Content Syndication Lead Generation: A 7-Step Process

Quick Summary: Content Syndication for Lead Generation 

Content syndication or CoSy (us B2B marketers love a good acronym!)  is one of the most powerful ways for B2B marketers to generate high-quality leads – when it’s done properly. By distributing your best content across trusted, external platforms, you can extend the life of your B2B content while also attracting relevant prospects, and filling your pipeline with verified leads.

But to make sure your content is seen by the people who need to see it to generate relevant B2B leads for your business, there’s a content syndication process you should follow.

This guide breaks down the content syndication process into seven key steps – from choosing the right supplier and targeting your ideal audience to selecting engaging content, running your campaign, and ensuring lead quality.

Let us talk you through it.

Content Syndication Lead Generation: A 7-Step Process

There’s a lot to know about content syndication for lead generation, including how to tell the difference between good and bad suppliers and what sort of content you should use. (Our annual publication, The Complete Guide to B2B Technology Lead Generation is ungated, and provides you with a lot more information, so you can read up more).

Effective B2B lead generation strategies start with good planning. From the first stage of choosing your supplier through to ensuring your leads are high-quality, we’ve condensed the content syndication lead gen process down into a simple seven-stage process.

Let’s explore each stage in more detail.

Content Syndication Lead Generation – Before You Start

First of all, you need to consider what you want to get out of your content syndication lead generation campaign.

• What audiences do you need to reach?
• Do you already have content ready to go, or do you need a steer on what to publish?
• Do you have a target number of leads you need to generate? And if so, how often do you want to receive them?
• What’s your budget?
• What’s your campaign timeline?

If you’re reading this, you’re probably already deep in the B2B lead generation research phase, but did you know there are ways you can bring your leads lower down the marketing funnel through content syndication?

A reputable B2B lead gen company can provide you with greater intelligence on your leads or more nurtured leads.

For example, you could promote more of your content to your new prospects, or use intent data to find what part of the consideration phase they’re in. That way, by the time your Sales team contacts them, they’re already aware of your business’s products or services.

For example, we run Nurture Track lead generation campaigns for our clients who require warmer leads through b2b content syndication.

You have to be a little careful choosing a lead generation business to work with. The industry has some very shady players that have given b2b lead generation a bad name over the years ( we don’t like those suppliers).

The lead generation agency you choose should be completely transparent and be able to show you exactly how they generate your leads. Take a look at our Methodology for an example of a transparent content syndication lead generation process.

Content Syndication Lead Generation – Step #1: Your Content 

Hopefully, your business has an excellent marketing department already producing high-quality educational content for your audience (if that’s you, hey!).

Our readers want unique, helpful, and easy-to-digest content. That might be an eBook, whitepaper, or case study, but it might also be a video: many users of our content libraries prefer to watch webinar recordings and video tutorials.

The best content to put out will depend on lots of different factors, such as:

• The target audience(s) you need to reach.
• The industry, or industries you operate in.
• The relevant topics that are emerging within your industry.
• The benefits of your solutions and the pain points your solutions address.
• And, of course, your lead generation campaign objectives.

Some audiences and industries prefer, or need, a lot of facts and figures; others like to watch videos of industry experts. Your content syndication partner should be able to advise you on the best types of content to promote based on your needs.

Here’s one of our favorite B2B lead generation tips: If you’re targeting different countries because you need to reach a global audience, your content syndication supplier should also be able to help you localize your campaign.

Local language lead generation is essential if you want to authentically reach a global audience and produce high-quality, engaged leads.

Also, it’s important to make sure your content is unique and valuable. Could readers get the same stuff through a simple Google search? Is it worth them giving their business details?

Content Syndication Lead Generation – Step #2: Target Audience Definition

The best B2B lead generation strategies use laser-focused audience targeting to produce relevant and high-quality leads. And a good content syndication lead generation company will work with you to figure out which criteria will work best for audience targeting.

Job title, job function, country, region, company size and industry are all standard criteria, but you can go further. Profiling questions are an effective campaign enhancement, and you can ask almost anything – such as what software the prospect is currently using and whether they’re planning to upgrade it.

