WebFx defines itself as a full-service digital marketing agency. They provide several digital marketing services to help businesses grow their online presence and generate leads. 

They offer all types of digital marketing services, including website design and development, search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, social media marketing, email marketing, and content marketing. 

The company is basically a team of highly-experienced marketing professionals who are experts in digital marketing and have the necessary tools to get the job done and get you the best results. 

They have a track record of success (with all the necessary awards, reviews, and testimonials to prove it) in helping businesses of all sizes and industries grow their online presence and generate leads.

But we don’t believe WebFx is the best-fit company you should work with if your sole goal is to hire for lead generation and appointment-setting services. First, we will tell you why we think so; then, we will share the five best WebFx alternatives you can hire for your lead gen needs. 

Why WebFx is not the best choice for lead generation and appointment setting services

Don’t get us wrong. WebFx is indeed a terrific marketing service company. We only believe that their services are not best suited for you if you need lead generation and appointment setting services, and here are the reasons we think so. 

Reason 1: Non-fitting services for lead generation and appointment setting needs

According to the website, WebFx primarily relies on search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, social media marketing, email marketing, and content marketing to generate leads for their clients. 

Although they’re excellent at their services, they may not be fit for your business. If you are looking for a company to help you with lead generation and appointment-setting services, here is what this basically means:

• You want meetings for your sales team, fast.
• You are not growing at the rate you wish and are looking for a way to fill your sales pipeline with qualified leads.
• You are looking for a team of experts who will go after your ICP and bring you hot leads without breaking the bank.

And these are the very reasons WebFx might not be the right fit for you. 

• You may not have the budget to invest in PPC and social media advertising or business to business social media marketing services. 
• SEO strategy and content marketing take a lot of long-term investments in educational marketing materials and time to yield substantial results; you may not have that much money and time to wait for search engines to pick up. 
• Email marketing services implies that you must have an email list before they can do the work for you. Plus, their service is more about coding and sending emails than it is about creating email copies and sending out campaigns. 
• Even the ABM service, which seems interesting, they still reach out to people by way of PPC and social media advertising — requiring a strong budget and lots of investments on your part.

When hiring for a lead gen or appointment setting, you want a company that will be proactive, reach out to people, and bring results instead of waiting for people to take the first step toward your company. 

You need a company that’ll build an ICP list based on people with pain points your product or service can solve, then reach out to them with personalized messages, find those with genuine interest in your product and bring them closer to your company or book a meeting with them. 

Because of this, the typical lead generation strategy for most service providers is to build a list, create personalized messages, reach out to the people, and bring you leads. 

The idea is that your company should be forth-going and reach out to people instead of waiting for leads to come to you. 

That’s basically an outbound lead generation strategy, but most of what WebFx offers is only inbound marketing, which is basically a strategy where you create marketing materials, advertise them, and hope for interested people to click — and that’s why we believe they might not be a fit for you. 

Reason 2: Highly-priced services with no specifications as to what results you’ll get

If you are hiring a company for lead generation services, you need to be sure of the number of leads you’ll be getting at the end of the month. 

You need a service that guarantees a steady stream of leads for your business and does so at a reasonable cost that your startup or small business can afford. 

Well, buckle up. 

WebFx’s services are highly-priced, all above the industry average, and you’ll have to make an initial investment before you get started. Here are two pricing of their services, for example — from their website. 

The email marketing pricing: 

The SEO service pricing:

Can you afford it?

Though, it’s fair to mention that their services do involve a marketing cloud tool from which you get a 360° view and manage everything. As well, they also have several other internal marketing tools they employ for the service they render their customers. 

But still, these prices are out of the league of the average businesses, and they are not specific as to how many leads you will get or the number of appointments they will set up for you. In other words, you’ll have to invest and sit back without being clear on what you get for your $$$.

Why Nerdy Joe is your best alternative to WebFx for lead generation and appointment services

Nerdy Joe exclusively provides B2B digital marketing services focused on email marketing and outbound B2B lead generation through cold emailing. 

