Demand generation tools help get the right people interested in your products or services.
But in a market saturated with competition and rapidly evolving consumer demands, yesterday's demand generation strategies may not work today. More than adaptation, innovation is needed to maintain a steady flow of leads.
While corporations have ample resources to test and implement demand gen strategies, startups can quickly experiment with various tactics.
However, only a select few have the best of both worlds – access to data-driven insights that drive targeted and effective engagement on time and on budget.
In this article, we'll explore:
- How top tools make demand gen straightforward and impactful
- The power of doing more with less, thanks to AI and machine learning
- The top five demand-generation tools on the market today
P.S. Our findings stem from rigorous expert research, involving many hours of analysis of the best demand generation tools available, saving you the hassle. Dive in!
Key Criteria for Evaluating Demand Generation Tools
Unlike lead generation which is all about converting prospects into leads, the ultimate goal of demand generation is to build a greater scale of brand awareness which can lead to more conversion points. When assessing tools, look for:
Functionality and features
A good demand generation strategy is linked to the sales funnel or customer journey, helping marketing reps and sales teams attract, track, and engage leads across all possible touchpoints.
Therefore, lead generation tools should tick as many of these functionalities as possible:
Lead capture and management
Look for lead capture capabilities through customizable forms, landing pages, or lead scoring mechanisms. Good lead management capabilities, including lead segmentation and nurturing workflows, ensuring that no potential opportunity slips through the cracks.
Email marketing and automation
Features such as drip campaigns, personalized messaging, and behavior-triggered workflows may come in handy in brand communications.
Content marketing and distribution
Demand-generation content marketing tools may offer content management systems, social media integrations, and analytics to track content performance and improve your SEO strategy.
Social media integration
You're probably already thinking about scheduling demand generation tools – and you're right. Demand generation seeks to amplify brand visibility and engagement with target audiences as part of a digital marketing strategy, including through social media management.
Platforms like Hootsuite can aid in generating demand as part of social media digital marketing campaigns.
Analytics and reporting
We know – Google Analytics already provides insights into key metrics such as website traffic, lead conversion rates, and campaign attribution. However, reporting dashboards from web visitor behavior or monitoring real-time actions will give you more in-depth insights.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities
Features like predictive analytics, personalized recommendations, and automated optimizations are all a present reality with tools such as Lift AI.
For example, after implementing Lift AI's buyer intent strategy to score the real-time behavior of every website visitor, Chronus saw an 85% increase in their pipeline from anonymous web visitors alone!
Their inbound marketing efforts and ability to generate leads have, quite literally, skyrocketed right away.
Integration with the existing marketing tech stack
Compatibility with existing technology infrastructure, such as email marketing platforms or the go-to customer relationship management platform, allows marketers and sales teams to consolidate data and automate processes.
Scalability and customization options
As you attract more qualified leads and expand, you'll require tools that can accommodate increased demand. In our analysis, we looked for demand-generation tools that can:
- Handle larger volumes of data
- Accommodate growing user bases
- Support extensive marketing campaigns
Customer support and training resources
Good customer support reviews are non-negotiable. Here's what we considered in our demand generation tools analysis:
- Ongoing customer support
- The ability to provide rapid turnaround and fast replies
- If the platform offers knowledge bases, community forums, or personalized training sessions
Our Curated List of Top Demand Generation Tools
There are plenty of demand-generation tools on the market, but only a few of them deliver real impact –AKA useful functionalities that add value to your demand-generation strategies. Below, we'll explore our top five findings.
1. Lift AI
Overview and Key Features
Lift AI revolutionizes sales and marketing processes with its AI-driven website buyer intent scoring software. This AI demand generation tool surfaces hidden buyers on your website in real-time, changing how sales teams interact with potential customers throughout the buyer's journey while turning website visitors into a valuable database of bottom-of-the-funnel leads.
Lift AI stands out as a demand-generating and lead-nurturing tool due to its key characteristics:
- It aggregates first-party behavioral data from your website for accurate, timely insights
- It assesses the buying intent of each website visitor in real time, allowing sales reps to engage with prospective customers
- Lift AI scores both anonymous and known visitors, solving the significant challenge of gaining insights on truly anonymous visitors that can't be ID revealed
- The demand generation tool has an accuracy rate of 85% in determining buyer intent for every visitor scored
- It integrates with tools like 6Sense and Demandbase, enriching their data with real-time behavioral buyer intent
Strengths and Differentiators
- Accurate lead scoring. Lift AI's machine learning model is pre-trained on billions of data points including real sales data to analyze your website visitor accurately, enhancing lead routing and scoring.
