Lead Forensics Reviews – The Pros and the Cons

Scenarios and reviews showing which types of businesses WOULD benefit from Lead Forensics

Reviews focused on Lead Forensics sales practices

Reviews focused on Lead Forensics staffing challenges

We have also included a section that focuses on how Lead Forensics damages business.

Scenarios and reviews showing which types of businesses WOULD benefit from Lead Forensics

First of all, you would be mad to base a buying decision on what you can see about Lead Forensics reviews in the public domain.

What you see can be very deceptive.

Taking Trustpilot as an example, here’s how Lead Forensics appear in Google results:

3.8 out of 5 stars looks OK until you look at the view of 25% bad reviews when you click through …

So you start browsing through those reviews (from most recent going backwards) and what you’ll find is loads of 5 or 4 star reviews, but you’re thinking: “hang on, 25% reviewed Lead Forensics as bad – where are THOSE reviews?”.

You’ll find them as you scroll further down, but they are swamped by good reviews.  The deeper you look, the more negative reviews you find.

And here’s the really interesting part: you can’t trust Trustpilot, because the reviewed business (Lead Forensics in this case) is able to engineer what types of reviews are allowed to stay live.   There is a brilliant article that you can see here from Richman SEO Training  and you should particularly look at the sections on:

• Review Gating
• Review Flagging.

If that doesn’t open your eyes up to how reviews can be manipulated, then nothing will!

However, there are some review sites that haven’t been influenced to kill negative reviews.   https://www.reviews.co.uk/company-reviews/store/leadforensics has many warnings from people who were sold Lead Forensics and then regretted it, as this example shows:

Where Lead Forensics does work for businesses

Putting aside it being difficult to trust customer reviews, there are actually some scenarios where Lead Forensics really can be beneficial for a business.

But very few businesses will fall into this category.

The Lead Forensics system is certainly really slick and has some great functionality that can be utilised by sales staff within organisations.  So, although you can’t always trust online reviews, there are some that look like those customers have genuinely benefited from the relationship, as you can see from these examples below …

However, those reviewers (and many others) may not actually realise how much business they’re losing, while they’re loving Lead Forensics.

Here’s why (while moving onto examples where Lead Forensics CAN potentially be a great part of the ‘website success’ mix) …

The Lead Forensics product will show identifiable companies that visited a website.  It will also make it easy for businesses to utilise that awareness and sometimes successfully bridge the gap between a company name and a person that becomes a potential customer.

Lead Forensics (or any IP tracking tool) will be able to identify anywhere from 10-30% of all visitors as being linked to a specific company name.

This means that 70-90% can’t be identified, but they could still be ‘company people’ visiting a website – they just can’t be identified by their IP address because:

1. Their normal work location can’t be tracked by IP address (e.g. an engineering firm that is just ‘seen’ as the BT connection they use).
2. They may be on a device (including mobile devices) that aren’t connected to their company network, OR they are travelling/working from a different location (e.g. at home, something that has increased hugely since Coronavirus hit the world in 2020).

Unfortunately, Lead Forensics convince people that they can identify all companies that visit a website.

They just can’t and it can be easily proven if you follow the guidance from our page here.

The reviewers are blinkered

We investigated many of those people who gave Lead Forensics positive reviews online.  Many of them portrayed themselves as being experts in website success.

They’re not.

At best, they’re uninformed.

At worst, they’re stupid.

We looked at their websites and found gaping great holes in their online presence, that would be losing them business from their website visitors.

We saw repeated examples of this which would be happening with those businesses:

1. People from companies visit their website.
2. Some of those (10-30%) would be identifiable and could be followed up with (using Lead Forensics or another product).
3. Many other people from companies could not be identified and wouldn’t engage with the website enough because the website wasn’t strong enough.

In many cases, those businesses would have been following up on companies that in reality, should have had enough reasons to make contact with them in the first place (but were let down by weaknesses in the website).

There is only one scenario where the price and contract of Lead Forensics can be justified …

Getting true success from an online presence

Lead Forensics (or similar products) should be treated as a mopping up tool.

It’s job is there to pick up on companies that visited, but haven’t made contact (the majority of which haven’t made contact because they didn’t find enough to inspire them to make contact).

If used as a mopping up tool in combination with other activities, Lead Forensics can be considered to be valuable.