Our shared goal with WebFx is to assist you in connecting with potential customers, generating sales-qualified leads, and scheduling appointments. 

However, at Nerdy Joe, we recognize the challenges faced by small businesses and large enterprises seeking to enhance their sales activities. 

Establishing a reliable process for active lead generation and customer acquisition is often a struggle, which can impede the productivity of sales teams. 

Also, salespeople in startups and small businesses are typically responsible for prospecting, researching, and reaching out to potential customers, consuming a significant chunk out of their time. 

This leaves them with only 12% of their time available for making calls, which is not an optimal use of their time. We take on the lead generation responsibility, freeing up time for salespeople to concentrate on their core strengths of in-person selling and closing deals. 

Here is why you should consider us over WebFx when it comes to lead generation and appointment setting service. 

You get a targeted approach with personalized outreach messages 

At Nerdy Joe, our lead generation outreach strategy allows us to target specific companies or individuals that fit your ideal customer profile. 

The thing is that with inbound marketing strategies like the ones WebFx relies upon, although you can have a general idea of the audience you are targeting, you can’t get really specific as to who you will be targeting. 

It’s essentially creating content for a general audience and leaving it up to the most interested individuals to come to you. This makes it impossible for you to target people individually, learn about their needs and address them properly, which is mandatory for acquiring quality leads. 

As well, leads generated like this will be the hardest to convert and will need a lot of educational materials to get there, which is not ideal because if you are hiring lead gen services, it means you want to fill your sales pipeline with sales-qualified leads and grow fast.

So, at Nerdy Joe, we prone an outbound lead generation strategy that involves researching and identifying your IDC profile, building a short list of potential prospects, and then reaching out to them directly with a personalized message that addresses their specific needs.

Researching and targeting short lists of ICP

We are very specific in who we target for you. And for it to yield results, the most significant part of the work is to spend time manually researching your ICP and building a list. 

Our ideal scenario is that we send 20 emails, get 15 replies, 10 positives, and get you 4 sales-qualified leads, meetings, or sign-ups.

For example, when you sign up with us, we ask you meaningful questions that tell us exactly who your customers should be. Here are some of the questions we ask:

• Why did you start your company? 
• What pain points were you trying to solve?
• What are the top 3 objections you hear from prospective clients during sales calls?
• Which type of clients have the highest lifetime value?
• Which type of clients is easiest to close?
• Which type of clients churns the fastest?
• Etc.

Your answers to the questions we ask provide us with all the information we need to build a profile of who we should target and why. This is how specific this allows us to get:

“Our ICP is a VP of Sales at a b2b software company selling to HR professionals, and his main pain points are lack of organization, time management, and team collaboration. He often refers to XYZ podcasts to get insights as to how to manage his team efficiently.” 

The next step is creating highly personalized emails, and here is how we do it. 

Creating individually personalized emails and messages

Upon building our short list of individuals and companies to target, the next step is to research each prospect individually and collect data points to create personalized cold emails or messages that stand out and make them love you. 

The goal is to make each recipient feel like you know them personally and get them to take you seriously. Even if they don’t sign up for our offer, we still want them to give you a pleasant response — at the very least, a reluctant pass. 

It requires learning about each prospect or individual included on our lists individually and creating unique, separate emails for each one instead of relying on a single person-based email template. 

To achieve this, here is how we proceed to learn about each individual. 

• We listen to podcasts they have been on.
• We read blog posts they wrote. 
• We read their LinkedIn, Twitter, and Mastodon posts.
• We read discussions on forums they’re in.

Outbound lead generation allows you to personalize your message to each prospect. You can use information you have gathered about their company or their specific needs to tailor your approach, which can increase the chances of success.

You get a direct outreach to prospects, ensuring faster results

As we explained earlier, most of WebFx’s lead generation strategies are not designed to deliver leads fast. Inbound marketing is a long-term game and requires a lot of investments to make it happen to success; you may not have that luxury. 

