Norman Platnick, who studied spiders, famously wrote:
“Wherever you sit as you read these lines, a spider is probably no more than a few yards away.”
It’s an alarming thought!
The good news is that something similar can be said about free leads - they’re all around you; you just have to know where to look.
In this blog, we reveal the rocks you can turn over and the flashlights you can use to easily find qualified leads without spending a dime.
And as for those spiders? Let’s just hope they stay outside! 🕷️
Here are the best places to find free leads online:
1. Try Cognism’s lead generation tool
Cognism is a B2B sales intelligence platform that provides accurate, compliant data to help businesses connect with their ideal leads.
The tool comes with various lead and company filters. Use them to build your ideal customer profile and find potential customers who match it.
For example, you can find the email addresses of CEOs working in companies in the DACH region that use Salesforce.
Take an interactive tour to see how it works 👇
Key features:
Cognism offers a free leads deal, which is a quick and easy way to get a list of free business leads from our B2B database.
But if you decide to go for a paid package, you’ll benefit from many great features:
- International coverage, including the best B2B data in EMEA.
- Phone-verified direct dials guaranteed to connect you with up to 87% of your list.
- Notified and compliant B2B email addresses in NAM, EMEA, and APAC.
- Fully compliant with global data laws, including GDPR and CCPA compliance.
- An AI Search feature that allows you to type (or speak!) your exact request, getting the results you need at lightning speed.
- Cognism Chrome Extension for easy access to B2B emails and mobile numbers on LinkedIn and company websites.
- Cognism Enrich for refreshing your CRM with high-quality B2B data.
- Includes consent-based intent data powered by industry leader Bombora.
- Includes sales trigger data for timely outreach.
- Easily integrates with sales tools and CRMs such as Salesforce, Outreach, HubSpot and Salesloft.
- Includes unrestricted access to person and company-level data (subject to fair use policy). With Cognism, you never need to worry about credit limits, geographical limits or other data access restrictions.
Pricing:
- Cognism offers bespoke pricing packages personalised to your business needs and workflows.
- It charges a flat platform access fee that covers data maintenance, set-up, onboarding, and 24-7 live chat support.
- All users get unrestricted access to Cognism’s data (subject to fair use policy).
- Integrations are included in every package.
- Contact Cognism for a quote.
What Cognism customers say:
Director of Marketing & Sales Development @Drift
2. Look in your CRM
Another great place to find sales leads for free is your CRM.
Mine it for churned former customers and potential buyers who made it far into the sales process but didn’t make a purchase.
These people showed interest in your offer once. Why not again?
Something could’ve changed on either end that now makes you two a perfect match. Some sales triggers you can look out for are:
- The target company got new funding.
- The former lead has moved into a decision-making role.
- The target company is expanding or relocating.
- You changed your pricing model.
- You added a new feature set that solves the lead’s pain point.
Our SDRs love this free lead generation method - all you have to do is run a “Closed/Lost Accounts” report.
It will show you accounts that entered the sales cycle but later dropped out. Filter the report to exclude any failed deals in the past year or quarter.
With this list, you can then cold call the decision-makers associated with the accounts. Make sure your phone number list is up to date - Cognism can help you here!
Use a cold calling script or the notes in your CRM to engage the dead lead. Ask them why they chose not to go through with the purchase.
For example, you might say:
“I see in our notes that you wanted X functionality, which we sadly didn’t support back then. I wanted to let you know that now we do, and it’s incredible, etc.”
Of course, your strategy to re-engage churned customers and win free leads can be more complex than this.
You might need to use a sales cadence, which involves cold emails, social media posts, and other outreach methods.
3. Target additional departments in your accounts
For all you know, high-quality leads are sitting there across the aisle from your current users.
Perhaps you sold to the VP of Sales but not the VP of Marketing, who would also find value in your solution.
To build a free business leads database, sell your solution to other departments in your key accounts that would also benefit from your product or service.
