2025-05-09 07:38:35
Last updated: May 8, 2025
Our 2025 report on Cost Per Lead by Industry was prepared by our marketing research team, based on data collected between January 2022 through December 2024.
Cost Per Lead (CPL) is defined as the gross marketing cost expended to acquire a lead for your business. It can be calculated by dividing your total marketing spend by your total number of new leads acquired from a specific channel or group of channels, as shown in the equation below:
A lead is defined as a direct connection via e-mail, phone or in-person introduction to a prospective customer interested in purchasing a product or service. The cost of the lead is incurred regardless of the eventual outcome of the discussion, which is distinct from customer acquisition cost, which measures the price of acquiring closed customers and includes the cost of sales.
Cost Per Lead is a valuable but slippery metric because quality varies widely by acquisition cost. For example, some lead referral channels provide warm leads – engaged prospects who are well-primed to buy from the right company – while certain SDRs we’ve come across are selling cold leads that convert a low percentage of the time. It is necessary to carefully track and measure each paid and organic lead generation channel in which you invest, narrowing your investments to the ones that produce the customers with the highest lifetime value, rate of referral, and overall satisfaction relative to their acquisition cost.
Below, we’ve parsed our dataset to display the average CPL for 30 industries, broken out by paid vs organic.
| Industry | Average Paid CPL | Average Organic CPL | Average CPL (Blended) |
| Addiction Treatment | $380 | $213 | $297 |
| Aerospace & Aviation | $469 | $277 | $373 |
| Automotive | $295 | $271 | $283 |
| B2B SaaS | $310 | $164 | $237 |
| Biotech | $274 | $236 | $255 |
| Business Insurance | $460 | $388 | $424 |
| Construction | $280 | $174 | $227 |
| Cybersecurity | $411 | $404 | $406 |
| eCommerce | $98 | $83 | $91 |
| Engineering | $371 | $201 | $287 |
| Entertainment | $116 | $111 | $114 |
| Environmental Services | $346 | $207 | $278 |
| Financial Services | $761 | $555 | $653 |
| Fintech | $490 | $413 | $452 |
| Healthcare | $401 | $320 | $361 |
| Higher Education | $1,261 | $705 | $982 |
| Hotels & Resorts | $308 | $224 | $266 |
| HVAC | $115 | $69 | $92 |
| Industrial IOT | $590 | $404 | $497 |
| IT & Managed Services | $617 | $385 | $503 |
| Legal Services | $784 | $516 | $649 |
| Manufacturing | $691 | $415 | $553 |
| Oil & Gas | $772 | $502 | $637 |
| PCB Design & Manufacturing | $480 | $271 | $376 |
| Pharmaceutical | $124 | $135 | $131 |
| Real Estate | $480 | $416 | $448 |
| Software Development | $680 | $510 | $591 |
| Solar | $217 | $196 | $206 |
| Staffing & Recruiting | $476 | $518 | $497 |
| Transportation & Logistics | $670 | $505 | $588 |
There are many lead generation channels available to businesses, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. As a general rule, organic channels will result in higher long-term ROI than paid channels, but require a longer lead time before they produce results. This higher ROI is due to both their scalability and because the leads generated through organic channels are lower-funnel than those from paid ones. As a result, the most effective lead generation strategy is to use organic channels such as SEO and industry speaking engagements as the primary driver of new leads, while leveraging paid channels such as PPC and trade shows when in need of short-term growth.
Setting up in-house lead generation can be a difficult process, and many companies choose to outsource this task to a dedicated agency while building their internal team. If you’d like to do so, you can learn more about our services by reaching out here.
2025-05-09 06:38:26
Last updated: May 8, 2025
What kind of ROI should you expect from an SEO campaign in 2025? Using proprietary data from SEO campaigns that took place between Q1 2021 and Q4 2024, we’ve broken down the answer to this question by industry, further segmenting it by return on advertising spend (ROAS), ROI, and time to break-even.
