What if you could use clever ways to help your prospects by creating value? Lead generation is difficult, both in-person and online. Sending unsolicited emails and scraping together lists can be challenging because, let’s face it, often, people don’t have the time to talk.

In this blog post, we’ll discuss 16 creative lead generation ideas that will help generate more leads for your business!

Lead generation is tough, no matter how you try to accomplish it. Lead generation can be difficult, but this is a challenge that often increases when you don’t have many interesting prospects. Reaching people and getting their attention is often difficult.

Alternate lead-generation methods can be used to help you reach your goals of generating leads, but what happens when more traditional techniques such as cold emailing or scraping together lists fall short?

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I hope to show you that it is a possibility. We will walk you through four creative methods to help your business with lead generation. Consider these ideas to help your prospects instead of just pushing them to take the next step.

16 Creative Lead Generation Ideas

Share success secrets from thought leaders.

Create helpful videos to solve issues for prospects.

Leverage the SEO power of customer reviews.

Create an interactive quiz or tool.

Provide gated offers with best practices.

Show what’s working for your company.

Create a useful spreadsheet.

Offer a deep-dive answer for a tough question.

Create a worksheet that simplifies a process.

Create a list of useful tools or resources.

Compile real-life examples with actionable takeaways.

Create a valuable email course.

Host a giveaway.

Create a template to simplify an everyday task.

Offer a free trial or a freemium product.

Offer a handy checklist.

Discover all of HubSpot’s free lead generation content and resources, all in one place.

1. Share success secrets from thought leaders.

The best way to provide unique value with your content is to reach out to a thought leader within your industry.

Interviewing the experts to uncover their secrets, you prove that you’re committed to providing world-class advice and insight through your product.

On the next page, you’ll find Groove’s take on this approach in an interview with Andy Drish. Groove interviewed successful entrepreneurs and asked them specific questions for everyone to learn from, even when lead generation efforts fall flat. And then, Groove shares those interviews with the larger community on its blog.

Not only does the interview with Drish contain insights and tips from an entrepreneur’s perspective, but it also contains a “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) section in which other readers can interact one-on-one with Drish.

This process helps Groove’s reputation as a valued resource among our audience.

2. Create helpful videos to solve issues for prospects.

A video may be more helpful than an email when it comes to lead generation – especially if there is a problem that can be solved conveniently.

Wistia, a company that provides video hosting and analytics services, offers helpful videos to companies who need help shooting their own video content.

Wistia is a video hosting platform, so publishing content strictly about how to use its product would never work. Videos like this one, which is relevant to anyone with an iPhone, help the brand create value for people who may not be familiar with Wistia.

Even if it’s just once, people who read and like Wistia content are more likely to come back for more.

3. Leverage the SEO power of customer reviews.

Review platforms are a great way to grow your brand and reach the right people.

After making reviews public on a third-party platform with strong SEO – like Yelp or Google – you will increase your chances of being found by qualified prospects in search without paying a dime.

Reviews about products share a very important place in our society that Google recognizes.

For example, when I searched for “best marketing software,” the rich snippet goes to FinancesOnline.com, a B2B review site with round-the-clock support.

Imagine if your business or product were on this list. There’s a high chance you would be included in the McKinsey list that outlines the steps of the consumer decision journey at various moments of purchase.

There are many routes to take, but patience is the key. Some companies may not respond right away, and they actually have the power to produce a higher ROI for you in the long run.

4. Create an interactive quiz or tool.

Engage potential customers with a quiz to learn more about them and obtain their contact information. The purpose of the quiz as a lead generation tool is to bargain for the outcome in return for an email or other contact information.

A great example of this is Eastern International College’s quiz. The college created the following quiz to help students select a major.

One great way to obtain the information students need is through taking an online quiz. When students fill out a lead information form, they provide the school with specifics about themselves so that it can counsel them accordingly.

One strategy that stands out is offering an interactive tool, such as the HubSpot Website Grader. The Website Grader is a free online tool to measure your website’s performance and offer recommendations for improvement.

To use the tool, visitors must submit their email with a headline and brief description of your company.

5. Provide gated offers with best practices.

To illustrate the efficacy of a marketing technique, consider mentioning examples of others who have successfully used that technique. Giving a list of best practices compiled by experts can be incredibly useful to marketers who are just starting out in that particular arena.

HubSpot’s list of SEO best practices is created by search experts, which means you know they’re up-to-date, which aims to deliver greater returns on investments.

The e-book features insights from experts trying to reach difficult marketing goals — and in exchange for their contact information, they get insider tips.

6.Show what’s working for your company.

What if you could reach your lead generation goals by sharing your successes (or failures) and what’s worked for you? By reading posts like this, your fellow entrepreneurs will find a lot of inspiration and likely avoid making the same mistakes.

To help provide an informative resource, Classy has published the results of its 1,000-blogging study.

Classy, a fundraising platform for nonprofit organizations, offered insights to the broader content community in terms of lead generation. As a final call-to to action, readers are given the opportunity to download the strategy guide.

7. Create a useful spreadsheet.

Volunteer to create a spreadsheet of resources for people and make it available to those who need it.

Heinz Marketing created an easy-reference spreadsheet (a map of the marketing automation landscape) and made it available free of charge as a way for visitors to see its services in return for their email opt-in.

