One of the challenges that we constantly encounter in the executing the nurturing campaigns of the lead management programs that we manage for our customers is having enough compelling content.  "Compelling" is the operative word -- as you want to provide content in your nurturing campaigns that is contextually relevant to the prospect given where they are likely to be in their buying cycle.  One technique to address the compelling objective is to use 3rd Party research reports from known and trusted sources.  In the high technology marketplace, Gartner, Forrester, and Sirus are a few of the big-name trusted 3rd party research firms that have prolific content.  The challenge is that using this content is expensive and as such, most companies don't have endless budget to spend for these great pieces of content.  How then can you make this great content go farther?

Ardath Albee recently provided some great suggestions in her blog post "Make 3rd Party Content an Opportunity not a Necessity" on how to make this kind of content more powerful and go further.  Her suggestion was to find the  "big ideas" contained in each of these 3rd party reports and then tie back into the special things your company does with a complementary article, blog post, or white paper.  As Ardath says, it doesn't have to be a lengthy article, just invest 800-1,000 words that will showcase how your company's solution address the big ideas mentions by the 3rd party research report.  This not only positions your company's key capabilities, it positions your company as a thought leader who has invested in bringing solutions to market to address these "big idea" issues.