The following ROI statistics represent the ROAS and ROI of SEO averaged over a three-year period. The SEO campaigns that generated this data were thought leadership-based, meaning they involved ongoing publishing of keyword-targeted, high-quality website pages, split ~65/35 between blogs and landing pages.
While ROAS isn’t a commonly calculated statistic for SEO campaigns, we wanted to provide a direct comparison against a commonly used PPC statistic. We calculate SEO ROAS using the following formula: Gross Return on SEO Campaign ÷ SEO Campaign Costs.
Typically, the costs of an SEO campaign are what a company pays our agency (~$120,000 / year) plus a share of the salary of all the people interacting with our firm on the client side. The final ROAS number is a ratio of how much gross revenue should be generated from every dollar spent on SEO.
Likewise, we calculate SEO ROI using the following formula: Net Profit from SEO Campaign ÷ SEO Campaign Costs. We then multiply by 100 to get the percentage return you can expect to see from SEO.
We’ve also included a time to break-even statistic, which is the number of months it takes for your net revenue from an SEO campaign to exceed your spend on that campaign.
| Industry | Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) | ROI |
Time to Break-Even |
| Addiction Treatment | 8.90 | 736% | 8 months |
| B2B SaaS | 8.75 | 702% | 7 months |
| Biotech | 9.20 | 788% | 8 months |
| Construction | 7.40 | 681% | 5 months |
| eCommerce | 3.65 | 317% | 16 months |
| Financial Services | 11.10 | 1,031% | 9 months |
| Higher Education & College | 10.40 | 994% | 13 months |
| HVAC Services | 8.15 | 678% | 6 months |
| Industrial IoT | 9.85 | 866% | 7 months |
| Commercial Insurance | 9.05 | 758% | 9 months |
| IT Staffing | 7.00 | 612% | 10 months |
| Legal Services | 6.15 | 526% | 14 months |
| Manufacturing | 9.50 | 813% | 9 months |
| Medical Device | 12.85 | 1,183% | 13 months |
| Oil & Gas | 10.55 | 906% | 10 months |
| PCB Design & Manufacturing | 12.40 | 1,101% | 11 months |
| Pharmaceutical | 9.85 | 826% | 9 months |
| Real Estate | 15.10 | 1,389% | 10 months |
| Solar Energy | 9.20 | 770% | 9 months |
When a marketing leader is setting expectations for the ROI their company will receive on an SEO campaign, they must consider the comprehensiveness and quality of the SEO campaign itself. Below are the three most common SEO services along with their ROAS, ROI, and time to break-even.
A technical SEO campaign is one in which an SEO consultancy enacts technical fixes to your website, typically relating to speed, security, and mobile optimization; performs keyword research; and rewrites the title tags on your website using the results of their keyword research.
A basic content marketing SEO campaign is one in which an SEO agency performs cursory keyword research using an online tool such as SEMrush; and produces ~4 blog articles per month of average quality relative to your competition.
A thought leadership SEO campaign is one in which an SEO agency creates a strategic SEO plan, rank ordering keywords by value and organizing them into hubs and spokes; researches your target audience’s needs and pain points, transactional behavior, and search intent; and produces 6-8 high-quality content pages per month with an aim toward producing new MQLs.
| SEO Service | Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) | ROI |
Time to Break-Even |
|
Technical SEO (Technical fixes, keyword research, title tag rewrites) |
1.35 | 117% | 6 months |
|
Basic Content Marketing (Average quality keyword research & blog articles ~4x/mo) |
1.05 | 16% | 15 months |
|
Thought Leadership & SEO (Strategic planning, high end content ~8x/mo, focus on marketing KPIs) |
9.10 | 748% | 9 months |
Positive ROI in an SEO campaign is achieved over a 6-12 month period, with peak results in the second or third year of the campaign. Here is what a typical B2B SEO campaign looks like in terms of gross revenue generated on an annual basis:
Seeing this kind of ROI is a result of content quality remaining high throughout an SEO campaign, a strong adherence to search intent, and the lifetime value of a customer being relatively high ($10,000+). The best candidates for thought leadership-style SEO are companies with high-value clients, such as those in financial services, industrial manufacturing, real estate, or B2B SaaS.
