Offline Local Business: SEO vs. PPC?

12 years ago

I would suggest doing both. With using PPC, make sure you have a great landing page and sales funnel. PPC can get expensive if your not converting ads.

Originally Posted by bigballin6161

What is better for getting new clients for offline local business? I have relied on SEO for the last 3 years and for 2 of them had the number 1 spot for all of my keywords. This worked well. Recently got a penalty and now sit at 5-7 and am at the point at wondering if I should just throw in the towel with SEO and go strictly PPC. All of the updates are making everything so unstable.

Would PPC(adwords) get the same amount of clients as say top 3 organic search? Anyone have any insight or experience themsleves in this situation? Should I break the bank and do both?

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Michael Nguyen

12 years ago

I'm in the exact situation as you. For the last 18 months it was pure and pure SEO but I'm not comfortable anymore with the Google updates. Don't pack in the SEO, just transition more to online marketing and offer all. This is where your client management skills come into play. Assign a budget to PPC and get guarantee clicks. All depends how much the CPC is and what you were currently getting in visits via organics. But offer both to cover your ass.

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dpac123

12 years ago

The important thing is to ensure that you fully understand what your target market does and how to reach them. Both SEO and PPC are useless if your website doesn't draw people, so the key thing is to think about how you can help, who you need to reach and what you would say to them. I find LinkedIn extremely effective and a lot cheaper than both PPC and SEO.

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iAmNameLess

12 years ago

What makes you think you've got a penalty?

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bigballin6161 12 years ago

Message in GWT. Inbound Unnatural Links.
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michaelrox27

12 years ago

Use exact match keywords that can provide you relevant visitor.

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inetweaver

12 years ago

I'm in the actual scenario as you. For the last 18 several weeks it was genuine SEO but I'm not relaxed any longer with the Search engines up-dates.

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jjjust007 12 years ago

Switch to YouTube videos, then rank them on the first page of Google!
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Matthew Anton

12 years ago

It's difficult. While budgets may be "large" your commission will be small, as the going rate of 10-15% for management is good if you are handling volume, i.e. hundreds of clients, but if you are managing dozens you'll need the SEO budget as it provides higher margins so you can get results and earn a living.

PPC is more scalable, but it's a different animal. You need larger volumes and larger budget clients to make it work for your company. SEO requires constant innovation, software, or a team behind you but can yield higher returns.

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MRomeo09

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Matthew Anton

It's difficult. While budgets may be "large" your commission will be small, as the going rate of 10-15% for management is good if you are handling volume, i.e. hundreds of clients, but if you are managing dozens you'll need the SEO budget as it provides higher margins so you can get results and earn a living.

PPC is more scalable, but it's a different animal. You need larger volumes and larger budget clients to make it work for your company. SEO requires constant innovation, software, or a team behind you but can yield higher returns.

Actually I was moving most of my business in 2013 from SEO to PPC, and specifically licensing PPC campaigns. I'll tell you that the money is much greater with licensing than what I got with SEO.

Basically what we did was take a niche, let's call it fencing companies. They have fairly high average ticket prices $5k+. We built an entire marketing funnel in that niche. We proved the model with over $400k in ad spend. We built a top to bottom case study about how our initial client went from 4 leads a week to 3 a day. How the funnel also increased their closing ratio from 36% to 51%, and the average ticket price actually increased by 22%.

Now I'm not charging 15% management fees. I'm not selling SEO. I'm selling a license to print money. I'm selling them the rights to use something that WILL work, is proven to work, and will produce results in about 24 hours. Instead of charging $500-1,000-2,000 a month for SEO, or 15-20% for PPC management. I'm instead charging $10k down, $5k a month or a percentage of gross plus ad spend(roughly 2 clients as downpayment, and 1 a month recurring seems to be a good rule of thumb(know your marketplace)). Plus the work is a lot easier. I don't have to worry about Google cracking down on me. I can replicate the funnel in about 3 hours of work which I outsource for around $15.

PPC campaigns that work are highly leverageable. You just have to approach it the right way and probably most importantly to the RIGHT customers(a pizza guy isn't going to be your target market). I control the entire campaign. The PPC campaign, the website/landing page, any educational materials along the way, etc. The main benefit is you do the hard work once, and then get paid over and over again. You can't really do that with SEO, or at least I never found out how to do that.

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massiveray

12 years ago

And this kids, is how you make money!

Originally Posted by MRomeo09

Actually I was moving most of my business in 2013 from SEO to PPC, and specifically licensing PPC campaigns. I'll tell you that the money is much greater with licensing than what I got with SEO.

