I Spent 30 Days Testing Best Demand Generation Softwares - Here's What I Found

And that’s how, even after having a perfectly functioning software stack, I had a broken workflow, and I was missing the point somehow. Everything looked fine on the surface when I was working on demand generation solutions. 

Campaigns running consistently, traffic coming in, forms getting filled out, everything looked fine from the outside. Our demand generation marketing seemed to work fine. However, when I dug deeper into the pipeline, something felt off; the pipeline growth wasn’t matching up.

Since our projections were clearly not tallying, I decided to test a range of demand generation software over 30 days. 

The aim was to find out which demand gen tool will help me move from interest to pipeline and not just generate activity. I evaluated each tool based on the following parameters:

• Ease of use

• Scheduling

• Lead quality

• CRM integration

• Routing capability

• Pricing transparency

What stood out quite quickly was that demand generation software is built to create demand only, but not to convert it. That is where the gap exists, where the pipeline leaks.

I have built this guide to help you source the best demand generation software after I spent 30 days testing top tools. I’ll also be sharing the one tool that surprised me the most genuinely, so stay hooked till the end. 

What is demand generation software?

Demand generation is the process of creating awareness and interest in your product before someone is ready to buy it. Therefore, a demand generation software is what supports this entire process. The job of a demand generation tool is to simply fill your pipeline with leads who already understand your product.

Demand generation is different from lead generation; it goes a step earlier. Lead generation focuses on capturing contact details, while demand gen programs warm up the audience. This was the lead who was worth talking to before they shared any contact details or signed up.

The entire process is executed by attracting attention through content and ads, qualifying interest through forms, and routing leads to the right place. However, that’s not where it ends. Ideally, with the help of an ecosystem of content tools, scheduling tools, intent data platforms, ad tools, and CRM enrichment, that interest should convert into a real conversation.

How I tested these tools

To avoid a surface level comparisons, I went in-depth. I wanted to actually find out which tools had a real impact on the pipeline. So, I went beyond the marketing headlines; I actually tried and tested each demand gen tool in real conditions.

• I ran a campaign with them

• I captured leads

• I tried to turn those activities into booked conversations

I tried every tool for at least seven days. It gave me enough experience with each platform to move beyond the point of “first impression.” Honestly, the most difficult thing was migrating to a new software every week and learning how each platform works. Nonetheless, in my testing, I checked for the following criteria:

• The ease of setting up each tool

• Do the tools improve lead quality or just quantity

• How well does each tool handle routing and scheduling

• How does every tool integrate with a CRM

• And lastly, do the tools have transparent and fair pricing

Another criterion I focused on was whether the tools can actually generate ROI or just add more work. Because let's face it, all these demand gen software are complex, and none of them are just plug-and-play. 

All of them have a learning curve and require some effort to get them up and running. Without knowing if they’re worth your time and if they really drive impact or not, it makes no sense for you to also go through the ups and downs I did.

Demand generation software: quick comparison table

The best demand generation software I tested (ranked)

1. Cal.com: best overall demand generation platform

What it is: Cal.com is actually a modern and powerful scheduling platform that’s built for revenue teams. Despite not being a dedicated demand generation tool, it ended up being my favorite. It is by far the most underrated tool on this list.

My experience: Cal.com has the fastest “time to value” of any tool in my experience. It allowed me to set up routing rules in under 20 minutes. Before that, I got my booking page up and running in less than 10 minutes. 

Once the setup was complete, the leads coming in through my HubSpot forms were no longer just sitting in the CRM. Cal.com was creating booked meetings with every lead based on their importance and territory with the right representatives. 

There was no back and forth with the leads to set up a meeting time. My booking page was already displaying my available meeting times, and the leads just booked the time that worked for them. This system was fully automated and had no delays or drop-offs in the middle.

To ensure every team member was getting work fairly, Cal.com offered a robust round-robin assignment tool. It worked three ways: strict round robin, availability-based routing, and weightage-based routing. Cal.com also cleanly integrated with my CRM with its two-way sync feature. The leads showed up on Cal.com, and every booked meeting showed up under the right contact on my CRM.