We hope the above statistics are useful to you in establishing benchmarks for your own SEO campaigns. If you’re concerned about your ROI meeting your standards for an SEO campaign, you may wish to contract with an agency such as ours to conduct a thought leadership SEO campaign. You can reach out to us here.
If you’d like a pdf copy of this report, reach out to us here.
To help you achieve the above ROIs, we recommend reading our reports and guides on SEO benchmarks and conversion rates:
2025-05-09 06:37:41
Last updated: May 8, 2025
What is the average conversion rate in each B2B industry? This is the question we began researching more than ten years ago, and which you’ll find answered in this report.
The conversion rates below are the result of research conducted and collected by our SEO firm, drawing from client data gathered between April 2020 and March 2025.
A conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to a company’s website that performed a conversion action, divided by total unique website visitors as shown in the formula below:
For example, a B2B SaaS provider may have three potential customers download a free trial of their software out of 100 unique visitors on their website in a given time period—a conversion rate of 3%. This is one of the first steps in the customer acquisition funnel as shown below:
As shown in the image above, this initial conversion from website visitor to known lead also represents the point at which marketing to that prospective customer must shift its focus from lead generation to lead nurturing.
In this section, we present the average conversion rate for 25 B2B industries. You can use these benchmarks to compare your company’s marketing performance with the average performance of your competitors. Next to each conversion rate we’ve also included a suggestion that comes from our experience working with clients in that specific industry.
| Industry | Average Conversion Rate | Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Strategy |
| Addiction Treatment | 2.1% | Publish case studies and personal stories (while protecting patient privacy) that describe how patients have worked through their addictions, sharing on social media simultaneously. |
| B2B SaaS | 1.1% | Create a presentation deck on the problem they’re attempting to solve with your software, and automatically send to customers that submit their e-mail address. |
| Biotech | 1.8% | Provide white papers and case studies describing the advantages and innovative results of your research. |
| Commercial Insurance | 1.7% | Use blog articles that contain ROI tables to illustrate how insurance is worth its price in situations businesses are likely face. |
| Construction | 1.9% | Design geotargeted, conversion-optimized landing pages for each service and subservice. |
| Engineering | 1.2% | Have a section of the website dedicated to use case pages showing how you’ve created solutions for problems your customers have faced. |
| Environmental Services | 1.3% | Create content “pods” of expertise around the major keywords that indicate an interest in your services, with each pod containing ~10 subpages tackling a more specific keyword within the pod’s container. |
| Financial Services | 1.9% | Use a FAQ approach, ensuring every question and answer has its own page, targeting specific, low-in-the-funnel searches around the type of services your company provides. Wealth management companies should also offer insights on specific investment and wealth preservation strategies such as Section 754 elections, featuring each insight in a blog post. |
| Heavy Equipment | 1.7% | Create a series of Capabilities pages featuring your equipment. |
| Higher Education & College | 2.8% | Create a pillar page containing personal success stories from students, outcome statistics, and graphics showcasing the degree program’s value not just to the student, but to communities. |
| HVAC Services | 3.1% | Geotarget all landing pages and blog posts for the area or areas served along with transactional keywords targeted to local business owners. |
| Industrial IoT | 2.6% | Utilizing thought leadership and white papers that describe the near future (1-2 years from now) and the ways in which successful businesses will modernize using industrial IoT. |
| IT & Managed Services | 1.5% | Create a series of cost-benefit analysis articles that explain why outsourcing IT is more effective than hiring an in-house. |
| Legal Services | 7.4% | Create in-depth, branded guides for the website that offer an appetizer portion of analysis around recent or highly searched for laws. |
| Manufacturing | 2.2% | Publish detailed product pages that highlight quality, price, and the ways in which the product exceeds industry benchmarks, including customer logos if possible. |
| Medical Device | 1.6% | Build a series of problem and solution pages targeting key issues that medical professionals face, citing clinical research on improved patient outcomes. |
| Oil & Gas | 2.5% | Attract in-company influencers by targeting technical keywords that only they would search for. Content should be very much “in the weeds.” |
