HOW TO TURN YOUR RESOURCE CENTER INTO A

LEAD GENERATION MACHINE

By Braveen Kumar

Table of Contents

EditingHana Abaza

Writing & Research Braveen Kumar

Graphic DesignJenny Choi

Is Your Resource Center a Content Graveyard?

Building a Lead Gen Machine

Make it Pretty

Clean it Up

Create a Journey

Invite Action

Give Marketers Control

Let’s Review

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oday’s marketers are creating more content than

ever before but still struggle with their content

marketing ROI. Maybe more content isn’t the answer.

Instead, marketers should look to where they keep this

content—where traffic is directed—in many cases, a

Resource Center.

All the content you create—from eBooks to videos—has the

potential to garner the attention of an audience of potential

leads, but is your Resource Center in any condition to

capture those leads? Or does your Resource Center have

the symptoms of Graveyard Syndrome?

Is Your Resource Center a Content Graveyard?

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T

If you can recognize any of these symptoms, you’re likely missing

out on key opportunities to capture would-be leads and make the

most out of all the content you create. So, how can we breathe life

back into your resource center? Well, we start by building a Lead

Gen Machine instead.

Graveyard Syndrome Symptoms:

Permanent and void of life

Cold and uninviting

A nightmare to navigate

Isolated from your community

A final destination instead of an engaging journey

Buried content

Visitors don’t seem eager to share the experience

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What’s the opposite of a content graveyard? A

place where you can send traffic to consume

your content, built for conversions and your long term

content marketing goals—in other words, a Lead

Generation Machine.

Building a Lead Gen Machine

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W

Increases the discoverability and extends the

lifespan of all your content

Educates prospects and customers about your

products, services, and industry

Puts you behind the wheel with full control—not

IT or your developers

Retains visitor interest and encourages further

action

Encourages visitors to participate in content

distribution as brand evangelists

Captures qualified leads for your sales funnel

and lead nurturing campaigns

“Resource Center” carries the unfortunate connotation of blandness—

they’re traditionally employed as a library of information that people don’t

want to sift through unless they’re desperately seeking a solution.

But that doesn’t mean yours needs to be the same. It all starts with

creating a strong first impression.

With the right elements, you can turn your resource

center into a lead gen machine that:

04

ost resource centers make a terrible first

impression. They’re dry, text-heavy, and don’t do

a good job of reflecting your brand in a positive way. You

should opt for a more visual design to create a simple

and approachable experience for visitors.

Make it Pretty

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M

This resource center from Motorola, for example, has some

good-looking corporate content. However, it doesn’t leave

you with that impression on first glance.

Visually engaging video content shouldn’t suffer simply

because you hide it behind a column of text. It’s not

just Motorola, most resource centers choose to present

themselves like this: cold, unwelcoming and a lot of work

for the visitor.

Instead, try to create that positive first impression through

a visually branded experience before visitors even click

through to see your content. After all, who are you creating

content for? Your resource center or new leads and

existing customers?

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ould you invite your guests to a messy home?

Then don’t invite your would-be leads to a

messy resource center.

Make sure your content is organized in a manner that

makes it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for.

Organized doesn’t mean alphabetical or chronological;

it means having a structure that makes sense to visitors

who are seeking specific information.The standard

is to organize your content by type (webinar, eBook,

Whitepapers, etc.), but your best bet is to strategically

categorize your content based on topics or your buyer

personas’ interests.

Clean it Up

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W

The Resource Center at MarketingProfs, for example,

shows different content types on the top bar and marketing

topics on the sidebar to capture both visitor interests and

content format preferences. Note how the topics on the

sidebar appeal to different interests among MarketingProfs’

audience from “Email Marketing” to “Graphic Design”.

Choose a structure for your own resource center that’s

meaningful to your target audience, even if it means

excluding generic content formats in favour of categories

that make more sense, such as Marketing Automation for a

marketing software company or Buyers and Sellers for real

estate content. A content-wide search feature is good to

have as well.

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journey provides a direction. A destination

provokes the question, “Now what?”

Providing a clear engagement path keeps your visitors

invested in your Resource Center’s content. The more

involved a visitor is in the experience, the greater their

chances of converting. Strive to eliminate dead ends.