Basically what we did was take a niche, let's call it fencing companies. They have fairly high average ticket prices $5k+. We built an entire marketing funnel in that niche. We proved the model with over $400k in ad spend. We built a top to bottom case study about how our initial client went from 4 leads a week to 3 a day. How the funnel also increased their closing ratio from 36% to 51%, and the average ticket price actually increased by 22%.

Now I'm not charging 15% management fees. I'm not selling SEO. I'm selling a license to print money. I'm selling them the rights to use something that WILL work, is proven to work, and will produce results in about 24 hours. Instead of charging $500-1,000-2,000 a month for SEO, or 15-20% for PPC management. I'm instead charging $10k down, $5k a month or a percentage of gross plus ad spend(roughly 2 clients as downpayment, and 1 a month recurring seems to be a good rule of thumb(know your marketplace)). Plus the work is a lot easier. I don't have to worry about Google cracking down on me. I can replicate the funnel in about 3 hours of work which I outsource for around $15.

PPC campaigns that work are highly leverageable. You just have to approach it the right way and probably most importantly to the RIGHT customers(a pizza guy isn't going to be your target market). I control the entire campaign. The PPC campaign, the website/landing page, any educational materials along the way, etc. The main benefit is you do the hard work once, and then get paid over and over again. You can't really do that with SEO, or at least I never found out how to do that.

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Matthew Anton

12 years ago

Originally Posted by MRomeo09

I'm instead charging $10k down, $5k a month or a percentage of gross plus ad spend(roughly 2 clients as downpayment, and 1 a month recurring seems to be a good rule of thumb(know your marketplace)).

Exactly. I would consider a $10k or $5k per month client a high end client. Most don't have the marketing budgets of this, which is why many resort to SEO, as it still has the highest ROI if you know what you are doing and don't get penalized.

I agree that PPC is more scalable, which is "printing money" in a way. Most businesses have a budget of under $1k a month for online marketing. Even with 100 clients that is 100k a month spend, or $10-$15k profit.

The situation you described is not the norm when it comes to SEM / PPC management relationships between business and client. The easiest is service provider for a flat fee.

Under this traditional model you either need to get clients to spend more, or do more volume.

This alternative method of mutual benefit is a harder sell but can be more lucrative. You can earn revenue sharing of the sales / services provided. This also opens a whole new can of worms during the sales process because you have to find out their profit margins to adequately figure out your own compensation (if you sell a fencing weapon for $345 you will need to come to an agreement for either a flat fee, or a %).

Would be interested to know the types of deals you worked out for this, if you could share here or pm it would probably help a lot of others get off the SEO treadmill and start scaling up their PPC efforts and growing with others vs just providing services and not "caring" if it converts as much.

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MRomeo09

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Matthew Anton

Exactly. I would consider a $10k or $5k per month client a high end client. Most don't have the marketing budgets of this, which is why many resort to SEO, as it still has the highest ROI if you know what you are doing and don't get penalized.

I agree that PPC is more scalable, which is "printing money" in a way. Most businesses have a budget of under $1k a month for online marketing. Even with 100 clients that is 100k a month spend, or $10-$15k profit.

The situation you described is not the norm when it comes to SEM / PPC management relationships between business and client. The easiest is service provider for a flat fee.

Under this traditional model you either need to get clients to spend more, or do more volume.

This alternative method of mutual benefit is a harder sell but can be more lucrative. You can earn revenue sharing of the sales / services provided. This also opens a whole new can of worms during the sales process because you have to find out their profit margins to adequately figure out your own compensation (if you sell a fencing weapon for $345 you will need to come to an agreement for either a flat fee, or a %).

Would be interested to know the types of deals you worked out for this, if you could share here or pm it would probably help a lot of others get off the SEO treadmill and start scaling up their PPC efforts and growing with others vs just providing services and not "caring" if it converts as much.

Ok first off I'm not really selling "PPC management". If I did then there is no way I could charge what I charge. It's just a fundamental shift in your approach. Leave the acronyms at home, this is selling printed money. It's down to the old analogy, I'll trade every $20 bill you give me into $100 bills. How many of those do you want to trade? That's almost exactly how I sell this.