One way to do this is to ask your current customer for an intro to the head honcho of the other department you want to target.
You might have to persuade this person a bit before they agree to make the introduction. Many professionals want to avoid bothering their colleagues unless it’s for a great reason, like a cute photo of their new dog!
Joking aside, when talking with your customer, come prepared with 2-3 solid reasons why you think the other business team would get value from your solution.
If the customer adores your product, they might take the reins and convince the other department to adopt it, calling you in at the end to seal the deal.
This can be a time-consuming way of turning leads into clients, though! There’s an easier way:
With Cognism's contact database, you can set up seniority and department filters, find decision-makers in other teams, and start the conversations much quicker.
4. Cold call the company
Cold calling is an efficient way to get free leads.
If you’ve got a list of CEO phone numbers (from tools like Cognism, say!), all you need to do is call and roll out your sales pitch.
It’s an underrated lead gen strategy; did you know that 54% of technology leads and 57% of VP buyers across all industries prefer to be contacted by phone?
You might encounter a gatekeeper when you call your decision-maker (typically a PA or secretary). But there are several strategies for getting past gatekeepers.
They can also help you out - if you’re unsure who the decision-maker is, they can give you their name. You can then use the information to find them on LinkedIn without spending a penny.
5. Research LinkedIn
LinkedIn prospecting is another great way to gather free business leads.
Through InMail messaging, you can reach out to professionals in your target accounts directly on the platform.
Search your current ideal lead’s connections to find their peers who might have similar needs. Like this:
- If your best customer is a finance industry CMO, go to their LinkedIn profile’s connections page.
- Use LinkedIn’s filtering options (location, industry, past company etc.) to narrow down the list until it displays only the people who most resemble your target customer.
Another way to get free sales leads from LinkedIn is to steal your competitors’ audience. You can do this by extracting competitors’ post commenters or their event attendees.
If you’re attending a LinkedIn Event, you can privately message any of the other attendees to have one-on-one conversations, even if you aren’t connected to them.
After that, research each person’s profile, adding only the highest quality leads to your list.
6. Try email signature marketing
Email signature banners can be great lead magnets. You can use them to promote offers, webinars, free trials or time-sensitive deals.
It’s a quick and easy way to grab some free leads for your business. Here’s a great email signature example:
You can also generate free leads by linking to promotional materials that your target audience will find valuable (such as eBooks or whitepapers). The hope is that recipients will click on the lead magnet and give you their contact details in return for a download.
Promotional email signatures aren’t restricted to salespeople. Marketers, C-suite execs, and product team members can also decorate their signatures with personalised sales content. This way, each email exchange becomes a sales opportunity.
Use email signature software like Mailtastic to manage company-wide email signatures from one centralised online platform. The software makes it easy to create banners, icons, and buttons for your email signature.
Try Mailtastic’s free trial (no credit card required!).
7. Build a personal brand online
One of the best ways for B2B salespeople to get free leads online is to build a personal brand, especially on social media networks like LinkedIn. There simply isn’t a better way to generate inbound leads for free!
When you regularly publish posts and share articles about industry-related topics, people start to think of you as an expert. That means they’ll proactively reach out to you if they have an issue related to your area of expertise.
When they reach out, you can help them and demonstrate how your product or service solves their problem.
You can also build personal brands around VIPs in your company, such as your CMO. This helps to generate demand for your product or service.
8. Increase your visibility with business directories
To get free leads for small businesses, set up a profile in business directories and let customers find you. For example, setting up your business listing on Yelp only takes a few minutes.
Yelp is a popular place where people find businesses, especially restaurants and services. According to their data, 83% of their users have purchased or hired from a business they found on Yelp.
You can also use business directories in reverse, to find target companies and their contact information.
Another method is to browse competitor reviews and identify people leaving poor reviews.
These unhappy customers can become your leads without investing much money, provided their criticisms were justified. Avoid the ones who seem impossible to please. They might just leave a bad review for your business, too!
