Routines. We all have them. Some we follow daily—consciously. Others we follow on a subconscious level, unaware of them.
Whatever they are, routines are incredibly powerful.
Over a span of time, the right routines can be key contributors to both our personal and business successes.
If you’ve read any of Tim Ferriss’ books or listened to his podcast, you know he’s a staunch supporter of routines.
In his most recent book, Tools of Titans, Tim discusses some of his personal morning routines, e.g., making his bed, meditating, and journaling.
He feels doing these things enables him to operate at a higher level and be more efficient and productive.
And you know what?
I totally agree!
Routines can be a huge help for boosting many different areas of your business, especially your digital marketing.
Developing certain routines has helped me get ahead, and I’ve even shared what a day of my life typically looks like.
Here’s a snippet:
Of course, that was back in 2011, and I’ve modified things a bit.
But the point is that creating and following an effective digital marketing routine can have a tremendous impact on all aspects of your business.
In this post, I’d like to provide you with an outline of tasks I recommend you work into your daily routine. They will help you generate up to 40% more new leads each week.
And don’t worry, the time commitment is minimal—roughly one hour.
But when done on a consistent basis, this routine will significantly increase your lead generation.
Let’s get to it.
The correlation between leads and sales
First, I’d like to briefly explain why effective lead generation is so important.
I probably sound like Captain Obvious by saying that leads are important, but I found some interesting statistics that paint a clearer picture of the exact correlation between leads and sales.
Here’s a screenshot from a HubSpot article:
And here’s a graph that illustrates how sales increase along with the volume of leads:
Notice on the far right side that 28% of companies with over a billion dollars in annual revenue generate over 10,000 leads per month?
Now look on the other end of the spectrum on the far left-hand side.
The overwhelming majority of companies (82%) with less than $250k in annual revenue generate 100 or fewer leads per month.
That’s not a coincidence.
The lesson here is get quality leads, and the sales will come.
Which areas should you focus on?
So you’ve got one hour to devote to digital marketing.
How do you decide where to place your effort?
As you probably already know, I hardly use any strategies at random.
I prefer to base my tactics on cold, hard data.
That’s why I think it’s smart to examine which lead sources are the most beneficial.
According to another study from HubSpot, the top three lead sources across the board are:
- Social media
- SEO
- Email marketing
Besides a variety of techniques that fall under “other,” it’s clear that these bring the most leads.
Based on this data and my own experience, here’s how I suggest you spend the one-hour block of time you devote to boosting your lead generation.
Updating social media (15 minutes)
Considering the fact that social media ranked as the top lead generation tactic for B2C and B2B2C marketers, that’s where I recommend you begin.
More specifically, spend roughly 15 minutes updating your accounts.
When it comes to posting, it’ll depend on the social platform.
For instance, most experts agree one post per day on Facebook is plenty.
However, tweeting 15 times per day on Twitter is quite acceptable for most brands.
If you’re uncertain just how much you should post, check out this post from CoSchedule.
It takes data from 10 separate studies to explain the ideal social media content volume.
I’m not saying you need to follow it to a T, but it should provide you with a general baseline.
Since you’ll want to update multiple times a day on certain networks, such as Twitter, I recommend batching—the process of taking care of your day’s work in one sitting.
In fact, batching is a scientifically-backed method for increasing efficiency, which I practice on a regular basis.
Two specific tools enabling you to batch like a boss are Buffer and Hootsuite.
For instance, you can auto-post across several networks like it’s nothing.
You can even auto-schedule days or weeks in advance.
Engaging on social media (5 minutes)
The second part of your social media session should be spent on engaging with your audience.
I find this to be less time-consuming than updating, and it can usually be done in around five minutes, assuming you’re not a massive brand with a huge following.
Spend this time responding to comments, leaving a comment or two, and generally interacting with your audience.
Perform SEO research (20 minutes)
Now, let’s tackle SEO.
I don’t think I need to tell you how important having a presence in search engines is.
If you need a reminder, consider this:
- 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine.
- 81% of people perform some type of online research before making a large purchase.
- 57% of B2B marketers stated that SEO generates more leads than any other marketing initiative.
Time spent on SEO is time well spent.
But which specific SEO tasks should you focus on?
Here’s what I suggest.
Identify keywords
Sound keyword research is still very much integral to effective SEO.
Although keywords don’t play as big of a role as they used to (remember when good ol’ fashioned keyword stuffing could help you rise to the top?), they’re still important.
I like to conduct brief keyword research sessions, where I look for opportunities and take note of anything that looks promising.
I can quickly reference those keywords later, when I’m writing a blog post and deciding on phrases to use in titles, meta descriptions, and so on.
More specifically, I like to target long-tail keyword phrases.
Long-tail phrases not only make it easier to rank but also have higher conversion rates.
For a comprehensive guide on long-tail search, check out this post I wrote on NeilPatel.com.
Analyze your SEO
I think we can all agree there’s an inherent level of instability to SEO.
It’s perpetually in flux.
For this reason, you should constantly keep tabs on the current state of your site’s SEO.
Consistent analysis will help you identify trends and patterns that can be quite useful.
This could be something as basic as determining which keywords are bringing in the most traffic or something as complex as analyzing your link profile to spot unsavory links to disavow.
It really depends.
Of course, you’ll need the right tools to properly analyze SEO.
For an overview of popular tools, refer to this post from HubSpot.
I’m also really big on using Google Search Console.
If you’re unfamiliar with how it works or how to use it, just read this post I wrote.
Keeping tabs on SEO in this way will help you correct mistakes early on and capitalize on key opportunities.
Email (20 minutes)
Last but not least, there’s email.
Some of you may find it strange I included this considering it’s pretty antiquated.
But all I care about is results.
As long as a tactic generates leads, it’s worth my attention.
And the bottom line is that email marketing gets results as long as you do it right.
Just check out these stats:
So devote the last 20 minutes to email.
It’s way too easy to get sucked into the black hole of email, wasting time on useless messages, marketing spam, or unnecessary chit-chat.
I get a ton of email, so I have to prioritize my time and energy when I attend to it.
With that being said, here are some tasks and activities you’ll want to engage in:
- Writing email blasts – The ideal frequency varies, but “17% of companies are sending 4 – 5 emails a month to their contacts, 8% 6-8 times, and 8% more than 8 times a month.”
- Researching ideas for potential email topics
- Managing email distribution
- Analyzing your email marketing strategy (e.g., examining churn, why people are unsubscribing, your click-through rate, etc.)
- Making adjustments where they’re needed.
Conclusion
Routines are important.
Developing a practical and tactical digital marketing routine can be your ticket to generating a high volume of leads that can take your business to the next level.
In fact, following this specific formula could very well help you bring in 40% more new leads each week.
Doing so will enable you to maximize your effort and accomplish more with a nominal time investment.
But here’s the thing.
You need to stick with it. This is super important!
To see real success requires that you follow this routine pretty much on a daily basis.
Not that you need to become a workaholic, but consistency is key here.
Do you follow any certain routines to optimize your marketing?