| PCB Design & Manufacturing | 2.4% | Be a leader in educational content, publishing blog articles on the situations your target audience faces that necessitate the use of your products or services. |
| Pharmaceutical | 1.9% | Illustrate your products’ value to physicians, pharmacists, or other target markets using summaries of the health studies conducted on your products, highlighting favorable patient outcomes. |
| Real Estate | 2.7% | Write blog articles that discuss the current state of the local market along with trends in pricing and value, keeping these pieces updated quarterly. |
| Software Development | 1.1% | Create an FAQ that lists common pain points businesses face and how investing in custom software promotes efficiency and generates ROI. |
| Solar Energy | 1.8% | Given the prevalence of local searches in this industry, create original geotargeted landing pages based on local keyword searches. |
| Staffing & Recruiting | 2.9% | Target location keywords for each of the markets you work in, each type of employer, and each job position you help fill. |
| Transportation & Logistics | 1.4% | Produce custom infographics showing the value of your services over the competition, including price, durability, and logistical advantages. |
In case it’s useful, I’ve also compiled the conversion rates into a single chart. This helps you see the scale of the difference in conversion rate between, say, Education companies and Legal Services businesses.
As businesses grow, it’s typical to deal with low conversion rates, and the process of improving these rates is called conversion rate optimization (CRO for short). Even Salesforce, with its stellar reputation, converts less than 5% of its traffic into qualified leads. Most B2B conversion rates aren’t higher than this, particularly in industries with longer sales cycles. But this isn’t a bad thing. In my 17 years studying conversion rates, I’ve found that the biggest issue for B2B marketers is simply understanding what conversion rate to expect at scale. From there, if you have a good marketing team, it’s rather systematic to push leads into the top of the funnel.
This confusion is exemplified by many of our SEO clients, particularly those in tech manufacturing (semiconductors, chips, circuit boards). Given their target audience of large enterprises, they have sales cycles of 6-12 months. Many of their marketers calculate conversion rate on a year basis, meaning that sales that started in Q4 2023, for instance, and didn’t close until Q2 2024, aren’t included in their conversion rate figure. This is a problem of interpretation, not conversion.
If you’re analyzing the data correctly and you actually have a low conversion rate, the reasons are likely too specific to your business to opine on in an overview article like this one. However, conversion issues tend to come down to a (1) lack of understanding what your target audience members genuinely desire from a website like yours or (2) lack of execution on satisfying these desires. Too many websites fall prey to things like:
With our clients, we begin by refining their website’s UI so it’s as accessible and easy to read as possible, highlighting the information the target audience member would want to see first (using plenty of white space around each text or visual element). We then devise a thought leadership content strategy that utilizes the corpus of content organizational technique to establish your website as an authority in Google’s search results for the most transactional keywords in your niche or market. Our goal is to lift conversion rate by .5% – 1% in 6 months.
Once you’ve optimized your web pages for conversion, it makes sense to return to generating new B2B leads for the top of your marketing funnel. This can be accomplished through advertising, but the ROI of thought-leadership based SEO is among the highest of all B2B lead generation strategies. Here are some quick tips with links to longer reads, should the subject be of interest to you:
Overall, increasing conversion rate is a full time job, so unless you have this expertise in house, you may wish to consider working with a firm that understands how to improve conversions for your specific industry. That is what we do at First Page Sage. If you’d like to learn more, feel free to get in touch.
For more information on B2B marketing and conversion rates, see our other reports:
2025-05-08 01:27:13
Our team recently conducted a study analyzing customer retention rates across sixteen major industries. Our study was designed to determine how effectively companies retained customers year-over-year and to provide a sound benchmark for firms to use when comparing their own performance.
We expected significant variation within industries, particularly between B2B services models and highly commoditized retail markets, and developed a series of normalization adjustments for variables as diverse as contract duration, voluntary churn, and service bundling. This report summarizes results, methodology, and strategic conclusions drawn from the data.
