Lead generation: guides & tutorials

The key is not just scraping data — it is building a complete pipeline that goes from raw web data to scored, enriched leads in your CRM, automatically.

This playbook covers the architecture, tool-by-tool setup, cost model, and compliance framework for building an AI lead generation system in 2026.

TL;DR:

Prerequisites:

• Apify account (Starter plan: $29/mo for production use)
• Claude API key or self-hosted Ollama (see Self-Host AI Stack)
• CRM account (HubSpot free, Clay, or Google Sheets)
• n8n or Make.com for orchestration

Define your ideal customer profile (ICP), scrape LinkedIn and company directories with Apify, enrich and score in Make.com, then push qualified leads to HubSpot, Salesforce, or Airtable. This guide walks through a full lead-generation pipeline: Apify for data collection, Make.com for orchestration, enrichment, scoring, and CRM sync. No code required for the workflow — only configuration.

You can extract business names, phone numbers, addresses, ratings, and more from Google Maps using Octoparse's visual scraper. Try Octoparse or Apify's Google Maps Scraper for a developer-ready alternative. This guide covers setup, field selection, pagination, and anti-block tactics.

Google Maps is one of the richest sources of local business data on the internet: business names, addresses, phone numbers, websites, hours, ratings, reviews, and photos — all structured and searchable. Apify's Google Maps Scraper extracts this data without writing a single line of code.

This guide covers setup, configuration, and how to export data to CSV, Google Sheets, or a CRM.

B2B sales enrichment means turning a bare company name or domain into a complete prospect record: employee count, tech stack, revenue signals, recent job postings, decision-maker names, and contact information.

Traditional data providers (ZoomInfo, Apollo) cost $10,000–$50,000/year. Web scraping builds the same enrichment pipeline for a fraction of the cost — and stays current automatically.

B2B lead gen pulls from company sites, contact pages, LinkedIn, Google Maps, Crunchbase, job boards, and similar public surfaces. Scraping automates the collection step; you still layer enrichment (Hunter.io, Clearbit), scoring (rules or a model), and CRM push (HubSpot, Salesforce). This guide maps sources, GDPR/CCPA basics, pipeline shape, and how Apify compares to Apollo.io and ZoomInfo for that stack.

For the evergreen reference version with field-by-field source tables and a full Apify Store walkthrough, see the B2B lead generation with web scraping use-case guide.

LinkedIn lead automation works when qualification and compliance come before message volume. Make orchestrates the pipeline: collect lead signals, enrich and score, route to CRM, and optionally draft outreach. LinkedIn's terms restrict scraping and bulk messaging—use only policy-aligned data sources and review controls.

Start building in Make.

Extracting POI (Point of Interest) and Local Business data from Google Maps at scale requires complex architectural engineering to bypass the platform's hard 120-result pagination limit per search query.

The Google Maps Scrapers collection on Apify hosts dedicated serverless Actors that use geographic grid partitioning to support high-coverage ingestion for city-wide or nation-wide location targeting.

Outbound sales lives or dies on clean, structured lead lists. Manual research does not scale; running scrapers from a single IP often hits WAFs (Cloudflare, DataDome, and similar) before you get volume.

The Lead Generation category on Apify is a set of hosted Actors aimed at pulling contacts, profiles, and company signals from directories and social surfaces—without you hosting browsers and proxy pools yourself.

Quick answer: The best Google Maps scrapers for 2026 are the Apify Google Maps Scraper (easiest no-code option—the same popular Store Actor is published under compass/crawler-google-places for high-volume grid runs), and custom Playwright or Crawlee scripts (maximum control). Add Bright Data when you need enterprise proxy infrastructure or off-the-shelf datasets.

Google Maps is the default global directory for local businesses: names, addresses, categories, ratings, websites, and phone numbers in one place. The hard parts are dynamic loading, anti-bot friction, and pagination limits (roughly 100–200 results per search viewport without splitting geography into smaller searches). This guide compares serious options—cloud Actors, APIs, no-code tools, and custom code—so you can pick by team skills, volume, and compliance.

Browse Google Maps Actors in the Apify Store →