Choosing a Demand Generation System

Demand Generation Software is a hot market at the moment. Demand Gen systems can add a lot of value, especially for high-value sales processes. This can be for enterprise software companies, corporate and private banking, but also for ticket sales for sports: I never realized NBA season’s tickets were that expensive!

To help you find the right Demand Generation tools, I’ve just updated my list of Demand Generation Systems. It gives an overview of all Demand Generation vendors that I know of. If I’ve missed some, please let me know and I’ll add them to the list.

The list is not meant as a thorough review: for that, you may want to buy the Raab Guide on Demand Generation Systems by David Raab. He recently published a list of low-cost demand generation systems, which may also be interesting.

If you’re looking for selection criteria, please take a look at Maria Pergolino’s blog: vendor comparisons part 1 and part 2 (part 3 is not published yet).

Last week Laura Ramos of Forrester also gave her view on the Lead Management Automation market, which is also a good read. She does not only mention Demand Generation vendors, but also other marketing automation solution providers.

The future of the Demand Generation market

If I look at the long list of players in this market, I’d almost wonder when the first one goes belly up. However, it seems as if the market is booming, and several vendors are reporting record results (for example Market2Lead, Pardot, Marketo, Marketbright).

Is it still possible for new Demand Generation vendors to enter the market in 2009?

Please consider sharing this post via the buttons on the left. Or subscribe via RSS or subscribe via email.

12 thoughts on “Choosing a Demand Generation System

  1. David Raab

    Hi Jep,
    New entrants still crop up. It may actually be easier to establish mind share now that people understand the concept a little better. Of course, money for start-ups will be tight unless we can convince Obama to make it part of the latest rescue package. Hmm, demand generation / economic stimulus: it’s not really that much of a stretch.

    On the other hand, vendors can grow quickly and still lose money. Lots of price-cutting out there, I’m told.

    Thanks for mentioning the Guide!

    David

    Reply
  2. Scott Mersy

    Demand Generation is indeed a hot market and, as you mentioned in this post, includes even more vendors than mentioned on your list, including my company, Genius.com, which won in the Demand Generation category for best Salesforce.com App of 2008 (http://is.gd/hlvp).

    The B2B buying process/cycle has lots of moving parts with lots of legacy pain around manual processes, sales & marketing misalignment, slow time to execution due to reliance on IT, etc. There are vendors who build a solution to meet needs in certain areas of the cycle. They then grow their solutions to cover more of the overall process as customers tell them, for example, “I love your solution for list management, but I sure which you could automate follow-up with my list based on their interactions with me.” There have been large numbers of these types of conversations going on between customers and vendors and the result is that Demand Generation solutions (aka Marketing Automation, aka Lead Nurturing, aka Lead Management, etc) contains an ever-growing set of vendors.

    It’s an exciting time to be in this market. It’s also great for customers who have a variety of solutions to consider. A crucial part of the decision-making process that sometimes gets overlooked in feature check-box bake-offs is the robustness, scalability, reliability, and data capabilities of solutions. This is complex stuff with a need for reliable up time, fast execution, excellence in email deliverability, and end users who demand their results quickly if not in real-time. It’s even more difficult to deliver all this as a true SaaS with instant-on rather than a complex implementation cycle like in traditional enterprise software. It’ll be interesting to see how some of these vendors scale as they start to get a critical mass of users and activity on the system.

    Reply
  3. Mike Pilcher

    Jeb

    to comment on where Marketbright is focused. David Raab has summed it up nicely in his recent blog. Marketbright is focused on the needs of customers who require complex nurture flows. The more products, the more vertical markets, the more price points, basically the larger the customer base and the more the requirement to segment offerings, the better Marketbright does. If you just want an email plus tool, then we can meet requirements but there are some simplistic tools out there that do exactly that. Our value rises the more people want to target their offering, which is typically larger companies.

    Hope this helps identify our focus.

    We also focus on Demand Discovery. We believe that B2B Marketing is much more than about pounding out emails, it is about finding out where your prospects are congregating and dropping breadcrumbs of information that lead them to your company. That can be Direct Mail, SEO/SEM, TradeShows, Webinars, Social Networking, Blogs, Analysts. Marketbright has solutions for all these and more.

    Reply
  4. Pingback: Is it Time for Marketing Automation OR Marketing Transformation? | Best Traffic Tips

  5. my blog

    And Blackberry still delivers soe excellent business functionality on its devices.Thee
    main reason behind the delay in launching is i – OS 5. The deal comes out as an outcome off Apple’s collaboration with most distinguished mobile network service providers such ass Vodafone, Virgin, O2, Orange,
    T Mobiile orr Three Mobile.

    Reply
  6. kleines wohnzimmer einrichten ikea

    naturally like your web-site however you need to test the spelling on quite a few of
    your posts. Several of them are rife with spelling issues and I to find it very troublesome to
    tell the reality on the other hand I will certainly come again again.

    Reply
  7. componentes en madrid de jvc

    Desde neveras hasta aire acondicionado; y pasando por lavadoras, secadoras y lavavajillas, entre otros muchísimos aparatos. Con todo ello, conocemos a Siemens como una de las mejores marcas de electrodomésticos que existen en la actualidad. Nuestro servicio de reparación oficial en Madrid solucionamos todo tipo de averías en cualquier modelo de lavadoras Siemens. Además, los últimos modelos de lavadoras Siemens están dotados del motor iQDrive, totalmente silencioso y eficaz.

    Reply
  8. 420 clothing

    Good read. I find out something new and difficult on sites I stumbleupon everyday. It’s always helpful to read simple things written content from the copy writers and use something of their online sites.

    Reply
  9. kush cloting

    Good read. I find out something totally new and difficult on personal blogs I stumbleupon everyday. It will always be exciting to read articles posted by internet writers and use a little from other web pages.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *