy.

Cons of Using Cold Emails:

1. Low engagement: There is a high chance your emails won’t get opened or noticed by your prospects if they are generic. Personalizing your emails helps you counter it.
2. Spam filters: With increasing consciousness of unsolicited emails, spam filters are getting advanced. But you don’t have to worry as long as you follow cold emailing best practices.
3. No instant feedback: Cold emails might not get an immediate response, but on the other hand, it gives your prospects time to consider your message without feeling pressured.

Cold emailing carries the potential to generate an ROI of up to 4200%.

That’s flat more than 40x on your investment!In numbers, you generate $1000 for every $25 spent.

How To Use Cold Emails To Generate More High-Quality Leads for Your Startup

Step 1: Start finding prospects that fall under your ICPs & buyer persona

The first step in creating a successful cold email campaign is to have a clear ICP and buyer persona to pinpoint your relevant prospects.

With those in hand, you can easily find prospective customers who can benefit from what you have to offer.

Finding the right people to reach out can be a challenge on its own. Thankfully, you don’t have to do it all on your own.

There are B2B lead database platforms that make the process easier by offering verified contact information so you can focus on engaging with the right prospects. 

One such tool is Saleshandy Lead Finder, which has a database of 700M+ B2B professional contacts from 60M+ companies worldwide.

You can use the various advanced filters available to easily find prospects that match your business criteria with laser accuracy.

With Lead Finder, you also don’t have to worry about getting the wrong email addresses, as it will verify each prospect’s email addresses before revealing them to you.

So, if you want to create a list of prospects with valid email addresses, feel free to take the help of a business database tool like Lead Finder.

Step 2: Create personalized emails

As we told you in the cons section, generic emails won’t cut it.

If you want your cold emails to have a positive impact on your prospects, you have to personalize them and make them more relevant to them.

You can do this by understanding the pain points, needs, and interests of your ICPs.

A high-quality personalized email should have the following elements:

• Eye-catchy subject lines.
• A personalized opener.
• Relevant value offering that solves the pain points.
• A soft CTA, to not sound salesy.
• Professional sign-off.

With an email like the one above, you can greatly improve your chances of engaging with the prospect.

Okay, now you might be thinking “This is a real hassle if i have to do it for every prospect of mine”.

Yes, it is, no denying that!

But, that’s why there are tools like Saleshandy!

You can personalize your emails for hundreds of prospects easily. It has various features, such as merge tags, spintax, and even variable tags, to help you do this.

What’s more great is that all this personalization can help you avoid spam filters as well!

Now, let’s continue further.

Step 3: Ready your follow-up emails

A drawback of cold emailing is that there is a chance your email will not be seen.

Why?

Your prospects are busy folk just like you, maybe they have not checked their email that day, and your email got lost in the pile up.

So, to increase your chances of getting viewed, you must set up follow-ups to nurture leads and increase your chances of conversion. 

In fact, every single follow-up you take helps you increase the chance of getting replies by 10%. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you keep following up endlessly. There should be a maximum limit of 4-6 follow-up emails.

If you are using Saleshandy, then this is what a sequence with follow-ups looks like using Saleshandy’s automation features. Such automation can help you schedule emails at the best times, making it easy to stay in touch with your prospects.

Step 4: Send and analyze

You have your prospect list, you have your personalized cold emails (initial email and follow-ups)… well, you are ready to start shooting your emails.

But your job doesn’t end just yet!

After sending, you should monitor key metrics like reply rates, unsubscribes, etc, to see what’s working and what’s not.

As you can see, a lot of manual work is piling up on you.

To help you and your team focus on what’s actually important, you can leave the heavy lifting work to a cold email automation tool like Saleshandy.

With it, you can automate your entire cold email sequence – from start to finish. Scale your outreach as and when needed.

You don’t have to worry about the hassle of managing replies and tracking key cold email metrics.

Basically, Saleshandy can be your startup’s budget-friendly tool to put cold email lead generation on autopilot.

2. Try Cold Calling

Cold calls are spam! – Who does that? 

If this is what you’re thinking, we don’t blame you. The bad reputation behind cold calling is because there are a lot of folks doing it in the wrong way!