What I do is create a marketing campaign. What does a marketing campaign look like to you? In my case it's a fully realized funnel. It's PPC using Facebook, Google Adwords, Microsoft Adcenter, CPA networks, youtube ads, etc. They get to the website, the website puts them into a funnel. Typically an opt-in for free information or a free consultation, etc. They get an email campaign already setup. We do remarketing campaigns to get them back to the site. And sometimes we'll do voice broadcasts, or telemarketing to the opt-in customers. I think Ryan Deiss got it about perfect here : Customer Value Optimization: How to Build an Unstoppable Business

So to call it PPC is kind of silly. It's so much more than that.

Let's talk about a real client, a local business. Here are his numbers:
22 Leads Per Month
7 Jobs Per Month
$4900 average Job
38% Average Profit
HIs only advertising was in the Money Pages and Valpak.

We sold him a proven campaign in the niche. We created a free report that was one of those proven models of educational material that a buyer would be interested in. But mostly the report was full of testimonials inducing the customer to want to do business with them. It was basically a case study, testimonial driven sales letter. The report and testimonial gathering cost me about $400. We drove traffic through PPC, and Youtube.
He paid me $5k setup fee, and 20% of profits.
57 Leads Per Month
30 Jobs Per Month
$5800 Average Job
45% Average Profit.
I basically transformed the business. He went from around $13k a month in profit, and making a comfortable $160k a year. To making over $72k a month and almost getting to a million a year. He actually had me stop after 3 weeks to give him time to hire up. If you look at the numbers, we actually helped him close more business. Instead of closing around 33% of his sales calls he moved to over 50%. He also sold more. He did that because we really ratcheted up his trust factor by running a testimonial driven marketing campaign. He was able to increase his profit by selling better quality stuff which didn't cost any more to install, etc.

Ultimately I'm most excited for him. I've changed his business radically, and his life. At the 2 month mark, I gave him a list of 10 prospects that I wanted him to call for me. We did an endorsed mailing from him to the prospects in the same industry and then he called them. I got appointments with all of them. I ended up selling 7 of them. And then you just rinse and repeat the process.

Again, I'm most excited for his growth. But if you want to count the numbers. I made around $16k a month from him. My total investment was around $500 for the setup, and around $30 a month in maintenance. My work was a lot less labor intensive than doing SEO or even site rentals or lead gen.

But let me be clear it's not beginner level stuff. It will take a fair amount of work and preparation to do it right. But it's about the results you can provide for the customer. When you can provide these kind of results, when you literally can take stagnant little businesses and make them million dollar cash cows. Then you deserve to get a piece of that pie. I think most PPC or SEO only providers are missing the point. If you can make your clients millions then you can deserve millions. I keep hammering the point in, be worth more to earn more. It's not sexy or easy, but it works. SEO by itself won't typically do it. PPC won't typically do it. It requires a holistic approach to profit growth through any means necessary.

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Claude Whitacre

12 years ago

Originally Posted by MRomeo09

Ultimately I'm most excited for him. I've changed his business radically, and his life. At the 2 month mark, I gave him a list of 10 prospects that I wanted him to call for me. We did an endorsed mailing from him to the prospects in the same industry and then he called them. I got appointments with all of them. I ended up selling 7 of them. And then you just rinse and repeat the process.

Your post should be etched in granite.

So it was;
He sent an endorsed letter to 10 names
Then he called them to introduce you.
Then you called him to make sure they were willing to talk to you.
Then you called to make the appointment.

Is that about it? Or am I missing something?

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MRomeo09

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Claude Whitacre

Your post should be etched in granite.

So it was;
He sent an endorsed letter to 10 names
Then he called them to introduce you.
Then you called him to make sure they were willing to talk to you.
Then you called to make the appointment.

Is that about it? Or am I missing something?

Yes, more or less. At it's bare essence this was what worked, but in reality I spent a lot of time and effort developing my own funnel.

Step 1: Identify prospects. Do your research. This company was on the bottom end of the companies I like to work with. I like companies with 10+ employees doing over a million a year in sales.

Then basically once I have the "best" in my vertical. I'm doing everything I can to contact them. Chances are this wasn't their first "touch", nor would it be my last touch if they didn't buy. I might have even had a phone conversation with them before. My approach and attitude is they are going to do business with me eventually, it's just a matter of when that happens.

Part of it is positioning as well. I force them into my funnel. They have to talk to my assistants and schedule time with me. I generally make it fairly difficult to get an appointment with me. I'm in the position of power even if I've been marketing to them. I hold the keys to tens of thousands of dollars a month, and either they will get it, or one of their competitors will.

I'm basically dripping them with case studies. And if the first business owner who calls them doesn't get them to call, will the 15th?