Content that is easily accessible to its audience and provides valuable information should be a tool in everyone’s lead generation process.

8. Offer a deep-dive answer for a tough question.

You can find answers to almost anything online. But which answers are really worthwhile?

Writing a content-rich article that answers an important question on your prospect’s mind is a great way to produce leads that might otherwise have gone wanting. In today’s world, companies advertise aggressively and go out of their way to provide the best answer.

One way to improve lead generation success is lead generation. We recommend following the example of Interact. They created a quiz. Here is an in-depth blog post Interact created, which dives into how taking quizzes can help build your email list (a strategy we discussed in step 4).

This blog post provides a helpful breakdown of how to incorporate quizzes into your emails for increased lead generation.

Supporting your audience with the information they need will increase engagement and possible product sales.

9. Create a worksheet that simplifies a process.

A worksheet is best for tasks that are best suited to strategy formulation. For example, a software company might develop a marketing plan in the form of a spreadsheet.

Fill out some paperwork with information that’s easy to get, and in return, they’ll opt-in.

The HubSpot example of this is their free KPI Tracking Worksheet.

For anyone with specific company goals, this spreadsheet can be used to establish them and identify & track your team’s KPIs and top KPIs for their industry. In exchange, readers can get started tracking marketing impact.

10. Create a list of useful tools or resources.

When you go the extra mile to explore other helpful resources your prospects and clients may not be aware of, others notice your dedication.

If you’re reaching out to your prospects with a value that also generates a response, you aren’t just attracting potential clients — you’re getting in touch with the kind of audience that’s specifically looking for solutions like yours.

HubSpot provides some fantastic marketing tools, but it also acknowledges that sometimes other options are necessary to reach goals that the company can’t set for its readers. This list contains different tools and resources to help make your lead generation campaign successful.

Now that you have all the information you need, it’s up to you to take advantage. Once you’ve come back to read our blog, we hope that you’ll be opting in for an email subscription!

11. Compile real-life examples with actionable takeaways.

Finding examples of successful training techniques is as helpful and challenging. Reach your lead generation goals using methods that offer value to your prospects.

You can find a list of 50 top B2B content marketing tips on Kapost’s website to help you be successful with your marketing efforts.

The Kapost 50 recognizes the best in B2B content marketing and allows others to see examples of effective strategies for their own work.

The blog post provides readers with clever site copy and inspirational content to keep them coming back for more.

12. Create a valuable email course.

If you want to launch an email course, take steps to make sure the person has time for it. Building your class takes a lot more than clicking “send.”

This approach tends to work well for in-depth topics that are best learned through traditional class methods. For example, Buffer has 25 social media strategies they’ve been giving away over a period of 25 days in exchange for an opt-in list.

As the most used social media management platform, Buffer has been able to solve its lead generation problem by creating an email course. The email course is a way for Buffer to stay in touch with new subscribers and serve them content as they prefer.

13. Host a giveaway.

The most successful way to generate leads is through offering value. There is no magic bullet when it comes to lead generation.

The key to lead generation is offering something, and what better way than through a giveaway? For an eWebDesign, this meant providing conversion rate optimization (CRO) software. This was very useful for its target demographic as they’re in the marketing world.

The company generated leads from attendees by giving away prizes during the conference plus social media engagement, and it was a success for web design. Whether they won or lost the giveaway, they continued to engage with the brand.

eWebDesign, the email list grew to continue outreach among subscribers with more targeted content about their products.

14. Create a template to simplify an everyday task.

Trying to create standard pieces of paper that you use every day in business — employee schedules, content calendars, market research sheets — can be challenging.

Reaching the right prospects is tough when traditional methods of marketing are not enough.

Check out these marketing budget templates from HubSpot.

Setting a marketing budget is crucial to any successful campaign, and this template bundle from HubSpot helps put best practices into place quickly. HubSpot helps generate more leads using these templates, and they’ve helped reach people through brands.

15. Offer a free trial or a freemium product.

Free trial of a company’s service is an opportunity to experience its value firsthand. These free trials also benefit salespeople by helping the prospects better understand what they’re buying.

Touchless buying can appeal to prospects who don’t want to be contacted on the phone. One way a brand can lower the number of leads who say “no” is by offering them a free trial for their site.

Here’s an example of a strong free trial offer from BuzzSumo.

Want to generate buzz for your content? BuzzSumo offers a free tool to help you create more interest in your content.

Another alternative is to offer a freemium product, which can be quite appealing to old and new customers when other methods of cold-calling or scraping for leads are unsuccessful. Offering my product or service line for free will make them feel good about the risk and try it.

16. Offer a handy checklist.

Let’s face it: most people don’t have time for things they don’t want to do. If you’re planning an upcoming webinar, there’s a lot that goes into it.

HubSpot has created a handy checklist to ensure that marketers have everything they need for their webinar when it comes time to actually produce it.

HubSpot achieves the gated offer and checklist downloads by proving expertise and encouraging action.

Ensure your content is always useful to your prospects so they’ll come back to your website again and again.

To get more lead generation ideas, check out HubSpot’s guide to the 30 greatest lead generation lessons.

Lead generation can be difficult, whether one-on-one or via email. Scraping together lists and sending cold emails is often frustrating for those receiving them, but things get worse when traditional tactics fail.