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Which content type is best used as a lead magnet?

Author's avatar By Robert Jones 13 Feb, 2018
Essential Essential topic

Chart of the day: PDFs are the best content type for attracting sign-ups on a landing page.

Participants were randomly assigned in an experiment by ConversionXL. The team then even did a complicated ANOVA (analysis of variance), but in brief: PDF, followed by web content is the best content formats when also compared with video, for attracting sign-ups.

Why? I can assume that although people don't mind watching videos, there is a scramble for the headphones on the office, or simply people would prefer to read something, in their own time. Here at Smart Insights, we host PDF resources and web-hosted resources, which you can read directly from our site, so as the person responsible for member content alongside our very own Dave Chaffey, I was very interested in this research.

What did ConversionXL conclude? They concluded that PDF's and web content convert much more than video and there is "no difference" between PDF and web content.

We also know that research reports generate the most leads, we summarised a study by Ascend2 in autumn last year, finding that 46% (so almost half) of marketers believe that research reports generate the most leads and return on investment.

More recently, research has found that content marketing is a big part of businesses marketing strategy.

Author's avatar

By Robert Jones

Robert Jones is a specialist in CRO, UX Research, insight and digital Marketing. He is CRO Analyst at Enjoy Digital. He has a Psychology Masters of Research, has run large digital marketing campaigns to build research panels and worked in insight roles for Vision Critical, ASDA and WhatUsersDo. He also managed all of Smart Insights member resources and published several guides including "How to conduct Persona Research" as well as contributing over 100 blog posts to the Smart Insights blog. When he isn’t working on marketing campaigns he is most likely eating authentic Italian food or planning his next short trip. You can connect with Robert on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter.

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