Demand generation plays a crucial role in B2B marketing given its focus on creating awareness and interest in your brand’s products or services – with the ultimate goal of converting prospective customers into clients. Yet as the digital landscape continues to evolve, so do the tools used to engage in demand generation.
Demand gen tools are designed to:
- Automate and streamline the process of attracting and nurturing high-quality leads
- Improve targeting
- Aid personalization
- Enhance data management and analytics
- Drive optimization
- Boost conversions
- Help you achieve your marketing ROI, all through supporting more efficient and effective process.
Read on as we delve into some of the most effective B2B demand generation tools, exploring their features, benefits, and how they can enhance your demand generation marketing strategy to engage your target audience.
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Deciphering demand generation tools
A demand generation tool is a software solution designed for purposes such as advanced targeting, automating and streamlining the processes involved in attracting and nurturing leads, and revealing where intent lies. Such tools, including the ever-growing popularity of AI tools, can simplify tasks, eliminate manual data input, and help you develop and execute a more effective demand generation strategy.
With so many tools readily available, when choosing a demand generation tool it’s crucial to evaluate your existing tech stack and audit your team to identify any gaps in resource and process inefficiencies. Once you’ve identified what you need, set clear goals of how the tool will directly address your pain point(s) and help you achieve better ROI.
Once you have a clear diagnosis of your problem, here a few factors worth considering when researching different market solutions:
- Features: Does the tool provide the features you need to improve your demand generation efforts?
- Benefits: Can the tool help you achieve your specific demand generation goals?
- Usability: How user-friendly is the tool? Can your team quickly learn how to use it?
- Integration: Can the tool seamlessly integrate with your existing marketing and sales tools?
- Pricing: Does the tool offer good value for money, and how do its costs compare with similar tools?
Understanding these factors can help you select the right tool that aligns with your goal of demand generation, business needs, and objectives.
Types of demand generation tools
There are several types of demand generation tools available, each serving different purposes and catering to different aspects of your B2B demand generation strategy:
- Inbound lead generation tools help attract leads to your website, often through content creation, content syndication and search engine optimization (SEO).
- Outbound lead gen tools aid in reaching out to potential customers through various channels such as emails, phone calls, and social media.
- On-page lead gen tools capture leads on your website, often through forms and landing pages.
- Conversion rate optimization (CRO) tools enhance the conversion rate of leads, taking them from interested prospects to sales-qualified leads.
- Marketing management tools provide insights into your marketing performance, helping you enhance your demand generation campaigns.
- Email marketing tools help create and manage email marketing campaigns, one of the most effective channels for nurturing leads.
- Search marketing tools boost the traffic from both paid and organic search, leading to an increase in on-site leads.
- AI-powered intent tools help you identify and prioritize in-market leads through first and third party intent signals.
- Tools that help with identifying total addressable market (TAM) / targeting your ideal customer profile (ICP) are invaluable for their ability to pinpoint exactly who you are targeting, on the right channel, and at the right time along their buyer journey.
- Personalization tools allow for more effective communication by ensuring your content and messaging is reaching your target audience and engaging them from the moment they see their name.
- Account-based marketing (ABM) tools capture all relevant information needed around your accounts to ensure accurate and effective account management.
The tool(s) you choose will depend on the specific strategies you’re employing for demand generation.
Let’s now explore some of the top demand generation tools you should consider for your business:
1. Hubspot: Your all-in-one marketing solution
Hubspot is a unified CRM that unifies marketing, sales and services tools – the benefit of which is that it covers the functionality needs of marketers – email, social, ads, landing pages, workflows and so on, while also combining sales and customer experience tools. This makes it far more connected, unifies data and ensures all key tools can be found on one single platform. It also provides valuable insights to evaluate and enhance your campaigns.
Pricing: can be tailored to your needs, the Marketing Hub starts at $23 per month for their Starter plan or $895 for a professional plan.
2. DemandBI: Prioritize in-market leads in seconds
DemandBI is Inbox Insight’s proprietary AI-powered intent tool that helps marketers identify in-market leads through real-time intent signals. This includes predictive lead scoring and other key B2B buyer insights such as Account Surge and Buyer Power, which are essential for effectively prioritizing your B2B sales leads. By leveraging these insights, marketers can determine which MQLs should be followed up by sales and which leads require further nurturing.
Pricing: is available through custom demand generation packages with flexible pricing.
3. Leadfeeder: Uncover hidden leads
Leadfeeder is a powerful tool that reveals the companies visiting your website, even if they don’t leave their contact information. By integrating with your Google Analytics account, it provides insights about industries, employee count, contact details, and behavioral data. This tool can be a game-changer in your demand generation strategy.
Pricing: a free Lite plan is available, with Premium packages starting at $152 per month.
4. LinkedIn Sales Navigator: Connect with the right people
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a premium tool from LinkedIn that allows you to target the right leads more efficiently. It enables you to reach out via InMail, use advanced search features, and prioritize leads in your sales funnel.
Pricing: plans start at $99 per month.
5. Ortto: Create journeys that boost revenue
Ortto is a complete platform that combines marketing automation, customer data, and analytics in one place. It allows for seamless integration with a variety of marketing tools and applications, enabling you to automate your marketing processes effectively.
Pricing: 14 day free trial available, then from $599 per month.
6. OptinMonster: Capture more leads
OptinMonster is a powerful tool for creating engaging lead capture forms. It features a drag-and-drop builder, allowing you to quickly create various types of opt-in forms, such as lightbox popups, fullscreen takeovers, and slide-ins.
Pricing: starts from $9 per month for their Basic plan.
7. SEMrush: Your go-to tool for SEO
SEMrush is a comprehensive SEO tool that helps you conduct on-site audits, discover lucrative keywords, and optimize your pay-per-click (PPC) and social media strategies. With SEMrush, you can build and manage PPC campaigns and draft and schedule social posts.
Pricing: a 7-day free trial is available, followed by plans starting at $108 per month.
8. Panguin: Understand the impact of Google algorithm updates
Panguin is a free tool that overlays your Google Analytics data with Google’s algorithm updates. It helps you identify if traffic drops on your website are due to these updates, allowing you to take proactive measures to recover traffic and improve your SEO.
Pricing: a free SEO tool with no set pricing plans as yet.
9. Wishpond: Run contests and promotions
Wishpond makes it easy to run contests and promotions on social media. It offers a variety of contest types, such as sweepstakes, photo contests and referral contests, which you can publish via multiple channels.
Pricing: starts at $49 per month for their Starting Out plan.
10. Zapier: Connect and automate your tools
Zapier is a powerful tool that connects your apps and automates workflows. It supports more than 2,000 apps, enabling you to automate tasks and streamline your demand generation processes.
Pricing: a free plan with limited tasks is available, with paid plans starting from $19.99 per month.
Ready to pick up your demand gen tools?
With the right tools behind them, demand generation marketers can streamline their processes, create more effective campaigns, and ultimately drive more growth for their business. While the tools listed above are some of the best in the industry, remember that the best tool(s) for your company will depend on your specific needs and objectives.
To ensure your strategy aligns with demand gen best practices, consider consulting with industry experts who can provide valuable insights and recommendations. If you’re ready to take your demand generation to the next level, check out our Demand Generation service. Our specialists can help you develop and implement a demand generation strategy that accelerates revenue, based on your unique objectives. Contact us today to learn more.