This report aggregates data from 14 industry-leading sources like Exploding Topics, Sprinklr, Vena Solutions, G2, and Demand Sage. Customer retention data are all calendar-year data from January 2023 to March 2025 to most accurately reflect post-pandemic behavior. Data were taken wherever possible from industry studies, CRM platform benchmarks, and firm proprietary retention analysis reports.
Customer Retention Rate (CRR) was determined by using the below standard formula:
To ensure uniformity across industries with varying customer engagement patterns, we standardized timeframes into annualized retention and separated by industry vertical by using the NAICS-coded aggregations. Overall, this analysis encompasses 10,214 firms with coverage in North America, Western Europe, and select APAC markets.
In the table below, we rank-ordered the sectors we studied by average customer retention rate.
| Industry | Average Retention Rate | Industry Performance vs. Mean |
| Media & Professional Services | 84% | +8.5% |
| Automotive and Transportation | 83% | +7.5% |
| Insurance | 83% | +7.5% |
| Information Technology Services | 81% | +5.5% |
| Construction & Engineering | 80% | +4.5% |
| Financial Services | 78% | +2.5% |
| Telecommunications | 78% | +2.5% |
| Healthcare | 77% | +1.5% |
| B2B SaaS | 77% | +1.5% |
| Banking | 75% | 0% |
| Consumer Services | 67% | -8.5% |
| Manufacturing | 67% | -8.5% |
| Retail | 63% | -12.5% |
| Tourism, Hotels, Restaurants | 55% | -20.5% |
The leaders in our customer retention analysis were Media & Professional Services (84%), Insurance (83%), and Automotive & Transport (83%), all of which benefit from high switching costs and therefore a built-in incentive to continue services. At the opposite end were the Restaurant, Travel, and Hospitality (55%) and Retail (63%) sectors, with commoditised products and constant price-based churn.
The inverse of churn is retention, and industries that have high churn (e.g., Credit and Cable Services) are likely to have systemic User Experience flaws, price volatility, or suboptimal loyalty infrastructure.
| Industry | Typical Churn Rate | Notes |
| Financial/Credit | 25% | Low price sensitivity and low differentiation |
| Cable & ISP | 25% | Poor customer care, price escalation |
| General Retail | 24% | Highly competitive, value-driven |
| Online Shopping | 22% | Amazon effect, low switching costs |
| Telecom / Wireless | 21% | Carrier-hopping, contract fatigue |
| Tourism | 18% | Cyclical demand, and with high purchase prices |
| Big Box Electronics | 11% | Niche programs yield better-performing KPIs |
Across high-performing industries, the retention levers correlated with >80% annual retention were:
Industries with poorer retention had less (a) formal use of data, (b) loyalty infrastructure, or (c) ongoing CX programs.
Early indicators for 2026 are:
2025-05-03 07:10:21
In this report, we rank the top contractor SEO agencies in 2025 based on 7 factors:
The top scoring agencies in our analysis are presented in the table below:
| Rank | Company | Year Established | Founder- Led | Leadership Experience | Average Review Score | Median Employee Tenure | Notable Clients | Approach to SEO |
| 1 | First Page Sage |
2009 | Yes | 4.8 | 4.9 | 4.9 Years | Rainbow Roofing & Restoration, Closet America, Security 101 | Uses high-quality content to deliver high long-term ROI by positioning contractors as industry leaders |
| 2 | Focus Digital | 2018 | Yes | 4.3 | 4.8 | No data | Pacific Aire, Twin Home Experts, Stego Wrap | Combines Google Ads with SEO to deliver lead generation for small business contractors |
| 3 | Effective Media Solutions | 2005 | Yes | 4.7 | 5.0 | 2.8 years | Ross & Witmer, Wally Falkes, MVHC | Combines SEO with traditional advertising such as TV and direct mail |
| 4 | LeadHub | 2011 | Yes | 4.3 | 4.7 | 3.3 Years | Green Heating & Cooling, Kinetico Water Systems, Champion AC | Integrates SEO with CRM optimization and brand storytelling for home services contractors |
| 5 | Lemon Seed | 2019 | Yes | 3.9 | 4.5 | 1.8 Years | Edelman, Green Street HVAC, Air Solutions Heating & Air Conditioning | Merges SEO with strategic brand development and seasonal service planning for contractors seeking both visibility and identity |
| 6 | HVAC Webmasters | 2013 | Yes | 3.9 | 4.6 | 5.3 years | Cajun Comfort, Executive Heating & Air Conditioning, Solace Heating & Air | Specializes in providing SEO and website management for HVAC contractors |
| 7 | Contractor Gorilla | 2008 | Yes | 3.9 | 4.3 | No data | Zazzara Construction, Dynamic Remodel & Repair, Billy Huey + Associates | Emphasizes web design to increase conversion rates from organic traffic |
| 8 | LocaliQ | 2008 | No | 3.5 | 3.9 | 3.6 Years | Kitsap Garage Door Co, Rock’n-It Quality Masonry Work, Pala Brothers Furniture | Offers SEO as one of many digital marketing services for local contractors |
First Page Sage is the leading contractor SEO agency in the US, and their methodology emphasizes publishing authoritative content to establish clients as industry leaders. While they work mainly with midsize B2B contractors, their approach has proven adaptable for smaller companies as well.
