20 Places to Research a Prospect List for Cold Outreach

When businesses work towards gaining target auditory and building a prospect list they often consider doing outbound marketing, the traditional, tried, and tested method of marketing. Cold outreach is an example of this marketing strategy.

Cold outreach involves building a prospect list of potential clients using a specific template to draw upon a vast market. It is considered a budget-friendly and effective way of driving more customers into your business.

Traditionally, cold outreach involves calling people to ask them if they would be interested to purchase your products. However, more recently, companies have started using emails and social media to reach out to their prospect list. It is deemed more effective to use the Triple Touch Approach in cold outreach – using phone, emails, and social media – to reach out to more business prospect lists and draw more sales.

With that said, having a well-defined prospecting process is vital to succeeding in your cold outreach. Without such, you will be limited to sending cold emails to contacts who might not have any interest in your products and therefore have no reason to engage. This is why you should have a thorough understanding of who your prospects are. You have to know what they do, what challenges they face, and how you can help them. This will help you create a highly-targeted and data-driven target list.

If you are now on to building a B2B prospect list for your company, here are 20 places where you can research.

1. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is considered a gold mine for prospect list research. Thus, it is one of the most popular and commonly used platforms for professional and business networking. LinkedIn allows you to find your prospect clients and check out various aspects of their profiles, including:
● Current job experience – most people include their primary job duties and major projects they have undertaken in their profile. This can help you know what falls under their domain and what doesn’t.
● Previous job experience – With this information, you can customize your emails based on their career history.
● Shared connections – If you have a common connection with your prospect, make sure to bring it up during your communication. This could be an opportunity to build a referral.
● Recent activity – You can take a look at what your prospects have recently shared and where.

2. AngelList
Angel List is another popular site to search for B2B contacts. Here you will find profiles of companies and people all in one place. One of the advantages of this website is that startups describe themselves in their profiles. Thus, you can have a view of their actual words and perspectives. The site also allows you to filter by investment stage, allowing you to have an insight on financial factors to group your prospects by.

3. Buyer’s Facebook Profile
Facebook, being one of the biggest social media networks, is one great place to check out your prospective buyer’s personal tidbits and social network. This is also a good place to find out whether you have any mutual friends.

4. Buyer’s Twitter Account
Twitter is another great place to see what your prospects are interested in. If your prospect has a Twitter account, it is worth checking out their page to see a handful of information about what they were sharing and find out any major trends in their interest.

5. Buyer’s Instagram Account
Some small businesses start on Instagram. Using Instagram is an effective avenue to magnetically attract your ideal prospects. Check out your buyer’s Instagram profile and find out what they love and care about. Take time to consider what your customers think through the posts that they share on the platform.

6. ProductHunt
ProductHunt is a great platform to use if you want to find B2B leads. It allows you to filter information by various categories and topics. You can also see discussions that could help you gain perspective of what your prospects want and need.

7. Yelp
Yelp is a very helpful place to search whether your prospects work directly with consumers. This site will help you learn more about the company’s strengths and weak points through reading customer reviews.

8. Quora
You can use Quora to build an understanding of what your prospect wants to learn. You can do this by going through questions which they have recently posted on the site. This will help you come up with some useful tips to share with your prospects.

9. Glassdoor
A company’s Glassdoor page contains some important information that could help you understand their culture. The site will also tell you what jobs the company is recruiting for. If they are looking for employees in a division which relates to your business, then that could be a good sign for you.

10. The Company’s Financial Statements
If your prospect is working for a public company, it would probably be a good idea to check out their recent financial reports. This will allow you to have an idea about the company’s performance.
MapAnything Data identifies your ideal prospects by using location coordinates to search for prospects in close proximity to your existing customers. The site allows you to create campaigns, events, and more.

11. GetApp
GetApp is a place where you can find analytical data, research, verified user feedback, current trends that can help you build your highly targeted prospect list. It provides users with the tools they need to make informed decisions for their companies.

12. Crunchbase
Crunchbase is a well-known platform for finding information about the business activities of companies, both private and public. With Crunchbase you can track company investments, financing rounds, the chronology of events, news, mergers and acquisitions, activities of investors, competitors, customers, partners, as well as your prospect’s acquisition history.

13. XING
Xing is a German business-oriented social network like Linkedin. Thanks to Xing you can easily find and establish business and personal contacts. Also, you can find a job in a company that ideally suits your expectations, and will bring great prospects for your development

14. Clutch
It is also very important to mention the leading platform of reviews and ratings in such areas as marketing, business, and IT. At Clutch you can discover interesting industry trends, get acquainted with the ideas and professional opinions of specialists, as well as find unbiased reviews about companies.

15. GoodFirms
If you are looking for services, want to buy software, or want to develop prospect lists, at GoodFirms you can find and choose the best software or company that will meet your requirements. At the same time, this resource helps software vendors and IT companies increase their own statistics and brand awareness. Therefore, everyone is satisfied.

16. Google map
Google map is research by location. You can find firms located around your office, street, city, country. A lot of them are not registered on LinkedIn, so it’s a good research source for your niche.

17. Similarweb
SimilarWeb is a website among which you can get detailed information about the traffic of other sites. Using the tools it provides, you can rank representatives in each business sector. Based on website analytics from SimilarWeb, you can find ways to promote low-performing companies to the top. These companies can be used to compile a prospect list if you provide marketing services.

18. Appfigures
Appfigures is a platform with all the necessary business information and statistics for mobile application developers. Here you can find information about advertising, reviews around the world, and the sales history of your applications. With this platform, you can also get the most complete overview of your app downloads and revenue to easily detect and analyze changes and assess your prospects.

19. Thomasnet
Thomasnet is an online platform that allows you to find suppliers of goods and services for businesses in the United States and Canada. You can create a sales prospect list with the companies that post information about themselves on this website. The Company Profile contains information about: capabilities, detailed product specs, ownership, quality certificates, contacts, and much more.

20. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a popular SEO tool that you can use to improve your position in Google search. Here you can find options for analyzing competitors, researching keywords, building links, tracking rankings, and auditing the site. You can also use Ahrefs to find content that is highly effective and engaging according to your list of prospects.

Each of these platforms is useful for a certain group of niches. To save your time and effort, entrust this search process to us and we will find the resource and the contacts that will bring the best results.