• Getting substantial results from PPC campaigns takes a minimum of 3 to 9 months. You may not have the budget to sustain PPC and social media advertising for this long. 
• SEO and content marketing take a lot of long-term investments in educational marketing materials and time to yield substantial results; you may not have that. 
• Email marketing implies that you must have an email list before they can start doing the work for you. It will be more about educating the subscribers than being hands-on in generating leads. Plus, their service is more about coding and sending emails than creating email copies and campaigns. 
• ABM implies direct outreach to prospects, but WebFx still reaches out to people through PPC and social media advertising — requiring a strong budget and lots of investments on your part.

These will only make sense to you based on your needs with lead generation. 

But from our experience, a company that hires for lead generation or appointment-setting services is simply not growing at the rate it wishes and is looking for a company that can guarantee a steady stream of qualified leads to help them grow. 

You probably don’t have months to wait for your first results or a huge budget to sustain investments without immediate results. 

At Nerdy Joe, we reach out directly to prospects, generate leads more quickly, and move them through the sales funnel faster. Working with us means that you’ll be getting results from the first month. 

As you can see from our targeted approach and the time we invest in crafting personalized emails and messages, we optimize everything for the best outcome for your business.

You have greater control, more control over lead volume

With our outbound lead generation strategy, we can adjust our outreach efforts to generate the desired volume of leads. This can be particularly useful if you have a specific sales goal or limited capacity to handle a large volume of leads.

For example, suppose you are a small business with limited resources. In that case, you may want to generate a smaller volume of high-quality leads that are more likely to convert into customers. Alternatively, if you are a larger business with more resources, you may want to generate a larger volume of leads to maximize your sales opportunities. 

In contrast, WebFx mainly relies on attracting potential customers to your business through marketing efforts instead of reaching out to them, which can be less predictable in terms of lead volume. Imagine what would happen if you were getting more leads than your sales team could handle.

You get a better ROI, flat rate pricing with detailed expectations

As you have seen earlier, it requires a significant investment in content creation and SEO efforts. PPC and social media marketing will also burn a hole in your pocket as well. Our cold email lead generation, on the other hand, is more cost-effective and produces faster results.

We require no initial investments or contracts. Yes, we won’t lock you up in retainer contracts while we test things, and you pay us and get nothing to show for it. Working with us means that we will start bringing you results from the first month — and we have a refund policy.

As a cherry on top, we charge you based on the results we will bring to your business, not based on the amount of work or the number of people we reach out to on your behalf. This way, you can see immediately what to expect from our service. 

We offer a flat fee for a specific number of leads or appointments booked for you and keep it all transparent on our site. 

• Silver: It costs $499/month and only gives you two warm LEAD.
• Gold: This is the plan we recommend, as it gives you the biggest bang for your buck. It costs $999/month and gives you six hot and sales-qualified appointments or LEADS.
• Platinum: This plan is for mid-level to enterprise companies willing to fuel their sales team with up to 15 sales-ready leads on a monthly basis.

What’s interesting with us is that you know the results you’re getting upfront and know exactly how much you’ll have to pay for it. 

5 WebFx alternatives and competitors for lead generation and appointment setting

Here are five other WebFx alternatives you may consider for lead generation and appointment setting services.

1. CallBox

CallBox is a reputable company that provides top-notch lead generation and appointment setting services. 

While they also offer other services beyond lead generation, their primary objective is to assist you in generating more leads and boosting sales without enduring the tedious process involved.

To achieve this goal, CallBox primarily relies on cold emailing and cold calling as its primary outreach channels. They utilize a blend of manual research and cutting-edge technology to build targeted prospect lists for campaigns. 

Plus, they provide database profiling services that help businesses enhance their targeting strategies. It’s worth noting that Callbox does not disclose any pricing information on their website. Ergo, you need to contact them directly.

Though we’ve found that the company offers pay-per-lead and monthly subscription pricing models, with pricing determined by the number of leads generated. 

