The executive summary
If you want to build a successful lead generation strategy, you’ll need long-form content. Here’s how to create effective long-form content that has the right impact on your prospects, and your business.
The ability to prove performance and ROI through a deep understanding of attribution, pipeline data and revenue is now a key part of the modern marketer’s toolkit.
We’ve moved on from worrying about vanity metrics like impressions and clicks, with marketing managers now expected to actively generate qualified leads and drive revenue. But this can be a tall task without the right strategy in place.
For some companies, the wrong approach to lead generation can make it difficult for marketing teams to create optimized content that turns an interested prospect into a qualified lead.
For others, a lack of insight into content performance can leave leads stagnating in the database, as marketers struggle to match them to relevant follow-up content to guide them on toward a sales conversation.
It’s all about building a strategy that guides prospects along their entire journey through carefully curated, high-performing content—with the right technology in place to track and capitalize on reader engagement at every stage.
Short-form content is great; it’s quick and cost-effective to produce, and easy to splash across channels.
But the real results come from combining those quick hits with more detailed, focused long-form content that captures, keeps, and converts prospects’ attention.
In our recent survey, respondents with successful strategies reported creating content with 42% higher word counts than less successful marketers.
Long-form is ideal for delivering in-depth thought leadership and educating prospects. However, with traditional formats like PDFs and scrolling web pages, it can be difficult to track engagement metrics and encourage people to interact with your content beyond a quick skim.
With marketing teams increasingly taking on more responsibility for the pipeline, now’s the perfect time to invest in new types of long-form content, using new tools and approaches to maximize interactivity and insight.
In this guide, we’ll explore how to create engaging long-form content for lead generation that gives you the insights you need to understand the impact of your campaigns and continuously improve performance.
Jump straight to the section you're most interested in.
Why focus on lead generation?
Getting started with long-form lead generation
Where do you fit in the market?
Echoing the voice of the customer
Mapping the customer journey
How to design content that really resonates
Where to distribute your lead-generation content
Your content’s live. Now what?
The wrap-up
