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5 Lead Generation Ideas to Make Up for Canceled Events

Lindsay McGuire
April 23, 2020
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Min Read

If you’re a marketer or event manager, recent event cancellations have probably impacted your work in many different ways. With many in-person events canceled throughout the rest of the year, it’s time to restrategize how to generate new leads.

If you’re worried about the lack of events and wondering how you’re going to make up those leads, we have some ideas that can help. Use these five simple yet effective lead generation tactics to help fill your pipeline.

1. Host a virtual event.

This is an especially smart option if you already had content or presentations created for the event that got canceled. Instead of completely ditching your event, consider hosting it virtually.

This won’t be a possible replacement for all event types. However, if your event was centered around a presentation or panel discussion, you can easily take your event online using tools like Zoom, GoToWebinar, WebEx, and more. Embed an online event registration form on your website to track registrants and event leads. You can also pre-record the presentation and promote it like a webinar.

The Formstack team recently went this route when the HIMSS 2020 conference was canceled. Our team worked hard in collaboration with AdventHealth to create a comprehensive presentation about digital transformation and data security in the healthcare landscape. Instead of letting that work go to waste, we created a webinar instead.

Related: 3 Best Practices for Hosting a Successful Virtual Event

2. Add calculators to your website.

This is a relatively easy way to capture some extra email addresses while providing something pretty valuable to leads. Adding a calculator to a webpage can improve time on page, offer an engaging way to interact with your website, and provide leads with relevant information.


To implement this lead generation strategy, choose a webpage that receives a substantial amount of traffic. Once you’ve identified a page, create an online form with 4-8 questions relevant to the content on the page. Simply add an email address field at the end of the questions to start generating leads.

long form tips


3. Launch a “personality test” campaign.

Want a super creative and fun way to capture leads? Create a “personality test” campaign.

This lead generation tactic is highly successful across social media. It’s one people love to share with their friends, family, and coworkers. Once an individual knows what “personality” they are, they’re bound to share with others and compare outcomes.

A great example of this type of “personality test” tactic was the holiday campaign “What’s your holiday selling style?” created by Gong.io.

lead generation for canceled events


After taking a short quiz and providing your email, you were given your selling personality. Each personality was holiday themed, which made it timely, relevant, and fun. A lot of my fellow marketing team members at Formstack took this personality test and shared our results in our shared Marketing Slack channel, even though we don’t work in sales.

Learn More: Generate Leads and Grow Your Email List with Quizzes

4. Repackage older content as a bundle.

Why make new content for lead generation when you could just repurpose content you already have?

For this lead generation tactic, identify 3-5 pieces of related content already living on your website. Try to identify topics that are evergreen and highly related to your audience to get the most bang for your marketing buck. You can even identify content related to a canceled event to target and engage the leads you would have encountered in-person.

Once you’ve found your content, such as webinars, guides, blog posts, and quizzes, create a new landing page that offers all the content as a package. This could boost the lead generation from these deliverables by offering more value for the lead’s email address: instead of getting access to a single piece of content, they’re given multiple pieces of highly relevant content.

Our Workplace Productivity Report is a great example of bundling multiple deliverables into one robust piece of content. It includes customer stories, infographics, and a report, all in one easy-to-access piece.

5.  Create some fun quizzes.

Creating a quiz is an easy way to get leads to engage with your webpage and provide their email address. You only need to generate 5-10 questions around a topic related to your industry, product, or company to be successful with this lead generation strategy.

You can choose to embed the quiz within a blog post or create a freestanding landing page for the quiz. Don’t forget to also share the quiz across social media!

long form tips

Pro Tip: Want to make your own quiz like this for your blog or website? Check out our One Question at a Time survey feature now!

Using these lead generation strategies can help your business generate new leads when events are not an option. Get going on one of the ideas above to start filling your pipeline with fresh leads today.

If you need a tool to help you execute some of the ideas above, give Formstack a try! Our drag-and-drop form builder makes it easy to create lead gen forms, quizzes, surveys, and more in just minutes. Start your free trial today!

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Lindsay McGuire
Lindsay is the Content Marketing Manager at Formstack, splitting her time between creating blog content, writing reports, and hosting Formstack's Practically Genius podcast. She's a proud graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism (MIZ!) and loves connecting with others on LinkedIn.
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