Google Places: Pay only for results?

Realistically, you'll have to be able to demonstrate that you can provide more than this value, right?

Putting yourself in the business owners shoes is good thinking, and that thinking a step farther. Ask yourself, as the business owner the following questions:

What do I want my marketing efforts to bring me?
How well are my current marketing efforts accomplishing this for me?
Will having my Google Places page optimized (correctly) get me better results than I'm getting now?

Then step out of their head and answer these questions.

Can your service help them to achieve their stated goal?
How will improving their Google Places listing help them to reach their goal faster?

Maybe you want to write out the features of the services you want to offer and then next to each "feature", write down the benefit your client will get when they have you implement that feature.

ex. When I complete your Google Places listing for you, then Google will have enough information to properly place your listing in the Search Engine Results... The main benefit to you, Mr. Store Owner, is that after I "optimize" your Places page - it's likely that Google will see your business to be more relevant than most if not all of your competitors. Then your page will show up higher on the page so you can get a higher percentage of the visitors going to your site.

Of course in a sales presentation, it's usually a good idea to follow a benefit statement with a closing question... "If you had more visitors going to your site, do you think that would help you to achieve your goal?"

or more directly, "With more visitors to your site, you'll get more people coming into your store. If you could get 100 more visitors into your store every month, what would you say that's worth?"

I'm not sure I understand the "objection". You presented a case where the prospect hasn't been given any information and can't see a value yet.

For any residual service fee, you're going to have to present a plan that makes sense to the business owner. You'll need a plan of action that you feel comfortable implementing and presenting to prospects... and maybe you would benefit from some sales training.

$400 a month for google places optimization? You are not putting yourself in the shoes of the business owner if you offer that or at all think the service is worth that. That seems over priced. You would have to really sell me on what was in it for me. If it is a huge city with a lot of competition and they can see a lot of buyers from it maybe.

One buyer a month would more than cover that for us but how would I see the value? I honestly think most businesses would balk at that. That is nearly $5000 a year for that service. I have companies that charge us that kind of money but it is putting our inventory on their site or sites. And we just stopped paying one because the leads we were getting were crap.

Honestly locally for google places we are only outranked by one place and that guy sells maybe 1/30th of what we sell so clearly him being better at google places isn't helping him. He also has a better location in town(so has drive by customers). Honestly new customers can't even find us half the time and yet we dominate the local market and us and another local dealer(about 10 miles away) dominate regionally and compeat on a national level.

And it is not from ranking in google. Our ten mile away competition doesn't rank well with google for anything. They have used eBay to dominate national while leaving us to take more of the local market. Their customer service is not very good either but they sell the cheapest lines at the lowest national price. For our brands we are often one of the lowest if not the lowest national price but we have better brands and more competition on our brands.

For us your service would be a hard sell.

For others it might be an easier sell but you need to show how they will benefit and maybe give them a way to track it.

Hey Lordauric,

Not trying to call you out at all here I'm just playing devils advocate.

I have a client paying me $600 for 3 months then $100 ongoing for Google optimization. That client didn't even balk at the price at all either. He understands how much business he can get for this listing.

I have another client that with one phone call from that listing made 6 times what I charged him.

Its all about what kind of business you are working with. If your client is a tailor and only makes a few bucks on each new client, then yeah it might be a little tough. If your client is a commercial cleaning business as they make hundreds or thousands each call they get then $400 a month is nothing to them.

Again, I'm not trying to call you out I just wanted to give my experience.

Sean

Well if you find a high enough business with owners who have no clue about this stuff you can get up there.

I'm just amazed you all are finding businesses that will pay this as I get the calls all the time from guys doing this and laugh at the prices.

And when I read the forum I laugh at the prices and we sell a product that even on an internet special makes us about $1,000 in profit per sale.

And I've know people who ran industrial cleaning companies and the margins are not that great.

To sell this kind of price you would really need to pick the right clients and sell them on what is in it for them.

I'd personally love to get some info on how many and how often you land these clients and how you are pulling it off.

Of course maybe I am under estimating what you are doing. And if you are doing a lot and it brings results that could be justified.

But $1,000/mo for google places is just a bit crazy with what I am visualizing.

Remember I'm one of the people with the keys to the bank account. I'm one of the people you would be pitching. In fact you would pitch to me and if you sold me I would pitch it to the CEO. If you really got our attention when setting up the meeting you might get to pitch to 4 or 5 of us at once.

And I can't imagine myself doing anything but laughing at a $1,000/mo for google places.

Now the $600 for start up and 3 months plus $100 a month after that I could see. That price makes sense if you are selling me on it. $100 to $200 a month if I believe I will get you knowledge and a few hours of work out of you a month is fine with me.

Just remember when you pitch these companies those in the highly competitive businesses will be the most likely to find value in it. They also will likely be making less than you think. For example on the cleaning I actually had as my customer the owner of a cleaning company that handled cleaning of various kinds at multiiple locations for Deere. He made about 50 to 70% of what I do most years. And when he lost a worker he was often doing the work himself. The margins were very slim or he lost the business to a competitor who would do it for less.

Big companies outscource cleaning because it is cheaper and legally safer for them to let someone else hire the illegals to do it.

I apologize for using commercial cleaning in my example. I have never worked with a commercial cleaning company so I don't know there margins. Maybe I should have used a moving company.