Standout features

• Routing forms with conditional logic that direct leads instantly

• Round-robin and collective scheduling features

• Native level HubSpot and Salesforce integration

• Fully customizable and brandable booking pages

• Robust free plan with transparent tiered pricing

What I loved: Cal.com helps optimize the speed-to-meeting. This is one of the more important factors for lead conversion, and this is also where a lot of pipelines leak.

What could be better: You can’t manage campaigns, ads, or content through Cal.com because it is not an actual demand generation platform, so that could be better.

Pricing: Cal.com has a free forever plan for individuals. It also has three paid plans: teams, organizations, and enterprise, with paid plans starting at $12/user per month.

Verdict: My evaluation of demand generation tools was based on what actually drives the pipeline. In that regard, Cal.com is the best. It focuses on converting leads, and it has a unique way of achieving that. Turning interest into a booked conversation is what allows Cal.com to rank as the #1 demand generation software in my rankings.

2. HubSpot Marketing Hub: best all-in-one demand gen suite

What it is: HubSpot Marketing Hub is a part of the HubSpot suite of software. It is a powerful all-in-one platform that brings email marketing, ads, landing pages, forms, and CRM in a single system. Fun fact: Cal.com integrates seamlessly with the HubSpot Marketing Hub.

My experience: There’s a reason the HubSpot Marketing Hub ranks second in my rankings. It is because this is one of the most complete demand generation software programs I have tested. It offers all the features you expect from a demand generation marketing tool. However, that very benefit comes at a cost, as this demand generation tool has a serious learning curve.

The setup process was long and somewhat painful (read boring), but once everything was set up, I was happy to see how the features worked. From managing nurture sequences and tracking contacts to running multi-channel campaigns, I could do it all with the HubSpot Marketing Hub.

Standout features

• Supports email marketing and automation workflows

• Offers an integrated landing page and form builder

• Supports ad management with attribution tracking

• Built-in CRM that supports lead scoring

What I loved: Since this is an integrated system, everything is connected, and that’s wonderful. Your contacts, emails, campaigns, and deals all live under one roof. This makes it very easy to track everything from first touch to conversion.

What could be better: It is expensive and especially more so as your business scales.

Pricing: Free tier is available with paid plans starting at $9/user per month. That may not seem like a lot, but it is just the starter plan. The real paid plans with adequate features scale pricing exponentially for large teams and as the business grows.

Verdict: If you’re already using the HubSpot ecosystem, this is a strong choice. It has excellent integration capabilities, and that’s hard to beat.

3. Cognism: best for intent data and outbound demand gen

What it is: Cognism is a B2B data and intent platform. It is designed to help you identify and reach buyers. It works specifically on buyers who are already in the market.

My experience: The reason this demand generation software ranks third is that it manages data quality really well. The contact and company information it gathered felt reliable, which is key for any outbound campaign. 

Additionally, the tool also scored leads with intent signals. These signals help you score leads and decide which ones you should pursue. So, this way you can prioritize certain reach-outs and keep your outreach campaign budgets in check by going for buyers who are active.

My experience was decent with this tool, but I had one overwhelming conclusion: it is not very flexible. It is built specifically for outbound-focused teams.

Standout features

• Large B2B database with verified emails and phone numbers

• Buyer intent data is useful to prioritize outreach

• Allows CRM integrations and data enrichment (add-ons)

• Provides GDPR-friendly data

What I loved: The intent data is seriously useful and helped me save money on campaigns. The targeted outreach also showed better conversion rates than just playing the numbers game.

What could be better: This tool is geared towards enterprise teams, and as such, the pricing is on the higher side

Pricing: Non-transparent pricing, does not have a free plan. Quote-based pricing.

Verdict: Suited for outbound-focused teams with a good budget. The quote-based pricing makes it harder to know your costs before a sales conversation. And also, you should note that a lot of the advanced features are add-ons, which are charged separately. So, keep that in mind when you’re going for this demand generation software.