Here’s how that should work (but doesn’t in the vast majority of companies) …

1. The company chooses a product or service that’s offered within their website.
2. They analyse in depth (A1WebStats is the only product that does this) relevant visitors to that part of the website. For example, only visitors from certain countries.
3. They compare those relevant visitors to the actual numbers of enquiries they gained about that product or service.
4. They decide whether that’s an acceptable level of enquiries. Normally it’s very unacceptable.
5. They use Lead Forensics (or similar) to reach out to the identifiable companies that got to that part of their website.
6. They then think about the overall picture – all those who couldn’t be identified (but were often likely to be ‘company people’), and what they need to do with their website to encourage more future visitors to actively make contact with them.

Why don’t people do the above?

Three reasons:

1. Lack of awareness that such things are more beneficial.
2. It’s perceived to be easier to chase companies that visited, than it is to create more reasons for those companies to make contact.
3. Management is blissfully unaware that they are losing so many potential enquiries and sales, and so don’t challenge their staff to be better than what they are.

To summarise this part of the page

If a business is obsessively focused on getting the maximum results from website visitors …

… regardless of whether they are identifiable as companies or not …

… then a product such as Lead Forensics can be a valuable add-on that will help mop up those companies who didn’t find enough reason to get in contact.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of businesses are nowhere near that level of strength and will use Lead Forensics as a sticking plaster that doesn’t solve the real problem – a website that doesn’t convert well enough.

If you’re reading this, thinking that your website is strong enough, and you could benefit from Lead Forensics, then please do contact us with your details – it’s extremely likely that we’ll show you where the holes are in your website, which may make you rethink about whether Lead Forensics is actually the answer you need at the moment.

 

Reviews focused on Lead Forensics sales practices

The most negative Lead Forensics reviews of all are those that refer to their sales practices.

What’s important to remember is that their sales culture means that they will do anything to get a sale, regardless of whether the customer benefits.

Once they get a sale, the customer is locked into a 12 month contract at a price that varies depending on how much the sales person thinks they can get out of the deal.

The lowest prices tend to be around £150 per month.

We’ve had communication from people that were quoted ridiculous prices for their websites that had relatively low levels of visitors.   We’ve also spoken with people who got locked into contracts, realised the product wasn’t benefiting them, and found themselves £hundreds a month worse off as a result – money that could have been better utilised elsewhere.

Lead Forensics trade off businesses thinking that it’s some sort of magic that they can see the names of companies that visited their website.

It’s not magic, and it’s not perfect, and even though we (A1WebStats) do offer companies identification as part of our system, we very much make it clear that it’s not the definitive solution to website success.

We’re not going to clog this page with reviews of their sales practices, as we cover that on this page, but you can go to any of these review websites, filter by low star reviews, and you’ll see what reviewers think about their sales tactics:

https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.leadforensics.com

https://www.g2.com/products/lead-forensics/reviews

https://www.trustradius.com/products/lead-forensics/reviews

https://www.reviews.co.uk/company-reviews/store/leadforensics

One thing that Lead Forensics are very active on (apart from pushy sales) is in trying to suppress negative reviews about them, including reviews related to their sales tactics and the people annoyed with what the product failed to achieve for them.

Here’s what happens:

1. People post negative reviews.
2. Lead Forensics find various reasons to get those reviews removed (they use every angle they can).
3. Most of those reviewers give up at that point, meaning that tons of negative reviews aren’t live for long.
4. Some of those reviewers have the persistence to ensure that their review lives on.

Here’s an example of a person who they had clearly tried to remove from their reviews, but was persistent …

And here’s another:

In reality there will have been immensely more negative reviews posted but many have been removed/suppressed by Lead Forensics.

If they were all kept live as intended by the reviewers then Lead Forensics would look even worse than they currently do.

 

 

 

Reviews focused on Lead Forensics staffing challenges

When considering buying from a company, it’s sometimes useful to get a feel for what their staff culture is like.

Happy staff and a good culture will generally translate into a good service provided to the buyers.

The two main employee/employer review sites are Indeed and Glassdoor, which we cover here.

 

Indeed reviews of Lead Forensics

At the time of writing, Google shows the Indeed employee reviews of working at Lead Forensics shows as being 2.8 out of 5 stars.

Although the numbers of reviews aren’t huge, the lower star ratings show that those employees mostly had a negative experience of working there.

Although there are some 4 or 5 star reviews, they are from current employees, so there is going to be some bias, plus potentially internal influence for staff to post positive reviews.