Typically though I found the endorsed mailing and the phone call to be my most effective marketing technique. There was very little resistance. They could talk shop for ever. And when they basically hear from one of their "us'ns" to use a Dan Kennedy term that they made about 5x the cash as they did before, and it was all done for them, they just had to do the "widgeting" and leave the marketing to my team, they were pretty darn compelled to call and give it a "whirl". I wasn't selling SEO or PPC I was selling cash.

So my funnel looked something like this:
1. Identify targets.
2. Send Fed ex package sales letter
3. Telemarketer tries to schedule phone appointment
4. Send endorsed letter.
5. Have endorsed phone call
6. Schedule Phone appointment
7. Drip case studies
8. About once a month have a telemarketer call and schedule phone consultation.
9. Don't stop until they beg you to stop or do business with you.

I found the endorsed connections amazingly effective. It's about the easiest type of sale you can make. But I believe every type of sale is most effective when it's part of a campaign to get your ideal customers.

That answer your question Claude?

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Claude Whitacre

12 years ago

Originally Posted by MRomeo09

I found the endorsed connections amazingly effective. It's about the easiest type of sale you can make. But I believe every type of sale is most effective when it's part of a campaign to get your ideal customers.

That answer your question Claude?

That and more. If you ever put this into a WSO, book, or course let me know.

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SashaLee

12 years ago

Originally Posted by MRomeo09

So my funnel looked something like this:
1. Identify targets.
2. Send Fed ex package sales letter
3. Telemarketer tries to schedule phone appointment
4. Send endorsed letter.
5. Have endorsed phone call
6. Schedule Phone appointment
7. Drip case studies
8. About once a month have a telemarketer call and schedule phone consultation.
9. Don't stop until they beg you to stop or do business with you.

Hi there,

I'm going to alert our security folks. You've come very close to our exact plan. <jk>

Folks, right here you have a recipe for success. Well done MRome. If you can stick to this plan you'll be set for a long, long time.

Don't let boredom with what works set in and derail you.

All the best,

Sasha.

Thanks

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9999

12 years ago

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MRomeo09

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Claude Whitacre

That and more. If you ever put this into a WSO, book, or course let me know.

I'm considering the Warrior Event in NC. Although I had intentions to go last year, and then ended up hospitalized for almost three months. So it's a little dangerous for me to make those plans. But if I go, I've been known to partake in a beer or two. Buy me a beer and we'll talk.

Originally Posted by SashaLee

Hi there,

I'm going to alert our security folks. You've come very close to our exact plan. <jk>

Folks, right here you have a recipe for success. Well done MRome. If you can stick to this plan you'll be set for a long, long time.

Don't let boredom with what works set in and derail you.

All the best,

Sasha.

Too late, got bored(or rather sick), and sold it all. Did make enough money that I no longer have to work, so that doesn't stink. So I don't actively do any of this anymore. In fact I had only been doing this for about six months, would have been interesting to see what I could have done with it. Moving on to bigger and better things.

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We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up ... discovering we have the strength to stare it down. - Eleanor Roosevelt

Your opinion of yourself becomes your reality. If you have all these doubts, then no one will believe in you and everything will go wrong. If you think the opposite, the opposite will happen. Itâ€™s that simple.-Curtis Jackson- 50 Cent

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Claude Whitacre

12 years ago

Originally Posted by MRomeo09

I'm considering the Warrior Event in NC. Although I had intentions to go last year, and then ended up hospitalized for almost three months. So it's a little dangerous for me to make those plans. But if I go, I've been known to partake in a beer or two. Buy me a beer and we'll talk.

Absolutely. Another reason you should come, is that there are going to be several guys from the Offline forum there.

I'd love to see you there. And as long as you're talking, I'm buying.

Thanks

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kemdev

12 years ago

Originally Posted by MRomeo09

I'm considering the Warrior Event in NC. Although I had intentions to go last year, and then ended up hospitalized for almost three months. So it's a little dangerous for me to make those plans. But if I go, I've been known to partake in a beer or two. Buy me a beer and we'll talk.

Too late, got bored(or rather sick), and sold it all. Did make enough money that I no longer have to work, so that doesn't stink. So I don't actively do any of this anymore. In fact I had only been doing this for about six months, would have been interesting to see what I could have done with it. Moving on to bigger and better things.

I'd be interested to hear some more specifics of the types of industries you're working with and how you make sure you get paid on every sale you make them.

