What is B2B Leads Data? Examples, Datasets & Providers for Outreach

Types of B2B Leads Data

• Contact Data: Data on key decision-makers within companies, including names, job titles, email addresses, and phone numbers.
• Firmographic Data: Information on company size, revenue, number of employees, industry sector, and geographic location.
• Technographic Data: Insights into the technology stack and software tools used by potential clients, helping you tailor your sales pitch.
• Intent Data: Data indicating a company’s interest in specific products or services based on their online behavior and content consumption.

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How is B2B Leads Data Collected?

B2B leads can be gathered from a variety of sources. Some sources work better for some use cases than others; a lot of the time it depends on how far down the purchase funnel your prospect typically goes before deciding to buy. Here’s some of the many ways of discovering businesses which make for promising sales prospects:

Lead Capture Forms

Once you’ve drawn visitors onto your website, you can collect the information which will tell you how they got there, why, and how you can contact them in future using lead capture forms. You can offer visitors different incentives to fill in lead capture forms, like gated content or newsletter subscriptions. The more lead capture forms your visitors fill in, the greater your prospecting opportunities are.

Browser Cookies

Cookies can tell you a huge amount about a prospect’s intent based on each web page visit, such as the name of the site, products viewed, pages visited, across multiple visits to different webpages. They’re a precise way of ascertaining what prospects are engaging with and which strategies are most effective at converting leads into sales.

Social Media and Company Registries

Data providers have invested a lot into identifying ways to gather lead data at scale. One of these ways that has proven itself effective is web scraping. Data companies have technologies with which they are able to gather information from millions of social media updates and thousands of company registries. Often, these automated means of data collection offer the data provider the chance to bring recency to their datasets, because social media accounts and registers are updated so regularly.

Events

Leads can be collected offline at corporate events. Visitors representing different organizations can be asked to fill in contact pamphlets during registration or the event itself. Including questions about what the business intends to buy and who is responsible for making purchases will give you a selection of solid B2B leads.

Manual methods

Cold calling and direct outreach (via email) can be powerful methods of identifying potential leads.

However, while the information gained this way can be granular and extensive, gathering information in such a manner takes a lot of time and resources and so is not scalable for larger needs. That’s when a B2B leads list from a data provider comes into its own: it eliminates the hundreds of emails and phone calls needed to compile your own leads list.

How to Determine Lead Quality

61% of B2B marketers still send all B2B leads directly to sales teams. However, only 27% of them will be qualified for a sales call.

Given the sole purpose of a lead, which is to bring revenue to your business, the data you receive needs to meet the criteria which enables a sale. It’s no use having lots of leads if only a small fraction of them result in a sale.

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To determine B2B lead quality, we can refer to the BANT formula (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing) which sales teams use to qualify their leads:

• Budget: Are your services within the prospect’s price range?
• Authority: Does the contact have the decision-making power to purchase?
• Need: Does the prospect have a requirement or intent for your product/service?
• Timing: Is the prospect currently seeking a solution like yours?

You need to ensure that the B2B leads you receive from your data provider meet the BANT criteria for you to see immediate conversions and ROI. Don’t be fooled by lengthy B2B lead lists - scale doesn’t always equate to quality.

Leads Data Pricing

How B2B leads are priced depends entirely on how large a database you require, and the how highly-qualified the leads offered by the vendor are Remember, it’s always worth investing in quality insights over long lists of mediocre leads!

The pricing models offered by the vendor also vary, too. It’s best to contact them directly for a custom quote. Common pricing models offered by B2B lead providers include:

• Price-Per-Lead Agreements: Price per lead agreement models means the provider will charge you on a per lead basis. This model means you’re free to spread your resources and invest in leads from different B2B lead sources and track the results of each as your campaign develops.
• Subscription or Licensing: B2B leads lists can be bought on annual or monthly subscription plans, with the differentiating factor between packages being the number of users or the number of leads you can gain access to per month. The data can often be made available for you to download just minutes after purchasing. Also, after getting B2B leads API access, users are able to use the leads and accompanying data as per their needs.
• One-off Payments: Vendors can sell you a B2B leads list sufficient to your needs with no obligation to buy from them in future, and without tying you to a subscription. These one-off payments work well for young businesses, or for businesses with limited budgets.