Don’t believe us!

Well, you would be surprised to know that 87% of prospects say salespeople don’t understand their problems. (Source: TOPO-Gartner)

That’s an annoyingly big number.

Now, if you want your cold calls to work out, you need to provide value and have a structured approach to convert prospects to quality leads and eventually convert.

But before you jump into cold calling, you need to know its benefits and drawbacks for your startup.

Pros of Cold Calling

• You can quickly connect with potential clients
• It gives you an opportunity to connect with your prospect humanly (through voice)
• You get an immediate response whether your prospect is interested or not

Cons of Cold Calling

• There is a chance your prospect might get annoyed as you have reached them without their consent
• You can run into an assistant who usually answers on the phone on behalf of a decision-maker 
• It cannot be scaled easily. You need to hire more folks in your team to call more prospects 

How To Do Cold Calling for Your Startup

It’s not rocket science to cold-call, but it does take some common sense to avoid annoying your prospects. Here’s how your team can do successful cold calling,

Step 1: Get a list of prospects and segment them

When you start cold calling, you need to create a list of prospects. Sort this list into groups based on how well they fit your ideal customer profile.

You can then further segment it based on factors such as industry, company size, and job title. This will help you tailor your approach to each group.

After doing this, move to step 2.

Step 2: Create & test call scripts

A well-crafted call script can guide your conversation and ensure you cover all the important points.

Create multiple scripts and A/B test them to see which ones resonate best with your prospects. Remember, while a script can be helpful, it’s essential to maintain a natural and conversational tone.

Also, make sure you start the conversation with some connection. The last thing your prospect wants to do is talk to a stranger who wants their money.

Step 3: Dial & ask qualifying questions to understand their problems

Here comes the crucial part.

The motive of your cold call is to identify potential customers and learn about their needs. Follow the script that you’ve created in the previous step and try to see if they are a good fit for your product or service.

There is a chance that you might get a neutral or a negative response. In such cases, be calm and understanding. 

Let’s consider this situation: They are your ICP but are not actively looking for your product or service.

Try to subtly say that you contacted them because you saw that their business is facing a similar issue like one of your customers.

This can generate curiosity in the minds of your prospects and can lead to further conversation. 

So next time, try to understand their problem and position your startup as their savior.

Step 4: Schedule Follow-up calls in case of no response

If you fail to connect with a decision-maker on your first attempt, don’t give up.

Schedule a follow-up call to reconnect and continue the conversation.

Persistence is key in cold calling. Of course, you don’t have to pester them every day for the whole month.

Step 5: If cold calling fails, add them to your cold emailing list

If cold calling isn’t yielding the desired results, consider adding your prospects to your cold emailing list.

Email can be a less intrusive way to reach out and provide additional information. Remember, every quality lead counts, and you can’t miss them when your startup is in growth mode.

To get things moving, you can follow the steps mentioned in the #1 strategy (cold emailing).

Also, here’s a detailed discussion of cold calling vs cold emailing to help you decide which one to go for.

3. Create Lead-Magnet Pages

Lead-magnet pages are like the chickens that lay golden eggs in your marketing strategy.

These pages are designed to capture leads by offering valuable content or resources in exchange for contact information.

When created effectively, they can become a consistent source of high-quality leads.

How Do You Find Lead Magnet Pages That Will Suit Your Startup?

Wondering how to find ideas for magnet pages that really grab attention?

There are two main ways to do this:

1. Keyword Research: Think about what your potential customers might be searching for online. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner or Google Trends to find the right words and trends to target in your lead magnets.
2. Competitor Analysis: To get inspiration for lead magnet pages, you can list out your top competitors and analyze what they are offering as lead magnets. This can help you get a better idea of what works well in your niche.

To get inspiration for your startup, here are two examples of high-intent lead magnet pages.

New Agency: A free consultation or audit to help businesses assess their marketing needs.

SaaS Startup: A free trial or demo of the product to showcase its features and benefits.

