How to Sell SEO to Clients

The market has a long list of SEO agencies that are struggling for the same customers. Therefore, you cannot succeed unless you know how to sell SEO to clients. The steps that you take will determine your success rate in the industry.

Here are some golden tips on how to sell SEO to clients:

1. Identify Your Niche:

All industries across the board require SEO services. Business owners are very quick when it comes to reaching out to their clients on all platforms. Most SEO strategies work for all businesses in the industry.

If you have been consuming SEO services for some time, it will not be hard to identify your niche. It basically refers to the source of most of your clients. You need to confirm whether all of them belong to one industry.

If all your customers belong to the same field or industry, you will need to pay more attention to the industry. On the other hand, if you are just starting a business, do some research on the industries that need SEO services. Some of them include home services, medical, and legal among others.

2. Polish the Unique Value Proposition of Your Brand:

All business sales communications that you make should reflect your value proposition. The value proposition should explain the importance of your services to your target customers.

You need to explain to your customers how the services that you offer can solve their problems. You need to provide valuable benefits to your audience and improve their situation. The most important thing is to add value to their brand.

The value proposition should also display how the services that you are offering are different from the competition. However, remember this is not a positioning statement or strapline. It should comprise of a headline, sub-headline, bullet points, and a visual element.

As you put the value proposition together, take note of the 4 Ps of marketing. These include Promotion, Place, Price, and product. For a more in-depth branding initiative, you can expand them to 7Ps: Promotion, Process, Physical Evidence, People, Place, Price, and Product.

Put all these Ps into consideration as you create and HOW and WHY of the SEO services that you are offering. It is the best starting point if you want to learn how to sell SEO to clients.

In summary, the unique value proposition will differentiate your business and give reasons why clients should choose you. As a result, you need to define your SEO solutions to all your potential customers and how they stand to benefit from them.

3. Focus on the Provision of Solutions to Your Clients:

Once you understand your value proposition, you need to provide real solutions to your customers. Most SEO experts go wrong because they use the same strategy for all their customers. You will find most of them struggling with building their online presence and search engine rankings.

It is good to allow the customers to define their SEO problems before you can create a strategy that will work best for them. Visit the social media pages and website of the customer before you engage with them in any way.

Bring up the current issues and explain to the customer how you will be addressing them. It is an excellent step if you want to learn how to sell SEO to clients.

4. Make Your Cold Emails Perfect:

Most businesses will tell you that cold emailing can be bothersome. Most companies appreciate that time is a valuable commodity, and most emails are either ignored or deleted. Therefore, it is crucial to refine your processes and perfect your email.

To avoid your emails going to the trash directly, they have to stand out from those of your competitors. To achieve this objective, you need to use a subject line that will attract the attention of your readers. The subject line will make sure that you have a perfect sales message.

Besides, you should also find the most appropriate template for drafting your emails. Research on the templates with the highest response rate for the SEO services that you are offering. It will help you to learn how to sell SEO to clients within your niche.

Before you think about engagement and readability, you have to make sure that you have the right strategy to avoid the spam filter. Most email providers, such as AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, and Outlook, use these filters.

Overly ‘sales’ emails and misleading subjects will not pass through an excellent spam filter. You can reach out to the whole contact list using a single blanket email. However, tailoring your emails for subgroups and groups will give you the best success rate.

5. Avoid SEO Jargons As You Talk to Customers:

Always use concise and clear statements while explaining your SEO plan to customers. Let no one cheat you that including jargon in your discussions will tell clients that you know so much.

If you use a term like SEO, use simple words to explain to the customer its meaning. The key is understanding the problems of your customers and describing viable solutions in the simplest language. It is one of the most effective tricks if you want to learn how to sell SEO to clients.

6. Make use of Case Studies:

Successful sales campaigns cannot succeed on their own. You need to deliver results to attract new clients and retain the existing ones. The use of SEO case studies in recording and presenting the achievements of your project is crucial if you wish to display your range.

You can either focus on one niche area or create a diverse portfolio with customers in all industries. In either case, you will need a case study to back up the marketing narrative that you are using. You could be an upcoming small agency or a freelancer who is starting. You have to make sure that you prove your pudding.

The essential thing in the SEO world is the result. The best way to perfect what you are selling is to show what you have to offer. Most people who want to learn how to sell SEO to clients miss it at this point.

You can use these measured results to create impressive studies that you can display on your website. It is also useful to have multiple success indicators because every customer looks for a unique thing.

Your case studies should also have timelines. It will show you what you can do within a particular timeframe. Also, it will give you some insights on growth potential. Besides, you will use it to push for service renewals and extended contracts.

