EdTech Marketing: 19% of Leads from Top of Funnel Content?

Last week, while presenting the 2025-2026 renewal deck to a client, a staggering number came up:

Leads, in our Q2 contract, were costing 40% more compared to what they did in 2024Q4.

Why, you ask?

Here’s the backstory…

In the 2024Q3-Q4 strategy, the client chose to run the full scope of our Inbound-Led Outbound strategy.

This means we generated huge traffic and awareness through nearly 100 blog posts in 4 major US states.

Each piece of content was crafted to clearly address a specific persona and a problem.

The Persona vs Problem approach works because:

It resonates with people’s cognitive biases

They see a problem that resonates with them; they read the blog post that they already agree with, and is empathetic to that problem. This keeps them reading further.

It offers a solution

There’s a secret to these blog posts: they are written using the PAS framework (Problem, Agitation, Solution). This way, people read about:

• the problem they have

• further consequences of that problem

• there is a solution

It gives a path down the funnel

Halfway through the post, we introduce the client’s solution, stating the outcomes of solving that specific problem.

With that, people click to either download a high-intent asset or request a demo. Both immediately feed the CRM for SDRs to act upon.

Using this exact system, last year we got 19% of the leads initiated from blog posts.

Why is this relevant, you ask?

Campaigns running blog posts pay - when done right - $0.05 per click.

With over 45% of people reading past half of our blogs (Yes! We track it!), it costs $0.11 to get a person aware of our client’s solution.

This significantly reduces the cost of acquiring leads.

Revenue-Aligned Content

The example above, aligned Top of Funnel to Bottom of Funnel quite nicely because:

• those were not educational blogs

• it got people who had the problem to read

• it made it easy for people who were part of a buying group to take action

• company and people identification tools were used to measure the awareness about the problems and the client, feeding the number of sessions into the CRM, further triggering SDR action after a threshold

The content you’re reading right now is also revenue-aligned.

How?

It shows the results we’ve had with clients and prepares subscribers - who are already warm to our message - to download our Inbound-Led Outbound Readiness Checklist.

In my GTM Tracks, people who downloaded my I-LO Strategy Guide will receive this email in their nurture sequence.

Hi, I’m Rod 👋
I share marketing and sales strategies for EdTech leaders.

Scale your pipeline and drive more demos and trials - no extra hires.

Reply to this email to start a conversation.