They begin engagements with a 4-6 week strategic alignment period that includes in-depth keyword research, content creation, and technical SEO analysis. First Page Sage then moves into the main phase of their campaign, during which they publish high-quality content on their client’s website that helps their client build trust with potential customers, leading to increased engagement and conversions over time.
| Summary of Online Reviews |
| First Page Sage teams are “organized and communicative.” They deliver “high organic ROI” driven by “unparalleled” SEO content. |
Focus Digital specializes in SEO for small businesses contractors through a dual approach that combines short-term lead generation with long-term SEO strategies. They begin by identifying high-value keywords and launching Google Ads campaigns to generate quick leads, while simultaneously developing a robust SEO plan to improve organic search rankings over time.
Their methodology includes creating strategic content, optimizing websites, and nurturing leads through targeted campaigns. Focus Digital emphasizes transparency and sets realistic ROI expectations, ensuring that contractors can confidently plan and budget for sustainable growth.
| Summary of Online Reviews |
| Being “in a constant state of innovation” is how Focus Digital is described. Yet, the company “meticulously focuses” on producing consistent ROI results. |
Effective Media Solutions offers comprehensive marketing services tailored to HVAC, plumbing, and electrical contractors. With over two decades of industry experience, they understand contractors’ unique challenges and provide SEO strategies that enhance online visibility and drive lead generation.
Their approach integrates SEO with traditional marketing channels, such as TV, radio, and direct mail, to create cohesive campaigns that effectively reach target audiences. By optimizing websites, managing PPC campaigns, and leveraging local service ads, Effective Media Solutions helps contractors attract and retain customers in competitive markets.
| Summary of Online Reviews |
| Effective is known for being “attentive, clear, helpful, thorough and very professional” and “proactive” for their HVAC clients. |
Leadhub is a full-service marketing agency that partners with home service companies, including HVAC, plumbing, and electrical contractors, to enhance their digital presence. Their SEO strategies focus on meticulous content optimization and brand storytelling to improve search engine rankings and attract qualified leads. By integrating SEO with web development, CRM integration, and targeted advertising, Leadhub creates marketing solutions that drive revenue growth.
| Summary of Online Reviews |
| While working with LeadHub, we achieved a “noticeable increase in internet sales.” Their team “always delivers” on projects. |
Lemon Seed Marketing specializes in offering marketing services for contractors, including HVAC, plumbing, and electrical businesses. They understand the nuances of the service industry, such as seasonality and maintenance plans, and tailor their SEO strategies accordingly to maximize online visibility and lead generation.