7. Brand Your Services:

You have to make sure that your services are visible in the market. Create profiles on various social media platforms and use them to respond to your followers. You can also use these platforms to share useful content.

Think about the content that your customers will find to be interesting. It can be trends or events in the market or SEO tactics that will enhance the performance of their business.

It is also good to participate in the dealing forums in your niche and share important insights on topics that are trending in your industry. You have to increase your knowledge base in the niche. It is the only way that you will remain relevant over time.

SEO tactics change each day because search engine regulations and consumer behavior keep in changing. Stay up to date with the modern SEO strategies in your field and other industries as well.  It will help you to outdo your competitors and learn how to sell SEO to clients.

Invest a lot of effort and time in learning the new strategies if you want to learn how to sell SEO to clients.

8. Collect Customer Testimonials:

Your case studies will show how your services improve the performance of websites over time. However, it is crucial to get customer reviews. Some of the most valuable things in the online world are positive recommendations from other enterprises.

Potential customers can easily relate to testimonials. Visualizing success will assist you to sell your SEO services. Some of the valuable testimonials can be word-of-mouth but it’s good to ask your clients to leave behind written feedback.

If you serve your clients well, they will be willing to leave behind a positive review for your site. You can add your customers to your LinkedIn page and request for their recommendations. Make sure that any visitors who land on your page can easily view these testimonials.

If you are using emails to contact your potential customers, be keen to include a link to the testimonials page. You can also choose one and paste it to the email. It is crucial if your target audience is also receiving similar emails from your competitors because you need to stand out.

9. Developing and Implementing Lead Generation Strategies:

Optimize your site and have a clear call to action on all the pages. Make maximum use of forums, blogs, and social media to generate more leads.

Choose conventional techniques that will work for your niche and business. Direct mail campaigns and can cold calls are the other lead generation strategies that work well. Don’t forget to personalize your communication as you pursue email campaigns and cold calls.

For lead generation to succeed, you need to implement, test, and then expand the winning strategies. Not all the strategies that work for the other SEO agencies will do so for yours. Therefore, define a lead generation plan that proves to be effective for your brand and scale it over time.

10. Get Social Exposure:

Getting your brand and name out there needs you to have an excellent social strategy. Social media and digital marketing go hand in hand and you need to be present on several platforms.

Once you set up an SEO blog for your business website, you will have an excellent platform for both the new and return traffic. You will also become an authority figure in the online content sphere. Share informative articles on your social channels regularly so that you can become an important figure in social media.

Besides, you may not know the social connections that will need your services in the future. Therefore, you need to understand that social interactions have long term gains.

Also, link up to social marketing with email marketing. Include social links in all your email correspondences so that your warm leads will not warm out forever. If business leads decide to follow you on social media, you can revive it in the future.

Remember, the individuals who are behind the businesses you are targeting aren’t static. People change jobs, move around, and even start new companies. Therefore, you can never tell when an obsolete lead will turn into potentials.

11. Partnering and Seeking Advice From Other SEO Professionals:

You cannot deliver high-quality services to your customers alone. Some professionals will help you to solve the problems that you have with some of your customers.  For example, web designers and content writers will help you to optimize your website, and hence partnering with them is crucial.

When you work with other professionals, you will respond to a broad range of customer needs and build your reputation in the market. Most customers believe that you know everything and you should apply it to their brand.

Consulting professionals will give you an opportunity to learn what you did not know and serve your clients in a better way. You will learn faster and offer customized solutions when you begin to consult from experts.

12. Become a Thought Leader:

If you search for the phrase “how to sell SEO to clients” online, you will get several articles talking about how not to do that. The internet is full of articles that highlight the unethical practices that will make your SEO efforts to fail.

Some professionals will tell you that SEO should market itself. Any company that wants to grow cannot avoid sales. Most freelancers and startups who wish to establish their brand in the industry prefer to use cold contact marketing. Most leading SEO companies used these age-old techniques to establish their reputation in the market.

However, there is an art on how to sell SEO to clients in the modern world. Sales is a sophisticated process because people are connected to technology all the time. The secret of success is building an online brand reputation all the time. It will take you some perseverance and time to achieve the desired objectives.

Conclusion:

With all this information, you now know how to sell SEO to clients. The good thing is that all businesses require SEO services to succeed in the modern market. Once you learn how to sell SEO to clients, you will have an outstanding performance.

The above strategies will make sure that you stand out from the competition. What works for me will not necessarily work well for your brand. In case you still need more guidance on how to sell SEO to clients, feel free to contact us.

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