“How do we get more leads?”
It is a reasonable question. But before planning another campaign, I would ask a different one.
“What could we make that someone would want to send to a colleague?”
Not because their inbox needs another attachment. Because it would help them explain a problem, make a decision or have a better conversation.
That is a more interesting place to start.
You have probably seen the usual options.
A report about the latest cybersecurity trends. An ebook with a title that promises everything. A webinar where the first 20 minutes are about the company presenting it.
Some of those can be useful. But changing the year on the cover does not automatically make them worth sharing.
Doing something cooler does not mean spending a fortune either.
It means making something your audience has a reason to care about.
There is a related personal reflection on helping without expecting something in return.
Let’s imagine a small cybersecurity company wants to reach security teams that investigate suspicious DNS activity.
The marketing team is considering another article explaining why DNS security matters.
Before writing it, they speak to the people who answer customer questions. They discover that teams often want to know what to check after seeing a suspicious domain in their logs.
For background on the technology itself, here is how protective DNS works.
That gives them an idea.
Instead of another broad introduction, they create a short investigation exercise.
It presents a fictional scenario: an analyst sees a device repeatedly requesting an unfamiliar domain. The reader has to decide what information they would want before deciding what the activity means.
What does the device do? When did the requests begin? Is there a legitimate service that could explain them? Who else might have useful context?
The exercise does not need to pretend there is one obvious answer. Its value is in helping someone think through the questions.
A security specialist checks that the scenario and explanations make sense. A few people in the intended audience try it and point out where it is confusing.
The team then makes it easy to share with a colleague.
That could be a simple web page or a document. It does not need a custom application, an expensive design project or a form asking for someone’s job title before they can see the first question.
Now the company has made something more specific than “the latest trends in DNS security”.
It also has a reason to start a conversation with the people it wants to reach.
“What would you check next?” is a more interesting question than “Did you download our ebook?”
Of course, an exercise is only one possibility.
A free tool might be useful if your audience has a recurring task you can genuinely make easier. Original research could be valuable if you have access to reliable information and can explain how you collected it.
A benchmark might help people compare their situation with others, but only if you have a sensible comparison and enough trustworthy data to support it.
Each idea has a cost.
A tool needs to work and be maintained. Research takes time to conduct properly. A benchmark based on poor data can do more harm to your credibility than publishing nothing at all.
Choose something your team can make well and keep accurate.
For a small company, a focused exercise or template reviewed by someone with relevant expertise may be a better starting point than a large report nobody has time to finish.
Then think about how the right people will find it.
Your sales and customer teams might know people who would appreciate it. A relevant professional community may welcome it if it contributes to an existing discussion.
Ask for feedback. Make it easy for people to point out what is missing or suggest a better way to approach the problem.
Do not assume that publishing something means people will automatically find it, share it or become leads.
Look at what happens.
Are the people you hoped to reach using it? Are they asking questions or sharing it with colleagues? Does it help your team have a more useful conversation?
If your audience is small, practical testing for low traffic can help you learn without waiting for a large sample.
If someone wants to discuss your product, make that easy too. But do not force every reader into a sales process before they have had a chance to see whether the resource helps them.
The goal is not to make something unusual for the sake of being unusual.
It is to create something useful enough that the right person remembers it, uses it or passes it on.
That is a much better reason to make something cool.
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