Their holistic approach combines SEO with branding, social media, and email marketing to create cohesive campaigns that resonate with target audiences. As a full-service marketing vendor, Lemon Seed ensures consistent messaging across multiple platforms.
| Summary of Online Reviews |
| Lemon Seed is known for having very “knowledgeable people” who are “very professional.” Clients report being “very happy with” the business relationship. |
HVAC Webmasters specializes in SEO services for HVAC contractors, leveraging over 14 years of industry experience to deliver consistent results. Their comprehensive approach includes custom website development, content creation, and local SEO optimization to improve search engine rankings and generate high-quality leads.
| Summary of Online Reviews |
| HVAC Webmasters provide “great service.” Teams are “very knowledgeable.” |
Contractor Gorilla specializes in web design and digital marketing for contractors, including general contractors, remodelers, and home builders. Their SEO strategies focus on creating high-converting websites optimized for search engines to increase visibility and drive lead generation.
By combining SEO with PPC advertising and content marketing, Contractor Gorilla develops comprehensive digital marketing plans tailored to each contractor’s unique needs. Their emphasis on user experience and conversion optimization ensures that website visitors are effectively guided through the sales funnel.
| Summary of Online Reviews |
| Clients say they receive “many leads” from Contractor Gorilla websites. I “recommend them” and plan to work with them for “many more years.” |
LocaliQ offers digital marketing solutions for local businesses, including contractors, by leveraging data-driven strategies to improve online visibility. Their services focus on optimizing existing content, managing local listings, and implementing targeted advertising campaigns to attract and retain customers.
By integrating SEO with other digital marketing channels, such as social media and email marketing, LocaliQ provides contractors with comprehensive solutions to grow their businesses. Their emphasis on analytics and performance tracking ensures that marketing efforts are aligned with business objectives and deliver measurable results.
| Summary of Online Reviews |
| LocaliQ “manages engagements effectively,” resulting in “jumps in revenue and profits” for their clients. |
2025-05-03 04:46:09
Last updated: May 2, 2025
While marketing and advertising provide businesses an effective way to generate leads in the short-term, content marketing creates long-term, reliable growth and high ROI.
To use content marketing effectively for lead generation, you must create a variety of content types, including blogs, product pages, white papers, and case studies. This content—optimized for Google’s evolving search algorithm—targets users at different stages in their buying journey. For example, blogs are used to target people doing research on Google who probably haven’t heard of your company. When written excellently and targeted to the searcher’s intent, they also enable businesses to reach the top spots in Google’s search results without having to pay for ad placement. In contrast to blogs, longer content such as white papers and case studies are used to engage visitors more deeply, acquiring their contact information for e-mail marketing and warming them up towards a sale.
This guide will help you understand the spectrum of content professionals create for digital marketing purposes and how to use each type of content to generate leads.
To explain how content marketing attracts leads and moves them through the conversion pathway, we’ll begin with a general overview of the marketing funnel.
The diagram below lays out the 3 stages of marketing conversion accompanied by the content types that marketers use in that stage to push visitors through the funnel.
During the Discovery stage, content marketers earn inclusion in Google’s search results by creating excellent, keyword-targeted content. Businesses can also utilize the complementary marketing channel of social media during this stage by sharing content on social channels as it is published. (NOTE: Social media doesn’t generate leads, but it really helps in warming them up once they’re aware of your brand.)
The best content marketing attracts users by addressing their problems, needs, and interests.
The next stage in the conversion pathway, Nurturing, occurs after visitors have discovered your company. While it may seem like marketing is about getting visitors to notice you, an equally important part is building trust with those visitors, as the vast majority (often 99%+) will not convert on the first visit. Your goal is to get visitors to either (a) visit another page on your site; (b) sign up for your email list; or (c) follow your company on social media. By doing anything more than “land and leave,” visitors confirm their interest in your company’s offerings to some degree.
Effective nurturing means not just having calls-to-action that push visitors to one of the 3 goals above, but also interesting, personalized content that makes them want to learn more and follow your brand.
