Best Demand Generation Software in 2024

Put in a single sentence, demand generation software is a set of comprehensive and advanced online tools for identifying leads before those are actually passed to the nurturing team. What these programs do is to qualify prospects and to separate prospective buyers from ‘casual visitors’, based on their responses, participation in events, user campaigns, and inbound marketing, which is, in fact, the launching process of demand generation.

As such, demand generation tools help the sales team build a long-term collaboration with the marketing one, and to score conversion in advance, rather than healing the consequences of an unsuccessful one. In fact, demand generation companies allow you to dissolve the traditional marketing concept to such extent that organizations entrust their entire market discovery, product promotion, and PR reengagement exactly to their DG systems.

But how to do knowledgeable comparisons to choose the best among demand generation tools for small business or enterprises? Let this buyer’s guide lead you there!

A good course of action is to sign up for at least a few free trials or demo and starter unpaid plans from popular demand generation software providers. With that method you will have the opportunity to test the important elements and you will get a good comparison of the capabilities of different apps. The best thing to do when choosing the best Demand Generation software for your company is to try the list of services that currently have the highest SmartScore rankings and Customer Satisfaction Rating in our demand generation software reviews, such as OSI Affiliate software reviews, LeadSquared, or RapidMiner.

Demand generation software tools are good for any company wishing to increase demand and score leads more efficiently. However, there are a few scenarios in which demand generation software is most needed:

• Small Businesses looking to improve targeting efforts. Small teams don’t have the same capacity to collect demographics, pain points, titles, roles, challenges, and customer goals as large companies do. They’re working hard on reducing time and efforts, which is why they need to automate demand generation with a quality program that can meet their unique audience targeting needs.
• Medium Businesses looking to improve the quality of their gated content. As the number of customers and interested parties rises, medium companies have less and less time to devote to the quality of their content, and the mistake most of them make is to let this time-inefficiency affect the satisfaction of customers. Thereof, demand generation software is welcomed by mid-size companies, in particular for creating outstanding and branded pieces users can only access with subscription. As you can guess, both sides have something to win from this: the business obtains the customer information, while end-users obtain quality and incentives for their purchase decisions.
• Large Businesses looking to communicate the value of their services. This is probably the vast majority of demand generation software buyers, such that already know they can’t rely on impulsive purchases, and that they have to develop specific strategies to trigger their customers’ decision. Large enterprises use demand generation software as their compelling language – the one that tells customers what they’re supposed to do, and how the services of the enterprise can help them do it.

• OSI Affiliate Software: An outstanding tool to set up and manage referral programs, and to boost both the size and quality of a company’s customer database.
• LeadSquared: A very comprehensive acquisition solution that drives leads through the sales funnel in a fast and responsive way, and suits the needs of any small/medium business.
• RapidMiner: A free, open-source demand generation cross-platform that combines data mining, text mining, machine learning, and business analytics.
• Infer: An advanced scoring solution used by marketing teams to focus on promising leads. The system identifies and rates the leads, and gives external behavior signals based on internal data.
• ThriveHive: A popular and fast marketing and lead management solution for business owners designed to develop their guided marketing strategies.
• HubSpot Marketing: An integrated marketing solution that helps grow traffic and increase conversions among your target audience.

There are many different types of demand generation software, varying from free and basic tool suites to ultra costly and accurate programs. Features can also be categorization criteria, as certain programs do nothing but collect leads, while others are more robust and they allow marketers to score those leads, to develop purchase incentive strategies, and even do some custom branding. Deployment is also an important factor based on which there are:

• On-premise demand generation programs. These are covered with a single license, and are hosted on the client’s local server. They qualify as the most expensive ones, due the fact that they require complex setup and occasionally some hardware installation.
• Software-as-a-service (SaaS) demand generation programs. These are usually paid per month, and are hosted on the vendor’s server. The business owner is not responsible for installation, updating, and maintenance.
• Cloud-hosted demand generation programs. Most of these offer free basic plans, and qualify as the most affordable ones due to their universal access and the fact that the client doesn’t need to update them or to pay for maintenance.