I've been working with a lot of upper mid-level HVAC companies on their websites and, more importantly, getting exposure to that website and generating phone calls. The average output for my service is around 15-25 leads per month from phone calls and form submissions (free estimate). An average install for any one of the companies I work with is $4-6,000 so a set up fee + percentage of new leads sounds like a no-brainer for me.

I can track leads no problem. How do you go about keeping the other end honest and tracking sales that come through? That's about the only thing I can't wrap my head around with this.

Thanks
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Garble

12 years ago

Originally Posted by kemdev

How do you go about keeping the other end honest and tracking sales that come through? That's about the only thing I can't wrap my head around with this.

I was wondering about this as well.

Thanks
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MRomeo09

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Claude Whitacre

Absolutely. Another reason you should come, is that there are going to be several guys from the Offline forum there.

I'd love to see you there. And as long as you're talking, I'm buying.

Trying to see if I can get it scheduled. We'll see, will let you know if I go. I generally keep a low profile at these things. I was more into getting up on stage in my 20's and 30's now I'm more into anonymity.

Originally Posted by kemdev

I'd be interested to hear some more specifics of the types of industries you're working with and how you make sure you get paid on every sale you make them.

I've been working with a lot of upper mid-level HVAC companies on their websites and, more importantly, getting exposure to that website and generating phone calls. The average output for my service is around 15-25 leads per month from phone calls and form submissions (free estimate). An average install for any one of the companies I work with is $4-6,000 so a set up fee + percentage of new leads sounds like a no-brainer for me.

I can track leads no problem. How do you go about keeping the other end honest and tracking sales that come through? That's about the only thing I can't wrap my head around with this.

I'm pretty much skirting the line of my NDA as it is. I can't really talk about niches or businesses. It's kind of irrelevant though, there are tons of niches like this when you wander away from the pizza shops, and dentists.

The funny thing is everyone new wonders about that, but it's really not that big of a deal. It's really not. First off I'm not all that concerned about getting every penny. I expect I'm going to make about 80-90% of what I'm owed. I'm ok with that.

Second, here in the states if you have an agreement like this, and you can catch them with fraud(which isn't that hard), you end up getting triple(treble) damages. It's really not hard to get an attorney to take on that case, as they are going to make a ton of money. Most companies know this. Yes they may try to steal a little here or there, but most aren't going to want to risk getting sued.

You have to understand from their point why would they try to screw with you? I mean you've brought in more money than they ever thought their business could bring in. You're doing all the work they don't want to do. You can leave them at any time, and take it to their competitor across the street. And everyone is rightfully scared silly about being taken to court. And you're dangling in front of them constantly new revenue streams if you're smart. New JV's, new campaigns, etc. Do you understand what triple damages would do to most going businesses if you could prove it? In most cases it would completely devastate the company and shut it down.

I usually have a pretty open relationship with the business owner, we're talking on the phone fairly regularly. We do a lot of "busy" work to try to tweak the campaign, which gives us an excuse for more bonding. Honestly it's not nearly as hard to get business numbers out of a business owner as many think. You just have to ask, and if they are extremely cagey, you can move on to the next prospect.

Understand this is a people business, your income will be directly related to how effectively you can get people to like you and trust you. It's how you get the deal in the first place. Maybe I'm too trusting, but I'm usually of the belief that if we are constantly communicating it's going to be easier for them to tell the truth than to lie about it and keep double books, etc.

Plus it's not hard to kind of check their numbers. You can always follow up with current customers and see what they spent, etc. I can pay a telemarketer $20-30 to bang out a survey of each lead we sent you. Check with other market players to make sure the margins are accurate, etc. Remember you have the power here if they don't make you satisfied you can always leave and take it to their nearest competitor with a killer case study from the guy they want to take down.

Let me ask you this. If I could bring you an additional $100k a month to your Offline business but I wanted $20k a month for that privilege. How long would you want to pay me that money? I have access to all of the customers, they are coming through my funnel. I can call any of them and just do a "quality check". Do you really want to pretend you only made $50k, and see if you get away with it? If I caught wind, I'd warn you once. And if you didn't shape up, then I'd sue. You'd pay tens of thousands of dollars for attorneys. You'd most likely lose. You'd be responsible for $30k a month for each month you were stiffing me. And your business has dried up because I yanked it out from under you, and sold it to your competitor. Think it through logically doesn't it make more sense to pay, and hope that next month I bring you another campaign that gets you to $200k a month, so you can pay me $40k?

Lots of rambling, hope ya got it.