9. Set up your business profile on review pages
Buyers nowadays do their own research long before they speak to salespeople. They find product reviews more trustworthy.
If you want to get free business leads, create accounts on review sites that your target audience uses to evaluate products or services like yours.
When people look up your business online and see your positive reviews, they’ll be more likely to contact your sales team.
There are industry-specific review sites; a tech company would want to set up a business profile on G2 or SoftwareAdvice.com.
Google is a good all-rounder for assessing businesses across all industries. Creating a Business Profile on Google is probably the best way for local businesses to generate free leads. After setting it up, customers can leave reviews, upload photos, and share their experiences with your business.
Comparing Yelp vs Google reviews can provide insights into which platform may benefit your business type, helping you optimise your online presence.
10. Answer questions on Quora and Reddit
Engaging with your audience in relevant subreddits is an underused way to find free leads.
The best method is to find niche-related questions from Reddit or Quora users that you can authoritatively answer.
The better your answer, the more people will upvote it, and the more exposure it and your company will get on the subreddit.
For example, let’s say you were selling copywriting services. It would be a good idea to answer this question on Quora:
Many people looking to hire copywriters will visit this page and see your response.
To turn visitors into inbound leads for free, put a call-to-action at the bottom of your answer, telling them to visit your website to learn more.
11. In-person networking
Networking is a wonderful way to find free leads, keep up with your industry, and build relationships with potential buyers.
Even if you fail to find any potential leads at a networking event, you’ll likely meet other people who are willing to introduce you to some.
It’s common to hear things like:
“You know, my buddy has been looking for a new {your product type} for some time now. You should give him a call.”
Industry-related events, such as meetups, conferences, and trade shows, will attract the most leads.
However, don’t discount local networking groups, online communities, LinkedIn groups, or Slack channels. These are all worthwhile places to look for free leads.
12. Install a chatbot on your website
Another free way of generating leads online is to add live chat or AI chatbots to your website. They help you spark conversations with people browsing your site, turning them into warm leads.
Usually, companies use a chatbot as a sort of greeter. Through pre-set questions and automated responses, the chatbot qualifies visitors:
When the visitor is qualified, the chatbot alerts the right person on the sales team to take over the conversation.
You can place these chatbots or live chat windows anywhere on your website. You can also customise the chatbot interactions based on the pages users visit.
For example:
The chatbot can ask visitors to the pricing page if they need help choosing a plan or if they’re ready for a demo.
Free leads FAQs
How to get sales leads for free?
The most efficient methods to get free sales leads are:
- Using lead generation platforms like Cognism.
- Mining your CRM for churned customers and late-stage closed/lost prospects.
- Building a personal brand on LinkedIn.
- Networking at industry events.
The leads you generate from these methods are free and usually highly qualified for your product or service.
What are the pros and cons of free leads?
Below are some things to remember when deciding how much you want to rely on free leads versus paid-for ones.
Pros
- Free inbound leads can sometimes become the best customers.
- Free lead generation methods suit small businesses on a tight budget.
- Many free methods also nurture leads simultaneously.
Cons
- Not all free leads you find online will be great matches for your brand.
- Relying too much on getting leads for free can delay your company’s growth.
- Creating free lead lists is more time-consuming than using paid methods.
- It can be tricky to find accurate contact info for free leads.
Are paid leads worth it?
Yes, paid leads are worth it - as long as they’re high-quality, well-targeted, and aligned with your ideal customer profile.
Work with reputable B2B data providers like Cognism to source quality paid leads.
Where can I get paid leads?
You can buy paid leads from several sources, but the quality varies depending on the provider and your specific needs.
Research Cognism and its competitors to help you make an informed choice.
Where is the best place to get leads?
You’ve come here looking for free leads - Cognism’s got you covered!
Click below to get free leads fresh from the Cognism database 👇
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