However, a review article on the Martal Group website reports that Callbox’s services cost some clients between $4,300 and $5,300 per month, with more extensive projects costing up to $15,000 monthly. 

This is a steep price for most businesses on a tight budget, and there is no guarantee that every appointment they generate will translate into a sale.

2. Cience

Cience is one of the household names in lead generation and appointment setting, which qualifies them as one of the best alternatives for WebFx’s lead generation services. 

And unlike WebFx, Ciene specializes in lead generation and appointment setting, focusing on outbound email and phone outreach. And like WebFx, they also offer you the sales intelligence tools and team you need for your lead generation service.

Some of their latest sales intelligence tools include programmatic ads tools, chatbot software, appointment setting tools, real-time chat, marketing platforms, CRMs, and project management tools.

Unlike Nerdy Joe’s subscription plan, Cience requires a minimum of a 6-months contract before you start working together. That’s a six-month investment whether you get results or not. 

This type of contract gives them time to try and test things, but it doesn’t really guarantee an ROI for you. It also means that you won’t be able to scale down, should you need to.  

Also, their website has no pricing details, but you can request a quote from their SDR. But you can expect a fixed monthly fee for their services, with pricing based on the people and tools you require from them.

3. The Martal Group

The Martal Group focuses on generating leads for tech companies in the IT, SaaS, and telecom industries. They also have a data intelligence platform with a curated database of 100 million contacts. 

Contrary to WebFx, their B2B lead generation and appointment setting services combine LinkedIn, Email, and Phone for outreach. They also provide you with weekly customized lists of pre-qualified leads for your sales teams.

The Martal Group works with a monthly flat fee after the 3-month Pilot Campaign, and businesses need to speak to the sales team to get a quote. 

4. Belkins.io

Belkins.io is another household name in lead generation and appointment. We believe they are one of the best WebFx competitors in terms of lead generation and appointment setting services as they combine both inbound and outbound outreach in their targeting approach. 

Belkins.io offers a wider range of services, including lead research with prospecting tools, email nurturing campaigns, B2B appointment setting, and copywriting services. They specifically target SMBs and startups struggling with consistent client connections.

Belkins.io also offers a flat-rate pricing model, but they base it on the number of leads they reach out to, making it easier to budget and plan for the cost of their services. 

5. Cleverly

Cleverly is also a lead generation and appointment setting company that caters to small businesses and startups. This is the perfect WebFx alternative if you want a company specializing in LinkedIn lead generation. 

Cleverly offers a fully managed service for LinkedIn, including profile optimization, targeted messaging, content creation, lead generation, and more. They focus exclusively on LinkedIn as their outreach channel. Though, their service stretches over the mere lead gen. 

Cleverly also operates with a flat-rate pricing model. And like Belkins, they base it on the number of leads generated. So, basically, you get a flat fee for everything they do, and the prices are relatively low, making it affordable for small businesses and startups. 

They offer three pricing plans based on the number of leads per month. Here they are: 

Let Nerdy Joe do appointment setting and lead generation for your business.

There you have it. Every company on this list offers you an excellent alternative to WebFX’s lead generation and appointment-setting services. They are all equipped to help businesses connect with potential customers, grow their sales pipeline and take their digital marketing efforts to the next level. 

However, you want to go for a company that:

• uses a proactive approach and does wait for people to come to you,
• is specific in who they target,
• takes a more personalized approach, 
• doesn’t buy or scrap lists, 
• asks you meaningful questions to build a representative picture of the ideal customer profile and uses a unique targeting approach 

— that’s us. 

We believe heavily in research prospects and creating email copies that make an impact. 

We take the time to understand your business’s ideal customer and tailor our approach to each individual. And we are able to offer you high-quality leads that are more likely to convert into sales. 

So, if you’re looking for a personalized and effective lead generation and appointment-setting service, Nerdy Joe is the best alternative to WebFx. 

Our approach to targeting is more accurate, and our focus on quality over quantity ensures that you get the most out of your investment.