Don’t believe these 6 Superstitions about B2B Lead Generation

Marketers continuously look for available channels for them to generate leads – be it through blogs, websites, social media, email, telemarketing or events. But somehow, they’re still not enough.

What’s even worse is that despite of the challenge to utilize every strategy conceivable, marketers seem to be bound by certain beliefs that, although technically illogical, constrain them from using the full potential of their marketing campaigns.

A post from DuctTapeMarketing.com highlights these ‘superstitions’ and why you shouldn't fall for such tall tales. Here’s an excerpt from that post:

1. Never Schedule Emails on a Friday

Did you send an email blast today? On a Friday?

Let’s be realistic. Most people carry their email in their pocket. They’ll open it when they open it, regardless of whether you sent it on a Monday or during a solar eclipse.

2. Good Content Comes in 10’s

It’s perfectly acceptable—even preferable, if you’ve covered everything on your topic—to publish a Top 6 list, a 9 Steps article, an 8 Benefits blog, or a 7 Signs guide. Marginal list items are annoying, which is why this blog post stops at six.

3. Visual Content Is for Products; B2B Shouldn’t Cross the Line

Visual content is huge. But many B2B companies are still skirting this terrain like it’s the Bermuda Triangle.

Want to know what’s legitimately frightening?  The average person’s attention span for text. And the fact that written content is processed 60,000 times slower than visual content.

There are a million ways to incorporate visual content—including original photos, video, and infographics. In fact, studies show infographics yield 12 percent more traffic than other forms of content.

4. Mentioning Competitors is Dangerous…

…like saying “Bloody Mary” in front of a mirror three times. Your professional rivals will emerge from darkened corridors and haunt your lead gen efforts for all eternity… Or not.

Used strategically, outbound links offer SEO benefits. Plus, competitor mentions may help you more clearly define your own unique value proposition—for yourself and for your audience.

5. Content Calendars Must Be Obeyed

Creating an editorial calendar is a great way to ensure your outsourced marketing team is delivering fresh, relevant information to your prospects, who are often at different stages of the buy cycle. Calendars can incorporate your priority keywords, targeted answers for different personas, and upcoming events that deserve mention.

6. Blogs Should Never Be about Your Products or Services

This superstition comes from a good place, but ends up scaring too many marketers into downplaying their work. Just like with social media, there’s a balance to be struck between helping and promoting. Sometimes the same blog can do both.

Read the full article at 6 Superstitions Busted by Our Outsourced Marketing Team

The SEO Battle: Don’t let your competitors kick your butt

Tired of the fact that all your online competitors are getting all the sweets while you scratch your head in bewilderment? It’s time to improve your SEO efforts.

While search engine optimization certainly takes into account an immense “chance” factor, marketers still need to fulfill their side of the equation to create a perfect setup and get all that desired traffic and click-through rates.

AJ Kumar, co-founder of Single Grain, a digital marketing agency based in San Francisco, offers these tips whenever you feel like you’re getting behind on the SEO competition:

1. Focus on content creation.

When it comes to digital marketing, the acronym "ABC" doesn't just stand for "Always Be Closing." It should also remind webmasters to "Always Be Creating."

Whether you're pursuing SEO, pay-per-click or any other digital marketing strategy to attract new visitors to your website, the quality and amount of content matters. Adding fresh content to your site makes it more appealing both to the search engines and their automated indexing programs, as well as the people who read your pages.

2. Plan your keyword targeting strategies carefully.

As you're creating this content, you'll want to pay careful attention to the keywords you're targeting. Just because you've reached the top spot in the Google results for a given keyword doesn't mean that maintaining this ranking is a valuable use of your time.

What you need to focus on are the search queries that yield the highest total traffic. To determine which keywords are most effective and which ones can be ceded to competitors, look at the traffic data for different search queries using Google Analytics or Google's Webmaster Tools program.

3. Stay abreast of SEO news.

SEO is a field that's constantly changing. If you're able to jump on a new technique or growing trend before your competitors, you may be able to cement your lead in the natural search results.

Set aside time each week to monitor SEO news websites such as Search Engine Land or Search Engine Watch.

4. Monitor your competitors' backlink profiles.

By monitoring your competitors' backlink profiles using tools like Majestic SEO (free, with paid plans starting at $49.99 per month) or Open Site Explorer (free, with paid plans starting at $99 per month), you can both identify potential linking partners for your site and uncover any new linking strategies your competitors may be using to try to beat you.

5. Monitor your competitors' on-site SEO activities.

Also monitor competitors' on-site optimization efforts. If any competitors dramatically change their SEO activities, you could be looking at one of two possible scenarios: They may have discovered a new way to optimize their pages in the search results, or they may be updating their pages in response to a penalty from the search engines.

Read the full article at 5 Ways to Beat Your Competitors at SEO