Strategic Marketing Solutions, LLC

Are you leaking your gated content in organic search?

Personally, I’m not a fan of finding portable document format (PDF) documents in the search results.

There are multiple reasons why PDFs are not ideal for an organic searcher to land on:

• Most PDFs do not have navigation, so users are forced to read through to find what they want.
• More often than not, webmasters don’t link to their website from the PDF.
• If there are no links in a PDF, so the opportunity for a call to action is lost.
• PDFs can’t house analytics tracking code.
• PDFs aren’t as malleable as web pages. You can’t add many fancy enhancements to a PDF.
• PDFs generally do not contain lead generation forms.

I could go on forever about my dislike of PDFs, because I believe they are a problem for marketers. While they are easy and fast to generate, they can be problematic when it comes to SEO, tracking and conversion.

Do you have a leaky lead generation funnel?
If you’re using PDFs on your site for any type of lead generation and you are gating that content (requiring registration via a landing page), you need to find out if the PDF has been indexed and is available in the organic search engine results pages (SERPs).

If the PDFs can be found in the SERPs, potential leads are bypassing your sign-up form, since they can find the content directly. A simple way to test for this is to use the site and filetype search operators together. For example, for my own website, I would perform this search:

A recent search for a client’s white papers found they have 633 white papers produced as PDFs in Google’s index. Yikes!

How do you know it’s a problem?
Because lead generation filetypes like PDFs are not trackable in Google Analytics, you may be wondering, “Are these exposed PDF resources really that big a problem?” Using Google Search Console (GSC), you can get some idea of just how impactful these PDFs might be.

Using the Search Analytics report in GSC, set the data type to “Pages” and filter to show those with .pdf in the filename.

Over the last 90 days, the client with 633 white paper PDFs had over 12,075 clicks from Google organic search to the PDF pages.

Read more: Do you have a leaky lead generation funnel?

In today’s digital world, it’s difficult to find someone who doesn’t engage on social media no matter what demographic they are in. Gone are the days of being nervous of our parents having a Facebook account when in these times family events and social gatherings are easier to plan online.

Key Stat: According to the Pew Research Center, nearly 70% of adults in the US are on at least one social media site.

If you’re in the business of gaining prospects, your role will be a lot more challenging if you don’t take advantage of the information your potential clients already provide online. Investing in social media lead generation (using social for prospecting new leads) is extremely effective when done right.

Interested in learning how to get started?

The following steps will take you through what to look for when it comes to navigating social media platforms for prospecting success.

Research and Identify Your Prospects

Before you even begin to engage with your prospects, do a bit of research online to develop a list of the type of clients you are looking for. Social media lead generation doesn’t mean you randomly select and message any account with your pitch. Once you fall into the area of spam, you have already failed.

Read more: How to Use Social Media Lead Generation for Prospecting Success 

So you have been hearing about social media for years. You spent money and time getting more likes, followers, etc.
But, likes don’t equal cash, and Mark Zuckerberg owns those likes. Not you.

Social media was the craze 3-4 years ago, but now people have millions of likes, followers etc. and nothing to show for it. Having lots of fans and followers does not mean that all of them can be termed as leads.

Don’t focus on those numbers that are not really helping you. You need to focus on getting leads, and not a social following. Remember that social networks keep coming and going, and for your business to be sustainable, the focus should be on lead generation.

How exactly do you generate leads?

Social Media Lead Generation Tips
Integrate Email Marketing Into Your Lead Generation Strategy

Studies show that email marketing conversion rates are 300 percent higher than social media. Therefore, it is imperative to have this as your main lead conversion strategy.

Instead of giving away all your valuable content, simply ask them to fill out a simple form to get access to your best information.
You can then use an email marketing software such as GetResponse to convert your leads. This will enable you to send them both informative and marketing emails. When done well, email marketing will help you make repeat sales to specific leads who have warmed up to your content.

To get people to sign up, you need to have a strong lead magnet. This is a piece of content that convinces your leads to enter their name, email address, and more details. This enables them to access that content. Studies show that courses perform better as lead magnets than eBooks. However, be it a course, a journey, an eBook, an event, a webinar, a video, etc., get a lead magnet that can work great with your audience.

Read more: How to Turn Your Social Following into Leads

As a digital marketer, you’re the Obi Wan Kenobi of online lead generation. You’ve been doing it for years. You know the secrets of compelling landing pages with the most inviting lead forms, and you’re the master of tracking conversions to their source.

But there is a great disturbance in the force, and your lead gen strategies/Jedi mind tricks are not as effective as you may think. Search your feelings, these aren’t the quality leads you’re looking for. In fact, 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales.

It’s time to turn this around and figure out why so many of your leads are going straight into the garbage compactor. Take a look at the 10 reasons why your lead gen strategy isn’t delivering the heroic results you’d hoped for:

1. Low contact rates
Fraudulent information, poor quality leads, and plain bad timing all lead to low contact rates with web leads. In fact, only 27% of leads ever get contacted by a sales rep! That’s a lower contact rate than a stormtrooper at target practice.

Lead forms can be a great way to convert your digital traffic, but remember that getting someone’s information doesn’t guarantee your company will ever get in touch with them. If your lead gen strategy is completely dependent on form submissions, you’re not only throwing away most of those leads, you could be turning away a huge segment of your audience. Think about letting prospects call you — phone calls come with 100% contact rates.

Read more: 10 Reasons Your Lead Generation Is Turning To The Dark Side 

With increasingly more marketing automation available, there are still some basic methods that will improve the lead generation process for B2B marketers, according to a recent study.

The notion of getting more value or qualified leads for less, whether it be in print advertising, email lists or pay-per-click (PPC) ads is a goal that can be achieved by creating a buyer persona. When marketers focus on a smaller group of potential customers through targeted personas, it saves cost. Being mindful of whom that buyer persona is remains key.

Secondly, consider the costs of your lead generation campaign. There is no doubt that materially, social media and email marketing are less expensive than traditional marketing and increasingly have a high return on investment. In a recent study by Voltier Digital, 41 per cent of B2B companies have acquired a new customer through Facebook, while 57 per cent have acquired a new client through the company blog. And, 47 per cent have acquired a new client through Twitter.

A third suggestion is to optimize the company’s website images. The correlation between a faster load time and increased conversion is clear. Time is of the essence and the correct sizing and faster loading means that your image sizes won’t be too big for your landing pages.

Read more: Streamline lead generation efforts by re-thinking your strategy 

Do you ever spend time crafting a brilliantly written article, posting it on your blog, only to hear the sound of crickets?

So to boost the number of people seeing your article, you post it on social media and send a blast to your email list.

You check your web stats the next day only to see that your blog masterpiece has largely gone unseen.

What’s a frustrated marketer to do?

Enter LinkedIn Pulse, LinkedIn’s publishing platform

Here’s why you should make publishing on LinkedIn Pulse a top priority for your business:

• Provides You An SEO Boost.
• LinkedIn Followers Are Notified of Your LinkedIn Pulse Articles.
• Drives Website Traffic.
• Boosts Your Thought Leadership.

Read more: How to Crush it With Lead Generation on LinkedIn Pulse