Link Building, when to give up on a possible backlink provider

[BobGW]

Hello,

I'm doing content marketing, it's working but it's slow and steady. I'm looking for some wisdom here from people that have done a lot of linkbuilding.

Phone calls are tending to be a great resource in our niche. But I've got about 10 sites that I've called about ten times each and they're taking up a lot of time. I've mostly narrowed down who to contact but that person won't answer the phone.

My question is, when do you give up on a good lead? Do I just try to contact a good person 5?, or 10? times then leave a message, leave a message a week later, then give up? I don't think leaving a message for content marketing in this case would help much.

Thanks for the advice.

[customerparadigm.com]

The great guru Seth Godin wrote about this on Saturday:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2013/11/tenacity-is-not-the-same-as-persistence.html

Seth wrote:

"Persistence is doing something again and again until it works. It sounds like 'pestering' for a reason.

"Tenacity is using new data to make new decisions to find new pathways to find new ways to achieve a goal when the old ways didn't work.

"Telemarketers are persistent, Nike is tenacious."

My $0.02 is that if someone doesn't respond to the first 3-4 phone calls, it's unlikely that you're going to "wear them down" by trying to be persistent.  You're probably just bugging them.

Instead, try to find a new way to get their attention and link to your site.

If it's a really valuable note, send a package with cookies, and a message tying in your pitch.  Send flowers.  Do something out of the box to get through the clutter...

Hope this helps...
-- Jeff