Lead gen’s broken. (Notice how I didn’t say dead)
Not in the dramatic, let’s-burn-it-all-down kind of way. Just in the quiet, sad, diminishing-returns kind of way.
Another 15-page PDF promising ‘5 proven tactics’ or a ‘2025 guide to Black Friday’? We’ve all seen it. We’ve all downloaded it. Most of us never read it. And if we did, we didn’t remember who wrote it.
The formula stopped working.
And if you’re still relying on gated content to drive leads, without rethinking what you’re actually offering, you’re not just losing leads. You’re burning trust.
So, what changed?
It’s not that people stopped downloading things. It’s that expectations changed.
B2B buyers are smarter. They’ve seen all the tricks.
Everyone’s inbox is flooded.
The gap between what’s promised and what’s delivered in most gated content is laughable.
We asked for someone’s email and gave them the digital equivalent of a dry cracker. And we’re wondering why they didn’t stick around.
Now, here’s the interesting bit that you’ll know if you’ve worked in a niche marketing role for any decent length of time.
All lead gen efforts have a lifespan, what normally happens:
Someone comes up with a different way to do lead gen - or resurfaces an old method (start a community, webinar series, event, gated PDF)
The industry starts to catch on and other companies start to replicate it
It starts becoming competitive and harder to make effective - the good ones will double-down on the quality, the bad ones will double-down on quantity
The space gets overly saturated with that type of lead gen and it starts delivering diminishing returns
A new trend pops up or an old one resurfaces
Here’s where I believe these marketing activities sit in this timeline: