Today’s marketers realize that it’s almost impossible to “sell” to a lead. Gone are the days of cold calling and slick sales gimmicks. Rather, content marketing has taken center stage as the prime strategy for generating leads and guiding them through the sales cycle to conversion.

According to the staff of BusinessNewsDaily.com, “Savvy B2B marketers have discovered that educational and informational content are effective tools for generating sales leads.”

A survey by MarketingProfs and Junta42 found that 63 percent of B2B marketers in North American turn to content marketing as their key lead-generation source.

So what kind of content is helping guide leads through the sales funnel? The survey says:

• Articles and email newsletters were the top choices for content-marketing efforts (cited by 78 percent and 61 percent, respectively, of the marketers who were surveyed).

• Educational and instructional content followed with case studies (55 percent), white papers (43 percent), and webinars (42 percent) proving popular among content marketers.

The bottom line: Consumers are smart, and they aren’t going to fall for gimmicks. They want — and deserve — the service of experts. Content marketing helps companies build relationships, credibility and trust among consumers. Even in the longest of sales cycles, a company that deploys a quality content-marketing strategy can stay top of mind among consumers who feel a connection to the content — and the company who created it.