Now, here’s the catch. Simply creating a lead magnet page won’t get you leads. You need to have it fully optimized for getting more visitors and conversions. Here are the elements that you need to inculcate:

• Compelling Headline: This grabs your visitor’s attention. You need to keep a clear and concise headline that promises value.
• Strong Value Proposition: Clearly articulate the benefits of your lead magnet and why it’s worth providing their contact information.
• Optimized Form: Keep your form short and simple to minimize friction. You should only ask for essential information, such as name, email, and job title.
• Clear Call to Action (CTA): You can test by using some creative but clear CTAs that encourage visitors to take action. For example, “Download Your Free Ebook Now.”
• Chat Box: Offer live chat support beacon to answer questions and provide assistance.
• Exit Intent Popups: Capture leads who are about to leave your site with a targeted offer.
• Tracking and Analytics: Use tools like Google Analytics to track visitor behavior and optimize your lead-magnet page.

Having a good lead magnet page has no cons. It’s a win-win for you, by all means. After a user shares their details, you can contact them via automated sales emails. This way, you can minimize manual work within the sales team in your startup. It’s like a one-time task that reaps benefits as long as your lead magnet works.

4. Tap Into Search Engine Optimization & Content

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps you get more organic visibility in search engines. With this, your startup can sustainably drive more traffic to your lead magnet pages, landing pages, and blog content.

Here’s what you can do if you are planning to keep SEO as one of your lead generation segments.

Execute Key SEO Strategies

» Keyword Research:
Identify the terms and phrases your target audience is searching for. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Google Trends to discover relevant keywords. 
Segregate the keywords with different intents, informational, navigational, or transactional, and create a content strategy.

» Content Production & On-Page Optimization:
Next, create landing pages and blog posts that resonate with your SEO and content plan. Use keywords subtly in your titles, subtitles, descriptions, and main text. (Note: Don’t stuff keywords unnecessarily)

» Backlinks:
Backlinks are references to your web pages from other websites. It helps you boost your website’s authority and search engine rankings (if you are building high-quality backlinks from reputable websites).

» Technical SEO:
This process involves preparing your website for the technical requirements of search engines like Google, Bing, etc. Some elements of tech-SEO involve crawl optimization, rendering, schema, page speed, website architecture, and more.

Guest Posting and Content Distribution

This is another effective way to increase your visibility and generate leads. When you publish guest post pieces and distribute your content on other relevant websites, you can reach a wider audience and establish yourself as an authority in your industry.

Once your content is published, you should share it on social media, email marketing campaigns, and relevant online communities like Slack and Reddit. These are only two examples. There are many online communities where you can find relevant target audiences. It’s like reusing the content in the most efficient way.

This will help you reach a wider audience and drive traffic to your website. The combination of SEO strategies with guest posting and content distribution goes quite well. These strategies can increase the visibility of your lead magnet pages and blogs.

Tips for Guest Posting:

• Find Relevant Websites: Identify websites in your niche that accept guest posts.
• Pitch Your Content: Develop a compelling pitch that outlines the value your article will bring to its audience.

Create High-Quality Content: Write informative and engaging content that provides value to readers.

5. Host Webinars & Arrange Podcasts

If you skim the internet, the most authoritative content you will find are podcasts and webinars.

Why? Because a lot of thought is put into creating those. Every single question in podcasts and the whole script of the webinar is thoroughly researched and reviewed to provide value.

Now, when you host webinars or podcasts on relevant topics, you can position yourself as an expert in your industry and attract potential customers. This can be your startup’s new source of leads.

How? Let’s say you host a webinar. To register, attendees must fill out a form with their information. Now you have information about a prospect with their business information. This can help you identify and filter out potential users or clients that match your buyer persona. 

Now, the next step is your mastery. You just have to reach out to them and convert them. 

Of course, not everyone will be converted, but there’s a high chance of a positive response because they have interacted with you via your quality webinar.

If you’re creating a podcast, one creative way to capture your potential client or user’s attention is to request that they be featured in one of your podcasts.

Why would they entertain your podcast? It’s because they will get recognition. Everyone wants attention in one form or another. Hence, it will be a win-win situation for both of you and your podcast speaker. 

After a few successful podcasts and webinars, you will be able to position your startup as an authority in your niche, and leads will flow in gradually.

