How to sort, filter and organise Leads to uncover the best Prospects and Partners on Breezy

Wondering how to use Breezy to uncover the best possible Prospects for your brand? Once you’ve run a Partner search on the platform, you’ll be faced with thousands (if not tens of thousands) of relevant Leads. So, you’ll need to know how to sort and filter them into Prospects so you can uncover the opportunities you’re most interested in.

Here, we’ll take you through how to sort and filter the results of your Partner search step-by-step, to get you those partnerships you’ve been looking for.

1. Scan the first page

First things first, we’d recommend checking out the Leads listed on the first page of your search results. We automatically show you the results with the highest ‘Breezy relevancy scores’ first, which means we’re showing you the results that we think are the most relevant to your brand, based on the keywords and competitors that you’ve entered. A good place to start, right?!

Without having to do anything at all, you’ll immediately be able to see each result’s:

• Breezy relevancy score.
• Moz Domain Authority.
• Number of matching keywords.
• Number of matching competitors.

Where we’re able to find the information, we’ll also show you a Lead’s Alexa Rank and the number of affiliate pages on their site.

Basically, your search results will look something like this.

To find out more about an entity in your results, simply click into the result itself. This will reveal a section down the right-hand side of your screen that will give you a more detailed snapshot of the brand in question.

For instance, you’ll be able to view a screenshot of their homepage, which pages on their site we believe to be the most relevant, and which of their keywords and competitors overlap with yours.

Use the tabs along the top to learn more about the Lead's audience and existing partnerships and use the 'notes' tab to leave internal comments for your reference or to share with other team members you're collaborating with on Breezy.

All this information will help to give you an idea of a brand’s relevancy, reach and overlap with your own brand.

Like the look of what you see? When a result piques your interest, just drag and drop it into your 'Prospects' folder. This way, you can examine any promising results in more detail later!

2. Try different sort parameters

Now that you’ve selected your favourite Leads from the first page, we’d recommend adding filters so that you can dig deeper into the results and find those Leads that could really help you to reach your brand’s goals.

To sort your results, simply click on the ‘sort by’ field in the top right of your screen and select your preference from the drop-down menu.

You can choose to sort your results by:

• Breezy relevancy score.
• Moz Domain Authority.
• Alexa Rank.
• Number of (mutual) competitors.
• Number of (mutual) keywords.
• Number of affiliate partnerships.

It’s worth experimenting with each of these to discover which ones yield the most interesting results for you. That said, for the most part, you’ll want to sort your results by factors that tie into your brand’s overall goals and strategy.

For instance, if you’re hoping to embark on content marketing partnerships that you hope can yield backlinks and SEO benefits, you’ll want to ensure that brands have a relatively high Domain Authority. Read our guide to content marketing partnerships for more information on why this will be important.

Likewise, if you’re hoping to find a brand that can help you with co-selling or lead account mapping (as part of a distribution marketing partnership), then chances are you’ll want to prioritise brands that have a decent number of mutual keywords, as their audience is likely to have a significant overlap with yours.

Ultimately, the best way of sorting your results is going to vary depending on your brand and what kind of partnerships you’re searching for. So, have a play and find your perfect fit!

3. Overlay filters

Next, it’s time to get even more specific. A lot of people realise that you can sort your results, but not many realise that you can then add filters on top to ensure that you only view results you’re interested in seeing.

There are two main ways that you can add filters. The first is by clicking the little arrow on the right-hand side of the search bar at the top of your screen.

This will open a control panel where you can adjust all the filters available.

Most of these filters can be adjusted by dragging the range to the appropriate number. However, if you want to get even more specific, you can also input the correct figure manually, by adjusting the numbers at the top and bottom of each range.

If you’re specifically looking to grow your affiliate program, you can click the ‘show affiliates only’ tickbox to ensure that you’re only shown Leads that have worked on an affiliate basis before.

Similarly, by clicking the box ‘hide existing partners,’ you’ll be able to hide any entities that have partnered with you already. After all, you want to identify new partners, not existing ones!

Each time that you amend a filter from its default position, the search bar will automatically update with your requirements.

The alternative way of updating your filters is to click directly into the search bar along the top of your screen.

This will open a drop-down menu, from which you can choose the filter you’d like to adjust, and insert it directly into the search bar.

