How to Consistently Gain New SEO Clients
If you are in the SEO business, winning clients, and eventually making them paying customers is the ultimate goal. Whether you are a newbie in the industry or a consulting SEO expert, you will need to strategize properly to make a great pitch to your prospects that will win them. From the tips below, you will learn how to identify clients within your industry, and how to convert them into buying customers.
1. Sponsor An Event
Events are a rich ground where you can meet with potential clients. Wherever people are converged, you can always have the opportunity to cast your net wider to reach a wider audience. The event need not be an expensive affair. How about if you started by inviting the local business community for a roundtable discussion about SEO. Businesses can learn from each other, especially through the interaction in events.
You can even go a notch higher by inviting one or two reputable industry leaders as keynote speakers. By doing this, you are essentially building a reputation as a qualified SEO expert. Create and sustain business relationships from such events and build on them to win clients.
2. Conduct Free Training
Free training is a good way to bring potential clients together. You could start by offering free marketing training for instance. Send the invite to your target audience via multiple channels. To avoid a lot of overhead costs, online training could be an option. Give participants valuable marketing insight, teach them how to expose their brand to potential clients, and top it off by giving free branded merchandise.
You will be seen as an authority on the field and the go-to person whenever any of the participants need marketing expertise. This way, you might gain new SEO clients.
3. Everybody Likes Free Trials
Take your SEO service closer to potential clients by offering free trials. Allow users to feel how your service answers their SEO needs and why they should hire you and not your competitor. Let the users experience short-term success from the free trial. This will put you in an advanced position to negotiate long-term contracts.
4. Cold Calling
Cold calling can make potential clients warm up to your services. Industry experts from AdInfusion.com advise that it is best first to warm up potential clients through postcards, emails, or twitter posts, just to create awareness. This way, they will have some familiarity with your brand before you call them.
5. Optimize Your Own Site
It is expected that you are doing all you can to become the best SEO solutions provider in the industry. Perhaps you even rank higher than most of your competitors. The question however is how friendly your site is. Do visitors have an easy time navigating or requesting information? Do your links actually work? How about customer support, do you actually respond within the time stated? Let charity begin at home.
6. Referral Scheme
Referrals are a great way to gain new SEO clients. Design a referral scheme for your clients complete with discounts. Clients who tell their friends about you and get them to successfully sign up can receive meal vouchers, gift hampers, or discounted service.
7. Build Local Network
Make friends with local businesses, get to learn about their services, and build valuable relations. Learn about their services and offer free marketing and SEO help to them. Soon, they will be talking to their friends about you, and you may earn referral clients.
8. Start Blogging
Blogging is an important part of content marketing. Content marketing aims not to directly sell a brand, but rather to create awareness about its presence. You can start a weekly or bi-monthly blog centered on a certain concept and released on a specific date. Just ensure you have fresh ideas and market the blog on all marketing channels.
9. Boost Online Presence
Besides the common social media sites, there are other platforms on the internet that can boost your profile. You could try platforms such as Quora, Facebook Questions, AnswerBag, or WikiAnswers for starters. For instance, users can ask questions regarding SEO and you have an opportunity to answer. Other users might view you as an SEO expert, and this way, you might attract potential clients.
Attracting new SEO clients can be achieved in various ways as shown above. Always remember that the idea is to cast the net as wide as possible. Sometimes you will need to convince potential clients who have never heard of SEO of the need and how it can help their businesses. Try avenues that are not commonly used and you will be on your way to adding more SEO clients.