4. ZoomInfo: best for large-scale demand generation programs

What it is: ZoomInfo is again an enterprise-grade software that’s focused on B2B intelligence. It has some similarities with Cognism. ZoomInfo is built for large-scale demand generation and account-based marketing.

My experience: ZoomInfo has a massive database. It is actually one of the largest databases among all the options that I tested. If you want to play the numbers game, this is your tool right here. It can help you reach a high number of accounts. 

The size of the database also comes with complexity that doesn’t necessarily scale down. So, I think this tool won’t be very useful for smaller teams.

Standout features

• Huge B2B contact and company database

• Offers buyer signal tracking and intent data

• Supports ad targeting campaigns

• Offers deep CRM integration

What I loved: For enterprise teams that run sophisticated outbound campaigns, this scale is impressive and seriously useful.

What could be better: It’s expensive, complex, and the pricing isn’t transparent either, so that’s a problem in the evaluation, too.

Pricing: Quote-based pricing for enterprise-level teams.

Verdict: ZoomInfo is best suited for large revenue teams running data-heavy demand generation processes.

5. Leadfeeder: best for website visitor intelligence

What it is: Leadfeeder, which is now a part of Dealfront, is a tool that identifies which companies are visiting your website. It turns anonymous website traffic into actionable demand generation solutions with lead intent signals.

My experience: I have to say, I was really impressed with how easy it was to set up Leadfeeder. The plug-and-play experience is really nice, and it directly ties into Google Analytics, which makes it very easy to install. If you don’t use the Google Suite, you can also install it by running a simple script on your website. However, that would require some tech experience.

The information you get would be very useful, as you would see companies that are relevant to your leads are already visiting your website, but just not filling out forms. In such cases, you can follow up with them and try to convert them. That being said, Leadfeeder is more like a signal layer rather than a full demand generation software.

Standout features

• Company-level website visitor identification

• Lead scoring based on page views and interaction behavior

• CRM integration to provide lead signals

• Email alerts for high-intent visitors

What I loved: Turning anonymous website visitors into named companies is genuinely useful and valuable. It gives your outbound teams a clear focus on who they should target.

What could be better: Since it identifies companies and not individual contacts, it becomes difficult to enrich leads. It requires other tools or manual efforts to find the right person to reach out to.

Pricing: Has a free forever plan for solo users. Paid plans start at $115/month for up to 50 companies identified. The pricing scales as the number of companies Leadfeeder is able to identify for you.

Verdict: Leadfeeder is like an addition to your demand generation stack and not a replacement tool. This is why it ranks fifth in my listings.

6. Trigify: best for social demand generation

What it is: Trigify is among the demand gen tools that track social signals. This is done to identify potential buyers based on their online activity and engagement.

My experience: This tool was an interesting test because it approaches demand generation very differently from other demand generation tools. It tracks social activity of users to surface people and companies showing intent. 

This type of social-led demand is valuable for teams that use social media positioning actively. That said, Trigify felt pretty new and not as mature as some of the other platforms I tested.

Standout features

• Social intent signal tracking

• Lead identification from social activity

• Integration with outreach workflows

What I loved: The concept of Trigify is great, and it helps you find leads that you would most certainly have missed otherwise.

What could be better: It is useful to teams who use social media for lead generation. Also, it works more like an addition to your stack, rather than an all-in-one system.

Pricing: Does not have a free plan. Paid plans start at $40 per month for the starter plan.

Verdict: Trigify ranks last in my rankings because of its new status, niche use case, and supplementary role in the lead generation workflow. But overall, it has potential, and it will be interesting to see how this tool grows over the next few years.

Demand generation best practices I learned from testing

After testing each tool for at least one week, I spent a month and a half going through all the tools. I can’t be happier now that it's over because I really don’t like jumping between tools every few days and having to relearn everything. Nonetheless, there were some useful things I learnt during my time testing each tool. Here’s what I found interesting:

1. Route the leads you generate instantly: If you know someone’s in the market for your product and you have their contact information, reach out immediately. It helps conversion rates significantly because buyers don’t have a prejudice against brands. They just want the best value and someone whom they can trust. Reaching out first has a significantly higher chance of converting your leads.