Ta-da! Now you’ve sorted your results and overlaid filters, you’ll be able to see the Leads that are most relevant to your brand and needs, uncovering those hidden gems you wouldn’t find anywhere else.

4. Add Prospects

Throughout the last few steps, we’d recommend keeping your eyes peeled for results that stand out. And, if you see anything that piques your interest, just drag the result into ‘Prospects’ as we described in step 1.

However, now that you’ve tailored the results to your liking, we’d recommend spending some dedicated time looking through them and dragging those with potential into your Prospects folder.

So, how do you decide what makes a good Prospect?

Read our blog on creating strategic partnerships that are the right fit for your brand for a step-by-step guide. But in summary, you’ll need to consider your brand’s objectives and the partnership types that will help you to achieve them.

Then, when you’re going through the results, you’ll need to select brands that could fit the bill, asking yourself the following questions:

1. What’s their reach like? The Alexa Rank and ‘visitors by country’ fields in your results will help to answer this. Remember that bigger isn’t always better.
2. How relevant are they? We developed the Breezy relevancy score to assess this, but you can also review the keywords and competitors that you have in common for more detail.
3. What’s their reputation like? This one’s a little more subtle, but the entity’s Domain Authority displayed in your results will help to give you an idea about how reputable search engines believe the brand’s website to be.
4. What’s their partnership history? You can click on the entity to view how many affiliate pages they have, who else they’re partnered with and whether they’re part of any affiliate networks.

The chances are you’ll need to find a balance between all of the above factors when you’re pinpointing entities that might make successful partners for your brand. And the best partners for you might not always rank most strongly in each category.

For example, you’ll need to consider what you can offer potential partners to ensure that your partnership is equally beneficial to both parties (read our guide to why partnerships fail to find out why this is so important). So, you might find that a smaller entity with a hyper-relevant audience would make a better partner than a huge conglomerate with a massive reach (not always though!).

Anyway, for now, keep all these factors in mind, but don’t overthink things. This is just your first pass, so any entities that you’re interested in learning more about can just be dragged straight into your Prospects folder, where you’ll be able to sort through them more carefully later.

5. Go through your Prospects

Remember when we said that you’d be able to sort through your Prospects more carefully ‘later?’ Well, now’s the time to look through all the entities that you’ve added to your Prospects folder, and decide which ones you’d like to contact now, which ones you’d like to contact later, and which ones you’d like to scrap altogether.

Remember, this doesn’t just have to be a one-off task. Instead, you can continuously add Prospects and sort through them month-on-month, to meet any ‘new partner’ targets that you’ve set for yourself.

To make things easier, we’d suggest grouping your Prospects into lists. Adding a list to your Breezy search is easy. Just click the ‘Add List’ button on the left-hand side of your screen.

Then, give your new list a name and click the blue ‘Add’ button to confirm.

You’ll be able to view your lists down the left-hand side of your results, beneath your Prospects and Partners.

Simply drag entities that are in your Prospects folder (or in your general Leads folder) into relevant lists to better organise and categorise them. Don’t worry, if you've marked the entity as a Prospect, adding them to a list won’t remove them from your Prospects folder. Instead, the entity will show up in both your Prospects folder and in the list you’ve dragged it into. Just be aware that you can only drag each entity into one list, to avoid duplication when it comes to requesting contact information for them.

There are three kinds of lists that are especially worth considering when it comes to helping you organise your Prospects:

1. Categories of partnerships (for example, affiliate marketing).
2. Types of entities (for example, magazines).
3. Subject matter (for example, industry news).

By using lists in this way, you can better prioritise where to spend your energy, contacting and negotiating partnerships with the entities in those lists that are likely to have the biggest and fastest impact on growing your brand.

But ultimately, you can use lists however you like. Want a ‘contact next month’ list? Go for it! Want an ‘archive’ list? Why not.

The only thing we would say is that once you’ve turned your Prospects into fully-fledged partners, there’s a dedicated area ready and waiting for you. Just drag confirmed partners into your ‘Partners’ tab to the left of your screen and watch it grow as you form more and more partnerships with valuable Prospects. Enjoy!

Ready to dig deep in your Breezy search results to find hyper-relevant partners that could help you grow your brand? Just sign in to your Breezy account to give it a try. Or, if you haven’t yet got a Breezy account, there’s no time like the present. Just book a demo to get started. What are you waiting for?