Although conversion can occur at any point in a customer’s journey, it typically follows directly a visitor consuming content during Stage 2. That content – a white paper for instance – will have a call-to-action within it, moving the visitor further along within Stage 2 (e.g. to a Product page, or perhaps a Webinar) or directly to a conversion page.
| Step 1 | Define your target audience & create personas |
| Step 2 | Determine your target audience’s preferred content types |
| Step 3 | Develop a keyword strategy |
| Step 4 | Create high-quality, targeted content for your audience along the entire funnel |
Before creating quality, targeted content, you must identify the most valuable target audience for your business. To accomplish this, interview your existing customers, asking them:
The answers to these questions allow you to create detailed customer personas of your audience. Personas are in-depth descriptions of a fictional person that serves as a representative member of the target audience. Here is an example of a customer persona:
Your business will likely have several target audiences, and while you should create personas for each, you must also prioritize them by expected customer lifetime value. Focusing most of your content on 3-5 personas often allows your team to target the most relevant groups without overly diluting their focus.
The customer personas you create will give you insight into what type of content your audience values, and therefore, what type of content your team should aim to create. If your primary audience consists of more junior staff at another company, then your content should consist of blog articles and guides focusing on the day to day details of their work. By contrast, if your target audience is primarily executives and other high-level managers, your campaign will be better served by reports and to-the-point case studies that quickly demonstrate your expertise.
Google is the primary channel on which audiences find new content, and the next step in creating targeted content is to choose keywords by analyzing search intent. The most valuable keywords for lead generation have a transactional search intent, indicating that a searcher is actively searching for a direct solution to a problem, a product or service to purchase, or a company to partner with. The below table provides examples of keywords of varying transactionalities for a hypothetical company that offers rapid prototyping services:
| Topic: “Rapid Prototyping” | ||
| Highly Transactional Keywords | Research-Oriented Keywords | Non-Transactional Keywords |
| rapid prototyping services | rapid prototyping pros and cons | how to write a rapid prototyping proposal |
| rapid prototyping company | rapid prototyping methods | what is rapid prototyping |
| rapid prototyping solutions | rapid prototyping best practices | rapid prototyping news |
Highly transactional keywords are the most valuable initial targets for your content, as they will produce the fastest return on your investment. Research oriented keywords may be targeted later in the campaign, and often provide useful opportunities to create lead nurturing content that can be repurposed across multiple channels. Non-transactional keywords have little lead generation value, and should be avoided by most companies.
| For an in-depth discussion on creating a keyword strategy, refer to our articles on SEO campaign strategy and SEO Keyword Strategy 101. |
Once keyword targets are determined, content creation can begin. Excellent content must:
Responding to the reader’s search query requires that your content provide expert analysis or distill available research to provide readers with information directly relevant to their needs. Content can be structured in several distinct ways to aid this process. For a keyword such as “rapid prototyping services,” a reader will be best served by a landing page directly discussing services offered. A keyword such as “rapid prototyping companies,” however, warrants a comparison blog that ranks the best companies that provide rapid prototyping services.
Include content elements to improve skimmability so that readers can quickly identify vital information without losing interest. Including graphics and tables that illustrate the point in an attractive, consumable way is particularly effective for conveying complex concepts or summarizing research. Skimmability is essential, as readers will leave a page that does not quickly provide the information they need, or at minimum, a clear roadmap that leads to that information.
Conclude with actionable next steps through a clear and concise call-to-action section at the bottom of a page to help push visitors through your conversion funnel. Your CTA should be limited to one or two paragraphs, and link to a conversion page, such as a contact form or demo scheduling page. This provides interested readers with as little friction as possible on their way to becoming a lead.
Content Repurposing for Multiple ChannelsLook for ways to repurpose content for multiple channels. For example, some blog articles make great scripts for speaking engagements or video content with minimal editing. Likewise, webinars may include graphics and tables that make great resources for blog articles. By repurposing content in this way, you can reduce the overall cost of your content marketing campaign, thereby increasing your overall ROI. |
While any marketing team can initiate the process described above, successful content marketing takes time to master. Many businesses find that they lack the time and expertise needed to produce and execute a content marketing strategy that is capable of generating leads.
As a result, many companies choose to partner with an experienced agency. We have over 14 years of experience using content marketing to generate leads, resulting in high ROI for our clients. If you’re interested in working with a content marketing agency to generate high-quality leads, contact us.