2. Connect everything back to your CRM: In the end, your CRM is your business’s homescreen. So, unless everything routes back to the CRM, you will only have incomplete data when you’re reviewing your dashboard. This process also ensures that any lead info you’re gathering is immediately used to enrich the contacts in your CRM, giving you your own highly valuable company database.

3. Qualify leads before meetings: Use intent signals and any other information you can gather about the lead before the meeting. Your sales team already works tirelessly to convert leads. However, getting on a call with a cold lead would only cause time waste for your team and get you nothing. That’s why you always qualify leads before meetings so that every meeting has a better potential of converting leads into customers.

4. Keep your pricing transparent: Nobody likes filling out forms and being forced to get on a call just to know pricing, including you. You may feel that your competitors will outprice you, but that’s no reason to keep your pricing hidden. A competitor with transparent pricing is already outpricing you because they’re transparent, so you win nothing by putting your pricing behind four doors no one wants to unlock.

5. Keep it simple, stupid (KISS): This is a common acronym used by journalists and marketers. And that’s exactly what you should do. When you see an exciting new tool, don’t go adding it to your stack just because it may help you capture three more leads. The more complex you make your stack, the more chances there are that it will leak leads and data. That’s good for no one. Stick to the basics and have a solid lead pipeline that you know absolutely in and out.

My final recommendation

After trying and testing tools for a month and a half, I have to say, Cal.com made a big impact on me. It had the most immediate impact on my pipeline, and it actually helped me convert more leads. The thing about demand generation software is that it doesn’t capture only the high-intent leads. 

It captures everything, and then you either have to sort through them with intent signals or you just have to mass perform your campaign and hope for the best. However, even when leads interact with your outreach, you don’t have any information on their intent anymore, so in the end, the leads remain at the top of the funnel only.

Cal.com flips the script here. It works at the bottom of the funnel. It helps convert leads that already have intent. Getting on call directly with such leads and improving your response times has a significant impact on your revenue pipelines. It actually drives revenue, and that’s what matters in the end.

So, if you want to try a different and new approach to demand generation, try Cal.com. 

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

1. What is demand generation software?

Demand generation software helps businesses create awareness and attract interest from people and companies. It then converts interest into pipelines for conversion. Demand generation covers tools for content, outbound scheduling, intent data, and CRM enrichment. All these tools work together to fill and accelerate sales funnels.

2. What is the best demand generation software?

As per my month-and-a-half research, the best demand generation software is not a demand generation software at all. It is Cal.com, a modern and powerful scheduling platform. It can help create booked meetings with your inbound leads automatically, helping you convert leads and generate revenue. It directly affects your pipeline and drives revenue, which is why it is the best demand generation software, as per my research.

3. What is the difference between demand generation and lead generation?

Lead generation is the process of gathering contact information for interested parties. Demand generation is the process of building awareness in the market with campaigns. It creates interest among the potential market of buyers in your company. It just warms up the market and ensures buyers know about you before you reach out to them.

4. What are the best demand generation tools for small teams?

Most demand generation software focuses on enterprise businesses and large teams. Cal.com and HubSpot Marketing Hub are among the best options you can find for demand generation for small teams. HubSpot would outrank Cal.com slightly in terms of being an all-in-one demand generation platform. However, Cal.com takes the top spot with unbeatable and transparent pricing.

5. How do I build a demand generation program?

To create a demand generation program, you have to first start by defining your ICP. Then you should choose the tools that attract, qualify, and convert that audience. This is the basics of how to build a demand generation program. The key some teams miss here is not having a step that connects demand to conversion. So, make sure you choose a tool that can help you fill that gap, like Cal.com.

6. What is the demand generation process?

The demand generation process typically involves the following steps:

• Awareness

• Engagement

• Qualification

• Conversion

The demand generation software support leads through each of these steps, from content and ads to routing forms and scheduling. You need to build the right software stack to get the most benefits and convert the demand you’re able to generate.