Please note: It takes time (around 3-6 months) and effort to start generating significant leads through this strategy. So, you need to be patient with your team.

Pros of Hosting Webinars & Podcasts for Startups

• Targeted Reach: Both webinars and podcasts can be tailored to a specific audience, ensuring maximum relevance.
• Interactive Engagement: Webinars offer real-time interaction, while podcasts can encourage listener engagement through comments and reviews.
• Lead Generation: Webinars can directly capture leads, while podcasts can build brand awareness and generate leads indirectly.
• Content Repurposing: Webinars and podcasts can be repurposed into blog posts or other marketing materials, extending their reach.
• Diverse Audience: Podcasts can attract a diverse audience, while webinars can be more targeted.

Cons of Hosting Webinars & Podcasts For Startups

• Time-consuming: Both require significant time and effort to produce. When you are a budding startup, this can take a decent chunk of your resources.
• Technical Challenges: There’s a risk of technical issues that can disrupt webinars or affect podcast quality.
• Limited Reach: While both can be effective, they have limitations compared to other marketing channels.

6. Leverage Social Media Marketing

Building a brand presence on social media is hard for startups because there are already big fishes in the market. Hence, you need to have a clear-cut vision and strategy for what you are going to share on your socials. Start with the following steps:

1. Identify where your target audience hangs around (be it LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc). This will have you channel your efforts effectively.
2. Optimize your social pages: Your social profiles should have a clear bio (with right brand positioning), contact information, and CTA(s)

Once you’ve completed the above two steps, you can test out lead-generation ideas that resonate with your startup’s brand identity.

Lead Generation Ideas for Startups on Social Media

Getting fresh leads from socials can be daunting because everyone tries to share content that helps your potential users or clients learn something. But that’s not the only social media tactic that your startup can use to generate leads.

1. Talk about your case studies and testimonials

If you think that getting reviews and publishing case studies will help you build traction and generate leads, you’re wrong. You need to distribute them. The best method is to share them on social media while tagging your clients.

This will help you increase your visibility in your clients’ or users’ networks and attract a more relevant audience to your startup’s products or services.

2. Create content that gets attention organically

Social selling is very underrated. Everyone wants to sell, but very few startups understand the concept of helping first. If you invest in helping your potential clients or users solve their problems, then you will see leads coming towards you very soon.

3. Don’t just speak, listen also

While you create and share content on your socials. You need to know that a major chunk of engagement can come through interacting with other relevant posts to your niche. Let’s say someone is having a bad experience with your competitor’s products. All you need to do is subtly comment or slide into their DMs and pitch yourself. 

Working on social media is surely a task for growing startups, but it’s not something that they should miss out on. There are many businesses that have social media as their prime revenue source. It’s because they have built an authority of their brand, and their audience looks up to them.

7. Go for Video Marketing

We know that startups have very limited funds, and you might wonder if video marketing is worth the investment. Actually, businesses themselves have answered this question. 

From a survey, it was found that 91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, which has been at an all-time high since 2016.

Why You Should Do Video Marketing for Your Startup?

Now you know that video marketing is something that will help you get more attention from your target audience. But what if we tell you that there are way more benefits you reap from video marketing?

1. Boosts Social Engagement: Videos are easy to consume, and you can position your brand in a way that helps give a nudge to your audience and boost your social engagement.
2. Improves SEO: Adding videos to your landing pages and blogs is a sign that you have put effort into creating a variety of content to help drive user engagement. This puts a plus mark on your Google rankings.
3. Helps you build trust: When you invest time into creating helpful content that educates your audience, it creates a sense of trust in people towards your brand.
4. Increase in leads & conversions: Videos help you position your brand as an entity that can help your users or clients achieve what they want, resulting in an increase in leads or signups.

Be it your product tutorial, client testimonial video, or general educational video, video marketing is not to be underestimated when it comes to lead generation.

8. Community Building and Engagement

Building a community is nothing more than gathering like-minded folks who share a common interest, values, and goals. 

When you create a community, it slowly establishes you as a thought leader in your niche. By adding a sense of belonging and room for open discussions, you can retain and attract new folks who would be interested in your selling in the future.