- Real time response. It helps businesses engage with potential leads at opportune moments for higher conversion rates (before they leave your website).
- Predictive insights. It helps tailor approaches to anticipate and meet potential customer requirements.
- Smart resource allocation. It maximizes resource and sales team management by allowing them to focus on leads more likely to convert.
Pricing and Plans
Lift AI offers three simple pricing plans:
- Essentials: $1,500/month for a single integration and 20,000 visitors.
- Premium: $2,500/month for up to three integrations and 20,000 visitors.
- Unlimited: $3,500/month for unlimited integrations and 20,000 visitors.
While pricing is a huge factor in evaluating a tool, ROI ultimately decides whether an investment is worth it or not.
"24% of our Conversations in Drift are with completely anonymous visitors that are scored High or Mid Intent by Lift AI." - Jennifer Boudreau, Director, Revenue Operations at Intelex
Reach out for personalized guidance on how to grow your conversions by up to 9X!
Ideal Use Cases
Use Lift AI as part of your demand generation efforts to:
- Solve the anonymous website visitor problem (hint: most of your website visitors are anonymous)
- Grow sales team efficiency
- Improve account-based marketing tools
- Improve lead generation and conversion rates
Drift
Overview and Key Features
Drift is an AI-powered buyer engagement platform designed to create personalized experiences for customers throughout their buying journey. Key features include:
- Conversational marketing and playbooks
- Prospector for data-driven expansion opportunities
- Integrations for a comprehensive view of customers
- AI-Powered Chatbots for customer support and recommendations, available 24/7
- Conversational Landing Pages (CLPs) for real-time interactions with visitors
- Real-Time ABM Notifications for alerts on target account engagement
- Meeting Scheduler & Real-Time Notifications for 24/7 scheduling and engagement alerts
Strengths and Differentiators
Drift excels in providing real-time engagement opportunities, enhancing customer experiences, and boosting conversions.
Its AI capabilities from Drift Engage, Powered by Lift AI, help it understand and react to buyer behavior, ensuring personalized interactions that boost demand generation marketing efforts.
Drift's integrations and advanced features, such as Conversational Sales and Service, offer a unified platform for engaging with customers at every stage.
Pricing and Plans
Drift offers three pricing editions: Premium, Advanced, and Enterprise. Pricing starts at $2,500 per month for the Premium edition.
Ideal Use Cases
- For Marketing: Drift helps generate high-quality leads, power ABM campaigns, and personalize web experiences.
- For Sales: It jumpstarts conversations, improves sales efficiency, and engages target accounts.
- For Service: Drift provides conversational service, automates customer support, and enhances customer experiences post-sale.
Hubspot
HubSpot's Marketing Hub offers an all-in-one solution for marketing teams by helping create better customer experiences. This solution helps drive revenue, saving time and resources, and optimizing marketing investments. Using Hubspot, businesses can connect with leads, manage campaigns, and measure results.
Overview and Key Features
- The Marketing Hub empowers you to personalize offers and messages for a target audience, attracting quality leads ready to convert.
- The AI-based marketing tools help automate content creation and track campaign performance.
- Hubspot's advanced reporting tools provide valuable insights into the customer journey, campaign performance, and ROI.
Strengths and Differentiators
HubSpot offers an ecosystem of marketing, sales, and service tools. By offering a complete suite of solutions that work together, the marketing automation platform enables businesses to break down silos.
Pricing and Plans
HubSpot Marketing Hub has three tiers: Starter ($20/month per seat), Professional ($890/month for three seats), and Enterprise (custom pricing, starting at $3,600/month for five seats).
Ideal Use Cases
- HubSpot Marketing Hub is ideal for SMBs seeking an all-in-one marketing solution.
- For marketing teams that want to streamline efforts like managing databases of contacts and automate tasks like sending out communications.
- For marketing and sales teams who need better alignment and communication to enhance customer connection at every touchpoint.
