The idea of building something useful and using it as a marketing channel isn't new. HubSpot's Website Grader is probably the most cited example. Give someone a free tool, collect their information, and start a conversation. It works because the prospect gets real value before anyone asks for a meeting.
The problem has always been cost. Building an interactive web application, even a simple one, meant engineering time, design resources, hosting, and ongoing maintenance. For most companies, especially growth-stage teams watching every dollar, that math didn't work. You could run paid ads or hire another BDR for a fraction of what it cost to build a custom tool. So the idea stayed in the "nice to have" category for most teams, and only the companies with surplus engineering capacity ever actually did it.
The Math Has Changed
AI-assisted development has collapsed the cost and timeline of building custom applications. What used to take a team of engineers several weeks can now be built by a small team in days. The code isn't the bottleneck anymore. The thinking is. If you know what you want to build and why, the building part is dramatically faster and cheaper than it was even a year ago.
What This Looks Like in Practice
We tested this ourselves. We built an AI Readiness Audit, a web application that walks someone through a structured assessment of how prepared their organization is to adopt AI. At the end, they get an instant score and a summary of where they stand. If they want the full report, they enter their email. We promoted it through LinkedIn ads.
The result is a lead generation channel where the product is the marketing. Every person who completes the audit tells us exactly where they are in their AI journey, what their gaps are, and whether they're a good fit for the kind of work we do. That's better intelligence than you get from a whitepaper download or a cold call.
Why GTM Teams Should Pay Attention
Here's what matters for growth teams: this category of tactic is now accessible to you. If you have a team that can build AI-powered applications (or a partner who can), you should be asking what useful tool you could put in front of your market that doubles as a lead engine.
The key word is useful. This only works if the tool delivers genuine value on its own. A thinly disguised lead form won't get shared, won't get completed, and won't build trust. But a tool that actually helps someone understand their situation, benchmark themselves, or get a result they care about? That earns attention and earns the right to ask for contact information.
What to Build
Think about what your prospects are already trying to figure out. Are they evaluating vendors? Build a comparison framework. Are they trying to understand their readiness for something? Build an assessment. Are they trying to size a market or estimate ROI? Build a calculator that does it better than the spreadsheet they're using today.
The Compounding Advantage
The economics of this have shifted so far that it's worth reconsidering even if you dismissed it before. A tool that would have cost $50K and taken two months to build might now cost a fraction of that and ship in a week. And unlike a paid ad that stops working the moment you stop paying, a useful tool compounds. People share it. People come back to it. People remember who built it.
For growth-stage companies trying to scale pipeline without linearly scaling headcount, this is worth serious consideration. The companies that figure out how to turn engineering into marketing will build lead generation channels their competitors can't easily replicate. And now, for the first time, you don't need a massive engineering team to do it.