When deciding whether a demand generation system is good for you or not, check whether it aggregates the following features and practices:

• Integrated data operations: The system is supposed to distinguish customers according to their behavior, and to provide valuable data for automated marketing decisions.
• ROI-centered culture: The system should centralize demand-center operations for the sake of brand awareness and efficient sales.
• Channel hierarchies: The system will help building personalized lead profiles for all stages of the sales cycle, in order to understand what they’re thinking and how they’re reacting to your strategy.
• Holistic content strategy: Upon creation, content ought to be aligned to the customers’ profiles, and should ideally be generalized to the extent of being usable for many audiences.
• Best lead disposition practices: Look for practices such as lead scoring, lead routing, lead capture, lead distribution, lead nurturing, etc.
• Robust tracking suite: Pipeline Building, Timing, Refined Targeting, Prospecting, Tech Stack Analysis, Account Data, Integration (Export/Import of Data), Data Enrichment (CRM, Buyers’ signals), Real-Time Tracking, Reporting, Categorization & Segmentation, Email Campaigns, Engagement Scoring, Reminders, Libraries, Dynamic Lists, Receptionist/Telephone Integration, API, Autoresponders, Support, iOS/Android apps, etc.

Only in 2015, 70% of all inbound strategies were based on demand generation. The trends, practices, and the applied systems vary significantly, but the purpose is always the same: Demand generators reveal invaluable truths about customer behavior without which conversions cannot be properly filtered.

Is a demand generation system going to help you too? Let’s check:

• Streamlined relationships. The best way to ensure your business has credibility on the market is to personalize the relationship you have with your customers. You have to be sincere, value-orientated, and to go straight to the point without wasting their time. A demand generations system makes this more than possible because it builds such relationships on scale. You know which your priority prospects are, and you manage to give each of them the personalized attention they deserve. Instead of looking to tailor your work line according to the market, you will tailor the market according to your system. As simple as that!
• Some extra ‘breathing space’ for customers. Nobody likes to be spammed all the time, so it may be the time for you to back up from aggressive sales marketing. You think it may turn customers cold towards your product? Not with a demand generation system. Your demand generation system softens sales and makes you look friendly, helpful, and non-demanding, and that’s what people like when being offered a product. Thanks to it, you will be able to distinguish a group of valuable prospects who’ll be interested in your product even when they can’t afford it, and will almost certainly come back.
• Delivering value for customer satisfaction. Instead of observing the digital world from the prism of harsh competitiveness, start considering all the attention-driving opportunities that it can give you. The chance of using demand generators is only one of the many, and it is just precious for building your own audience where people will be so fascinated by your efforts that they won’t even consider a different product. To make things simpler, you’ll reach them before they reach you, and you will offer detailed descriptions, free trials, and live support. Once they actually start trusting your platform, difficult engagement will no longer be an issue.

Resurgence of websites 

Websites remain the number one source for leads, with email and paid search tied at second, and social media at fourth. Expect a resurgent trend towards creating more content geared for websites and free review sites as they promise bigger returns.

Need for higher quality content

Presenting higher quality content has become the new KPI for generating demand and leads. Companies need to have more than the technology available and that includes content that is findable, memorable, share-worthy, and actionable.

Availability of long-form content

With the increasing number of online shoppers, the demand for more detail about products before pulling the purchase trigger has become more pronounced. The availability of blogs, client stories, and other long-form content can help sway the inquisitive customer into signing on.

Lead management sourcing 

If your company is employing different methods for generating leads, it might become difficult to efficiently separate which leads came from what activity. This, in turn, can keep you from comparing the contributions of each method. To remedy this, it might be best to find a platform that can perform automated lead management.

Lead quality

Filtering your leads can help you separate the gems from the duds in your pool of prospective clients. Common results will display a sizable quantity of duplicate entries or invalid contact information. Coming up with and implementing a verification process for leads is a challenge that can significantly raise the quality levels.