It’s also laughable that the Indeed platform makes it very clear that their best review is selected by Lead Forensics as ‘a representative review’, when the majority of their reviews are negative (so it’s hardly representative!) …

What’s more interesting are the reviews of ex-employees, of which the following are typical examples …

It’s clear from the Indeed reviews that Lead Forensics is not a good place to work.

 

Glassdoor reviews of Lead Forensics

At the time of writing, Google shows the Glassdoor employee reviews of working at Lead Forensics shows as being 4 out of 5 stars.

That’s markedly different to those employee reviews on Indeed.

When you click through to Glassdoor you can browse through the reviews.  However, as soon as you start to filter anything, the barriers come up and they try to get you to sign up to them to be able to see any more detail …

You can’t help but be suspicious of an employee reviews site that has markedly different ratings, but when you try to filter those ratings, they try to force you so sign up to get access.

A suspicious person would think there is something being hidden here (such as those reviews being influenced by the reviewed company themselves).

 

Why staff reviews matter

When considering buying Lead Forensics, you are locked into a 12 month contract.

We’ve heard many stories of their customers who have had their contacts change frequently, in line with staff turnover.  That lack of continuity can be seen as a negative.

Overall though, the majority of Lead Forensics staff reviews focus on their hard sales culture and the impact that has on their staff.  That’s important to consider as part of your decision whether Lead Forensics may be a company you want to be dealing with.

 

 

 

How Lead Forensics damages businesses

You may be wondering:

How can a product like Lead Forensics DAMAGE businesses, if it’s giving them useful information about companies that have visited their websites?

Here are four reasons, part of a greater 16 reasons why A1WebStats will gain you more business from your website visitors than Lead Forensics can …

 

Misleading perceptions

Lead Forensics make you think that you can see all the companies that visit your website.

You can’t – typically you’ll be able to identify 10-30%

The other visitors won’t be visible in the Lead Forensics system (but they are in A1WebStats), because they don’t want you to realise that so many of your visitors can’t be identified as companies.

So you look at Lead Forensics data, thinking that you’ve got a good view of your website visitors, when the really important visitors data isn’t made available to you.

You haven’t got the most important view of your visitors, and it’s easy to prove via an A1WebStats free 30 day trial.

 

Wasted time

You see that companies go to your website.

You try to follow up with them.

You will rarely get a successful connection to someone that is interested in talking to you.

Even when you do get in contact with some people from those companies, they’ve often decided to go elsewhere, because they didn’t find enough on your website to appeal to them.

So you spend time chasing companies instead of putting time resource into finding ways to get those companies to engage more with your website and proactively make contact with your business.

 

 

Flexibility of financial resource

At a bare minimum, Lead Forensics will cost you £150 per month, and you’ll be locked into a 12 month contract (that you have to actively cancel ahead of time if you don’t want it anymore).

That’s a bare minimum (more for most businesses) of £1,800 per year is what you’re committed to from the moment you sign your contract.

That’s £1,800 that is unavailable to spend on other activities when you may need it.

You may realise a month or two into a Lead Forensics contract, that it’s not easy to turn ‘visiting companies’ into actual revenues.  By then it’s too late and you have no option but to wait until the end of the contract.

In a world where most SaaS businesses provide true month to month payments, with no contract, anything else should be avoided.

What else could you do with that budget, that would help you get more results from your website visitors?

 

Distraction destruction

What’s more important?

1. Chasing identifiable companies that have been to your website.
2. Finding out why you aren’t getting more enquiries from visitors to your product or service pages.

If you think the answer is number 1, you shouldn’t be in business because you’ll be distracted from the real challenge, which can lead to destruction of your future business pipeline.

If you focus on understanding why your website visitors aren’t making contact with you (A1WebStats helps here), then you are on the path to strengthening your website, which will lead to more companies proactively contacting you.

 

In summary

Companies (apart from competitors, suppliers, etc.) that don’t make contact after visiting your website, usually have two reasons:

1. Your website didn’t give them enough reasons to make contact, so they went elsewhere. You will rarely win these back, even if you chase them.   Our estimate is that these would make up 85% of those companies.
2. They’re researching options but not ready to buy yet. In this case, there would be value in following up with them.  These would be the estimated 15% of your company visitors.

Lead Forensics would encourage you to chase as many visiting companies as possible, when reality is that you will never convert the majority of them.

The answer is to use an intelligent website visitors analysis system, that’s immensely cheaper than Lead Forensics, but provides hugely more beneficial outcomes.   You can find out more about that, including the 30 day free trial, on our page here.