Dealfront (formerly Leadfeeder)
Overview and Key Features
Dealfront is a demand generation tool designed to help businesses identify the visitors on their website, track leads and convert them into high-value leads. Its key features include the automatic removal of irrelevant traffic sources such as bots and ISPs. The platform captures leads missed by traditional marketing automation tools using live customer data.
Strengths and Differentiators
Dealfront stands out for its integration of various functionalities, simplifying workflows from lead management to deal tracking and sales forecasting. It offers transparent access to data and insights while complying with strict European regulations. Additionally, Dealfront combines sales and marketing processes into a single platform.
Pricing and Plans
Dealfront offers a free plan with unlimited users and data from the last 7 days, limited to a maximum of 100 identified companies. Paid plans start at €99 per month, billed annually.
Ideal Use Cases
- Dealfront is ideal for mid-market businesses that want to uncover insights into website visitors' behavior, sources, and user journeys.
- Small businesses benefit from Dealfront's seamless integration with CRM and email marketing tools, improving lead generation by combining anonymous visitor data with personal information.
- Any company that wants insights into sales intelligence for targeted ABM campaigns.
Albert
Overview and Key Features
Albert is an AI-focused learning solution designed to improve the effectiveness of digital advertising campaigns. It autonomously plans, executes, tests, optimizes, and evolves your social media strategy, paid search efforts, and programmatic advertising strategies, 24/7.
Strengths and Differentiators
Albert stands out as a marketing AI software offering autonomous cross-channel campaign management. Its ability to continuously optimize campaigns, personalized targeting at scale, and integration within existing ad accounts set it apart. Albert uses Google Analytics data to make the most out of digital campaigns.
Pricing and Plans
Interested parties can request an estimate and explore the pricing options based on their advertising budget and requirements.
Ideal Use Cases
Albert AI seems ideal for businesses seeking continuous optimization of digital advertising campaigns without the need for manual intervention.
Choosing the Right Demand Generation Tools for Your Business
Here's how to cut through the clutter and make the most out of all the right tools for your demand generation strategy:
1. Assess your specific needs and goals
Use tools like Google Analytics to understand your website visitors' high level data and identify areas for improvement.
Is your organic strategy lagging behind, or you could use a revamp in your paid campaigns? Does your website convert the way it should? Where are you losing the most revenue?
These are all valid questions you should be asking yourself before deciding where to direct your demand generation efforts, and then find a tool that matches your needs. Additionally, customer surveys and interviews, or past reports could help you gain qualitative insights pain points, preferences, and trends.
2. Evaluate your existing marketing tech stack
Take stock of your current marketing tools and platforms to ensure a better integration with new solutions. Look for opportunities to consolidate overlapping functionalities and streamline workflows.
Give this free tech stack inventory template a try before investing in a new tool.
Considering your budget and resources
If your budget doesn't allow for a top-tier demand-generation tool yet, explore free or low-cost options like Google Analytics, Mailchimp, or Buffer to kickstart your demand-generation efforts in the social media or performance marketing area without breaking the bank.
Keep an eye out for special discounts or promotions from leading vendors to maximize your budget.
Prioritizing features and capabilities
Look for advanced capabilities such as predictive analytics, AI-driven lead scoring, and omnichannel campaign management to drive personalized engagement and conversion optimization.
Prioritizing features and capabilities that drive ROI? Give your demand generation strategy a real edge with Lift AI's predictive analytics, AI-driven lead scoring, and integration with sales reps.
Let Us Boost Demand Generation while You Take Care of Your Business
Navigating through various demand generation tools can feel overwhelming, especially given how complex demand generation can be.
Key takeaways:
- Look for tools that match your company's needs and can automate processes across platforms.
- Use insights from tools like Lift AI to engage sales reps based on prospects' live behavior on your website and stop losing revenue there.
- Keep an eye on every facet of demand generation to address as many consumer touchpoints as you can. When possible, employ tools to help you in this process.
Keep in mind – demand generation involves both sales and marketing teams. While marketers create demand, it's up to sales reps to nurture and close leads. Tools like Lift AI help bridge the gap between marketing and sales efforts.
Ready to see a difference in your demand generation strategy? Discover how Lift AI drives more than 5X conversion to opportunity!