Create a Journey

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A

PDF Content: Offline eBooks or Whitepapers that

offer no opportunities for further engagement

Social Silos: Directing visitors outbound to YouTube

or Twitter to view videos or tweets

No Path to Consume More: Not offering more

content when visitors have finished with an item and

are open to consuming more

Non-Responsive Design: Neglecting mobile visitors

by offering an experience that doesn’t scale for

smaller screens in an age when 38% of our daily

media interactions are on smartphones.

It’s important to explore solutions that eliminate these

potential dead ends, such as:

• Using interactive alternatives to the PDF for eBooks

and Whitepapers

• Integrating your media into your Resource Center

instead of sending traffic outbound

• Offering Previous/Next navigation within content or

suggestions for further reading

• Employing a responsive design to accommodate

audiences on multiple devices

Once these leaks are plugged, you’re ready to add the key element for

generating new leads.

Common dead ends include:

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ontent serves a multitude of purposes, from

lead generation to customer education, all of

which contribute to your broader business goals. Your

Resource Center needs to reinforce these goals by

inviting visitors to take the actions that help you achieve

them.

Invite Action

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Contextual Calls to Action are essential

for conversions. If you want to generate leads with your

Resource Center, you cannot neglect this aspect. Within or

around your content, you need to present your visitors with

a variety of CTAs that make sense in their environment.

Link directly to a piece of gated content at the end of a blog

post, invite them to call a Sales rep, present an opt-in form

to receive future updates. If you never ask, you’ll never

receive.

Enable Social Sharing within your content

to help you increase brand awareness and reach new

audiences with your content. Even if product-oriented

resources are less likely to be shared, your top of the

funnel content can help you increase brand awareness and

reach new audiences. This helps feed higher volumes of

relevant traffic into your lead generation machine.

Of course, being able to steer your lead gen machine to

achieve these different goals requires a marketer’s touch

and a ton of flexibility.

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o far we’ve emphasized the front-end experience

and the visitor’s perspective, but it’s important

to remember who’s operating this lead gen machine:

the marketer. In order to realize the inbound marketing

potential of your Resource Center, it needs to align

with your marketing team’s needs and put them directly

behind the wheel.

Give Marketers Control

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An adaptable architecture for your Resource

Center helps you steer your content strategy on the fly and

replace outdated information with ease, making regular

content audits easier to conduct. Otherwise, you’re serving

up a rigid experience to an ever-changing audience. Cut

out the middle man—whether that’s IT or developers—and

invest in a platform that gives marketers complete control

and flexibility.

Sync it with your marketing ecosystem to maximize the potential of your other

software. Your Resource Center is one cog—albeit a

significant one—in your content marketing machine.

Connect lead activity within your Resource Center to your

analytics and marketing automation tools to paint a bigger

picture and turn your data into insights for future content

creation and lead nurturing campaigns.

Gate quality content such as webinars, eBooks,

or Whitepapers to catapult your lead generation to new

heights. If you have informative, must-have content that you

can offer visitors in exchange for information, do so with as

much tact as you can. It has to be exclusive enough and

worth their time and contact information. Put this quality

content behind a landing page (Unbounce offers an easy-

to-use landing page builder), or Overlay CTA (if you use the

Uberflip platform).

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our Resource Center shouldn’t be a half-

hearted obligation to your customers where

your content buries itself, not when it could be a home

for your content and the cornerstone of your content

marketing—a place to give value to your audience while

bringing qualified leads into your Sales funnel.

Let’s Review

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Make the most out of your content by ensuring that your Resource Center:

Presents a visually appealing design that

entices every visitor without overwhelming them

Employs an organized structure that makes

sense to your target audience and helps them

find what they’re looking for

Creates an experience that reinforces a journey

that minimizes the dead ends and leaks that cost

you leads

Invites action with contextual CTAs and makes

social sharing easy

Integrates with your existing marketing

ecosystem—metrics, automation, and all

Enables marketers to gate, promote, and modify

content without developers or IT

Of course, it’s not enough to just feed content into your new Resource

Center and expect leads to come out; after all, you are what you eat

and you still need great content and strategic distribution. But, at least

now, your content will have more than a fighting chance.

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