You don’t need to make a community with your branding. Just think about what your buyer persona might be interested in professionally. Now, find a common pattern and create a community for it.

To create a sense of authenticity and demeanor, you can keep the community as invite-only (meaning people will have to request you to join).  Why? Because a lock that can be opened by any key is not valuable. 

When people see that they have to be good enough to join your community, that’s how you recruit highly interested folks who can join and engage in your community. 

If your community is able to successfully provide value, it can lead to word-of-mouth marketing by fellow members of the community.

Note: Please make sure that you don’t keep your community sales-oriented. Because the last thing your audience would want to do is to fall into another marketing bait.

9. Attend & Host Networking Events (Works Wonders!!)

Networking events are a goldmine for lead generation. These events are a gateway for your startup to get in touch with potential users, clients, and industry experts face-to-face.

Now, let’s talk about how you can generate leads with events. But before that, let’s make one thing clear – you will not directly land an opportunity and get clients as soon as you walk in.

When you attend or host a networking event, you have a platform where attendees can build genuine connections with people in common fields. These relationships eventually leads to referrals, collaborations and even partnerships.

No kidding, you will never know what potential it holds until you actually attend an event and reap benefits from the network you’ve built.

Here’s what you should do when you attend or host a networking event,

1. Introduce yourself and talk about experiences: When you attend events, you have the chance to position yourself as an expert in your field. Try to share your knowledge and insights in the form of experiences.
2. Try to expand your network: Network is like an asset. The larger your professional network is, the more high-quality leads you can get.
3. Try to ask questions (if you are attending): Asking questions means a lot. Firstly, you will be able to broaden your thought process and learn something in return. Secondly, you will get a conversation starter if you want to connect after the event.

Now, if you are hosting events, you will have a chance to capture attendee data (name number, email address, business, etc), which indirectly means getting prospects that might be interested in your product or services.

Once you get this data, you can reach out to them via LinkedIn or email. You can personalize the message and hit send! Here’s a template that you can refer to.

Reconnecting after an Event

Subject:Reconnecting after [Event name]

Hey there, {{First Name}}
It was pleasure meeting you at [Event name] and discussing {{Industry}}. I found our conversation about [Topic] quite interesting.

My {{comapny}} specializes [Relevant services/Products] and has helped businesses like yours to overcome challenges before.

We can offer a customized solution to address your needs. Let's schedule a call to discuss this further.

Let me know when you're available, and we'll find a convenient time.

Cheers,
{{Your Name}}

10. Run Paid Ad Campaign

If you are not sure what paid ads are, then we’ll give you a quick rundown.

Paid ads are a form of advertising where marketers bid to feature their ads to target specific audiences. You can place ads in various forms like videos, images, or stories. Some platforms also support text-only ads.

One of the reasons why many startups and large brands run paid ads for lead generation is because they are the clearest form of generating leads. 

It’s as simple as: you put in money » you get quality leads (only if you do it properly). It’s not very budget friendly, but can give you a decent ROI.

Paid ads serve two purposes: 1. Getting leads, 2. Brand awareness

Why brand awareness? Because consistent paid ads help in subconsciously remembering your brand name. So, the next time they run into your blog or social media post, they’ll say, “Yeah, I probably know this company. Let’s see what they are talking about.”

11. Set Up an Affiliate Program

According to Yahoo Finance, the global affiliate market size was valued at USD 16.2 billion in 2023. This means that it can be a big mistake to miss out on additional leads that you can get from running affiliate programs.

Setting up an affiliate program is one of the best ways for startups to get leads without using any resources. All you need to do is pay a set commission only when your needs are fulfilled.

Here’s how you can set up your affiliate program:

1. Set a revenue model for your affiliate program. You need to balance out the profitability between [number of leads based] commission or % commission when conversion happens.
2. Create a landing page that talks about your affiliate program and clearly states your commission percentage.
3. Share your affiliate programs across your socials to give a boost. Also, try to target the keyword intent of “{{your industry / service / product}} + Affiliate Program” on the landing page. Example: SaaS Affiliate Program, if you are a SaaS startup.
4. Cater to the queries of affiliates and see the leads rolling in!!

12. Work With Influencers

Influencers are like cash cows if you know how to milk it. They have done the job of gathering an audience.

Your job is to find the right influencers who have your potential audience as followers. If you’ve done this right, half of your campaign is already successful.

Now, since you are a startup and possibly have a tight budget. Try to set up a collaborative deal. 

For example, if the influencer quotes a large sum of money to feature your product or service, then you can pitch them for a special % in commission on conversions or some tangible metric.

This way, you can leverage influencers to do your bidding without exhausting your funds.

Pro tip: If you are tight on budget, then you can invite relevant influencers to be featured in your podcast. This will help your startup to leverage its network to grow your audience and generate more leads.

4 Lead Generation Tools Helpful for Startups

Tools play a significant role in scaling your lead-generation campaigns. We have compiled a list of top lead generation tools and handpicked four that are best suited for startups.

1. Saleshandy

If your aim is to generate leads without much manual effort, then automating your lead-generation campaigns through cold emailing is the best way to do it. 

You have already seen how cold emailing can be an effective lead-generation strategy, and with Saleshandy, you can easily take it up a notch!

Here’s how Saleshandy can be your go-to solution for everything cold emailing.

• You can find verified prospects from a database of 700M+ prospects from 60M+ companies worldwide.
• You can create multiple automated cold email sequences with as many follow-ups as you want.
• You can easily personalize your emails for n-number of prospects. (Multiple personalize features)
• Easily scale your outreach and reach as many prospects as and when you want. (Add unlimited email accounts at no additional cost.)
• Invite as many team members as you want to manage your cold email strategy. (Unlimited team members at no extra cost.)
• Take advantage of multiple email deliverability features like Email Warmup, Sequence Score, etc., to make sure your email lands in the prospects’ inboxes.
• Track performance and manage replies from a centralized place – unified inbox.

2. Leadfeeder

Leadfeeder is a tool that every website should have. Especially if you are a startup or an agency that wants to get every possible lead you can squeeze out.

You can connect with your website’s visitors as Leedfeeder tracks every visitor of your website, pages they visit, and how they came across your site. You can then push these leads to your outreach list and move them into the sales funnel.

3. Google Ads

Google Ads is an amazing online advertising platform that helps you target your audience by showing ads across various ad types. Google Ads uses a pay-per-click (PPC) model, meaning you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. This ensures you’re only paying for results. The cost per click (CPC) varies based on criteria like keyword competition, ad quality, and bid amount.

4. Helpscout

Helpscout is a customer support software that helps website visitors get in touch with your support team seamlessly. 

You can create live chat beacons and embed it on your lead-magnet pages to make the lead generation process smoother.

Recap of Best Lead Generation Strategies for Startups!!!

That’s a wrap of our 12 best strategies and four tools that can help your startup generate high-quality leads. 

We know it’s quite a lot of information to take in, so here’s a quick run down of the best strategies so that you can find the best fit.

• Budget-friendly lead generation strategies with high returns
  • Cold emailing » Super affordable and gives fastest results (fully automated)
  • Attending networking events » Helps you build a network that can directly or indirectly help you get more leads
• Costly but amazing lead-generation strategies
  • Paid Ads » Money in – leads out. A simple yet effective strategy
  • SEO & Content Marketing » Takes time to give results, but it will give you leads consistently
• Best tool to automate lead generation
  • Saleshandy » One-time setup with minimal investment and high returns

FAQs

How much do you pay for lead generation?

If you choose the lowest investment channel (cold emailing), then lead generation should barely cost you $25 to get started.

How do startups generate leads?

Major startups generate leads via multi-channel marketing, which includes cold emailing, paid ads, social media marketing, and SEO.

Which is the fastest way to generate leads for startups?

The fastest way is to find prospects from a verified database like Saleshandy’s Leadfinder and push the prospects into your cold emailing sequence to generate leads on automation. 

Another way that can match cold emailing is cold calling, but it can be annoying to your prospects.

Which lead generation method gets the best ROI?

Cold emailing, by all means, gets the best ROI for lead generation.