What Do You Have That People Want?

Over at the ISEDB there's an article outlining which B2B lead generation tactics are working (or not) according to research from MarketingSherpa.

"Marketers were asked, "which offers are 'very effective' for generating high-quality leads?" Their top five picks, ranked in order were:"

Free trial demo or download – 54% of software marketers and ASPs ranked free demos as highly effective B2B lead generation tactics,

Webcast or webinar – 41% of business software marketers and ASPs ranked webcasts as highly effective,

White paper -- All business technology marketers rated white papers as highly effective B2B lead generation tactics,

Blog -- 35% of business software marketers and ASPs as well as 33% of those marketing business services rated blogs as highly effective.

Podcast -- ....By June 2006, 22% of software marketers and ASPs called podcasts highly effective B2B lead generation tactics.

(I'm highlighting here so be sure to read the article for all the results and comments.)

What works in lead generation also works in link building.

Each of these items can be used to attract links by adding them as content to your site and offering it as promotional content to others.

Let's pull out the white paper idea and look at the ways we can use it to build links: (and help with basic SEO):

1. Develop a number of white papers (Get everyone in your company to write on their topic of expertise)
2. Place on your site, (builds content, SEO, pay attention to your internal links)
3. Offer to your customers, encourage them to push. (viral potential & good customer service)
4. Add an RSS to pages (be sure the paper has a keyword headline)
5. Include tagging (digg, del.icio.us, Furl etc)
6. Issue press release through a service like URLWire (snail mail as well if you're land based)
7. Offer to vendors, manufacturers, your association, it's members etc/anyone to host on their site.

Now pull out the other lead ideas and go through the same drill. You may have to change the industries and demographic you target to fit the idea but hey, that's a good thing! You want lots of links from different places within your niche. Leads are links, links are leads. Give people what they want, market it well and the links will come!

Slashdot / Del.icio.us / Digg