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advertisethis

12 years ago

Originally Posted by MRomeo09

Step 1: Identify prospects. Do your research.

You seem to have employed DETAILED information about the targetted company prior to them having become a client. Obtaining that information seems to be the exclusive domain of the IRS, special stockholders, employee insiders, or aggressive private investigators. Is that far off, or do you just make inferences based on the market, specific product costs, and spyfu gleanings?

Thanks
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MRomeo09

12 years ago

Originally Posted by advertisethis

You seem to have employed DETAILED information about the targetted company prior to them having become a client. Obtaining that information seems to be the exclusive domain of the IRS, special stockholders, employee insiders, or aggressive private investigators. Is that far off, or do you just make inferences based on the market, specific product costs, and spyfu gleanings?

It's really not that hard. There are multiple ways to get this information. For me I typically use InfoUsa and just buy a list. I can choose almost anything. For instance a list I pulled yesterday found phone numbers and email addresses of companies in a certain niche that have between 10-19 employees and had sales between 1-5 million, and had been in business over 10 years and found 1,240 of those leads. It costs me $458 for that list. But these are my IDEAL clients. It comes with the following information:

Company name
Address
Contact name
Title
Contact gender
Line of business (SIC Code)
Metro area
Carrier route
Delivery point bar code
Phone number
Website address
Employee size
Sales volume
Credit rating score
Office size
Square footage
Number of PCs
HQ/branch
Public/private
Franchise
Yellow Page ad size

If you don't want to pay for a list, then you can choose to use Reference USA which you can find in any major library. You can find most of this information for free there. It's an awesome resource.

You can also find quite a bit of information on industries by getting the RMA book. The RMA(Risk Management Association) puts out a yearly book called the Annual Statement Studies. You can find out broad strokes about the industry by looking at them by SIC code. You can find out generally speaking how much income each company makes and from that come up with rules of thumb. It's interesting when you talk to a business owner and you ask an innocuous question like how many employees do you have? They give that information quite readily- 12. And you tell them so you probably gross Between $900k and $1.4k and you most likely take home between $50k and $200k. Because you end up with these rules of thumbs of an average employee in these industries bring in between $80-110k of revenue, and the business makes between 5-15% profit.

You can also get these numbers pretty easily by getting on the buyers lists for business brokers. You can call up a business broker and say I want to buy a kitchen remodeling business anywhere in the Northeast, can you send me some listings, and they will send you a ton of information and you can find out about businesses in the industry pretty easily. You will be able to compile your own data of revenue vs employees vs profit.

And finally you can just call businesses in the industry and make a survey. Some will tell you, some won't. You can ballpark it. "John thanks for taking my call we just have a quick survey for the industry if you don't mind. How many employees do you have? 10? Very good. So that means you're probably right around $1M gross revenue, is that about right? Oh really you're doing $1.5M, that's awesome. So for companies in your industry that make around $1.5M they make between $75k and $300k in net profit. Would you classify yourself as less than $100k between $100-150k, $150k-200k or $200k or more?" Now some will answers others won't. But you'll get enough to know what to expect.

Given how easy it is to find this information. There is no chance that I'm going to ever target a company that doesn't meet *MY* criteria.

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JodyRossDeane

12 years ago

Absolutely love the information provided in this post.
@MRomeo09 thank you for your generosity in sharing what has worked for you - many will find your advice invaluable.

Absolutely forget about acronyms. Just forget about them. Only you understand them, none of your potential and current clients should, and if they do, then stay away from using those acronyms with them, because they probably only think they do.

Talk to them about what their bank manager will understand - Leads, sales, systems...profits, and you will gain their attention.

Thanks

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kruger7

12 years ago

Amazing thread - it doesn't surprise me though, and there are some people going down the PPC route or a hybrid SEO and PPC campaign. Just one question though, which may seem a bit silly - do you use certain templates when you want to create a website for a niche or use any kind of tool? While its the keywords and actual content which matters, feel like the whole look of the website still needs to be important to keep the conversion rate up.

Thanks

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internetmarketer1

12 years ago

Just wanted to put my two cents in and say that this is a business that should require what your clients are in need of the most. SEO or PPC? It is a tough choice because you should know what you believe is the best for their business specifically. Are they perfect for SEO? Or does this business specifically need PPC? What would benefit them more? It is true that certain business owners really do not need PPC or one of the other....they just need that one form of marketing for them and wait for it to work for them.

I would say that I have had clients who needed both from me, and as long as they can pay for both, it should be find.