You can also enhance a content syndication lead generation campaign with other enhancements such as intent data targeting, allowing you to better understand your leads’ intentions. and find leads who are actively pursuing solutions like yours.

Content Syndication Lead Generation – Step #3:  Content Placement

So, you’ve perfected your content, audience targeting, and campaign promotions. It’s now time for your campaign to go live!

Having chosen a reputable supplier, you’ll know your content is being syndicated on a genuine website owned by the content syndication company you’re working with.

Furthermore, the common pricing basis for content syndication lead generation is cost-per-lead (CPL), whereby you agree to a fixed price for a certain number of leads. Taking a fixed CPL approach means you’ll know the exact number of leads your content syndication campaign will generate for your budget.

All that’s left is for your lead generation supplier to start syndicating your content to their relevant readers, aka distributing and promoting it via their content syndication platforms.

Content Syndication Lead Generation – Step #4: Audience Engagement

The next step is where your supplier will actually generate the leads – they will be hosting your content on their relevant and dedicated site, and promoting it via email to the agreed audiene that exactly matches your ICP and agreed criteria.

Here’s our content syndication process in action:

 

Types of Content Syndication Campaigns:

When syndicating your content, lots of B2B lead gen businesses offer different types of campaigns and enhancements. At Headley Media, for example, we offer a full range of B2B lead generation services.

Our lead gen services range from a Single Touch campaign, where your leads are exposed to one piece of your content before being delivered to you, to a Nurture Track campaign, where they are nurtured using two or more pieces of your content before being delivered to you.

Plus, syndicating your content with a reputable lead generation supplier will enable you to enhance your campaign even further. For example, our lead generation campaign enhancements range from audience intelligence strategies to display advertising.

We deliver end-to-end, highly targeted digital campaigns 100% in-house. Your content is promoted exclusively to your defined audience segment via brand-exclusive email promotions, directing prospects to a custom campaign landing page hosted within a full content library website. 

This tailored approach ensures a seamless brand experience for our readers and drives genuine interest, resulting in high-quality audience engagement.

Content Syndication Lead Generation – Step #5: Content Download

This is where transparency in the lead generation process really matters.

If you run a campaign with Headley Media, your campaign landing page will be hosted on the most relevant website within Headley Media’s portfolio of technology brands, aligned to your target audience. Every landing page includes GDPR and CCPA-compliant consent that is never pre-ticked and never required, ensuring each lead is genuinely engaged and fully traceable.

All leads are generated via a direct, first-party content download, with no outsourcing and no shortcuts.

From first interaction through to lead validation, you’ll have complete transparency into how each reader became a lead, ensuring quality, accuracy, and compliance at every stage.

Content Syndication Lead Generation – Step #6: Data Validation & Delivery

Quality control is a key stage – an often overlooked but vital part of content syndication lead generation.

Before your leads are delivered to you, a good B2B lead gen company should offer lead validation services as standard. Lead validation works by cross-referencing their data with other sources to check the accuracy of the data and the validity of the leads.

For example, at Headley Media, we take a dual-validation approach to quality control.

Firstly, we use our own AI validation tool, Headley Validate, which mimics human authentication on a large scale. Our in-house quality control team then cross-references our data validation manually. Plus, we use multiple sources – including LinkedIn, Xing, company websites, and state registrars of companies.

It’s important to work with a supplier that takes quality control of your content syndication seriously because, as you know, business card data changes regularly. People move jobs, get promoted, change their names, and so on, so it’s easy to see how data can quickly become out of date. Working with a lead generation company that takes quality control seriously is what sets good lead generation suppliers apart.

Content Syndication Lead Generation – Step #7: Post Campaign Analysis

The final stage is arguably one of the most important steps for a marketer – analysing the results!

All campaigns that are managed in-house by experts will have all the data you need at their fingertips. At the end of a content syndication lead generation campaign run with Headley Media, we’ll deliver a bespoke Post Campaign Analysis, or PCA. This will be packed with valuabel insight and, depending on the type of campaign run, will include information on intent scoring, top tier accounts, content performance, recommendations for future campaigns, ICP analysis and any further bespoke insights.

For more content syndication lead generation tips, read our Ultimate Guide to Content Syndication Lead Generation , or sign up for our Marketing Leaders newsletter.