No need to be so negative tho, man. The OP was wondering how to justify the fee which is very justifiable. Truly optimization a GP listing takes a lot of time unless you outsource it.

The fact is people do charge the prices we are saying and business owners are happy with paying those prices. They have a problem and we know how to solve that problem for them. Just like if you went out to dinner. You could make that meal you'll buy for A LOT less than what you're paying for it, but you don't have the time, energy or skills to make that meal. So you go somewhere else and pay 2 or 3 times as much as you would pay if you made it yourself and you leave a happy customer.

Or course that's a little bit of a stretch, but you see what I'm saying, right?

Sean

Your fees seemed fair based on the example.
But a lot of other numbers including $400 monthly ongoing do not seem real to me. Maybe you are getting clients who require a lot of work but what are people honestly doing for $400 a month? What kind of maintance can I as a business owner expect?

The price simply leaves doubt in my mind and that was original amount. The $1,000 really left doubt in my mind. But he never said what else he does. It is is simply maintenance how many hours is he and his team spending each month?

I guess my point is not to be egative but point out how much money you guys are leaving on the table by pricing in a way that IMO is too high.

Like I said for $100 a month you likely would be doing almost no work and in fact likely could do no work and unless something happened the business would keep paying it.

It's like the $5 lunch you simply buy it and don't think twice.

Also by having more upfront like you do Sean you show that the work is very front loaded. You will do more in the begining.

Let me put it this way would you rather charge $400 a month and keep the customer for 6 months or would you rather charge $500 up front and get $100 a month after that for 3 years?

You can always charge more but the more you charge the more you have to justify it.

We had a service that listed all our inventory that sent us horrid leads. They cost $400 a month. We cancelled. Had they been $100 or $200 a month we wouldn't have thought twice about canceling. They made more money in the short run but to get truly passive income on the long term you have to make the line item not worth worrying about.

And for soem large companies that might be $400 or $1000 or even more but honestly I think most of them would even question it. You don't get to be dominate in business by throwing money away.

And remember if you are charging $400 a month and a guy comes in offering $100 a month he literally just stol your business and might not even have to do anything since so much of the work you already did.

Never set yourself up to lose a customer. Charge prices that are fair based on what you do. And if what you need to do monthly is worth $400 charge that but you are going to need to justify it. If you are doing less why not charge less and get them to the point where it just becomes automated for them? They just forget you and consider it on auto pilot.

EDIT:
Wanted to add this. It seems like a lot of people in this forum don't have as much experience if any on the other side. i try to give reality check advice that may help you land more customers. Using google places as an example. Let's say you spend an hour or two with me but your prices seem out of line. I might go get my google places myself(or have an employee do it). Who knows I might rank good right away and you just lost easy money. If not I might look into getting a service and literally you just helped another company land me.

Blockbuster did this a few years back when they converted their in store customers to online customers and than jacked the price and drove them to Netflix.

The more you charge the more you have to justify it. If you really don't plan to put 8-10 hrs into it a month why charge $400 and risk them saying no or leaving in a few months once you have them ranked?

The key is are you offering value for $400.
If you are offering the same value as the guy doing $100 a month than you will lose out.

Also let's say the client only takes an hour to service each month. Wouldn't it be better to charge $100 and keep that business knowing he would have no reason to even look for another provider vs charging $400 and him finding one?.

Now if you are providing hours of service each month charge for it. 4-10 hours month I see no issue with $400 or $500 if I am getting leads based on that work you are doing.

But honestly which is more likely? An hour of work per month or five hours of work per month?

This is why I promote having an hourly rate in your head that you use to figure out fees to charge. I know not everyone agrees with that style of fee but I always plan to scale and it allows me to scale easily. Also it keeps business owners who are friends but who have different needs feeling I was fair to them both. If I charge one $1000 and another $300 but provide the same service they will not recommend me. They will not talk about me in a positive light to their fellow business owners.

My mission is never to get Pizza Shack's business. My goal is to get 10 referrals from the owner of Pizza Shack. The goal of any offline marketer should be for the majority of new business to come from referrals.

By having a pay scale that is independent of what the businesses can each afford in my opinion gives you the best shot at this.

Of course those with bigger budgets you merely sell on bigger packages. Or on how they have more competition so it will take more work. You are doing more and that is why they pay more. They don't pay more because they can pay more. Even the guy making $2000 off each lead can get the most basic service. My job(or my salesperson's job) is to show him why with the value per lead we should do more than the basics.

I hope people see what I mean. By having a pricing schedule even if it is just kept in my head i come off more professional than those who price the same service to different businesses at different prices based on what they can afford. In time you may even charge $1,000 per hour for your personal consulting. Of course at that point you should have staff members who you charge businesses $100 or $200 an hour to work with as well. Basically you become the upsell.

I'm not against offering a free trial to local business owners for SEO or GP services. If you actually are capable of getting them ranked, I say why not.

It all depends on the value you can provide and how many people locally are searching for their service. You need to have a way to track things to show them that you are worth it.

Also to show new clients you need to show past results that you have achieved for others. So go get a friend and rank them for free and have them give you a video testimonial.

I just talked to a dentist that is paying yellow pages $75,000 a year. (there are like 5 phone books in town).

Would it be a problem for him to pay $500/month $1000/month to dominate local search? hell no..

I think monthly payment won't a great deal. Try to come with a contract for a fixed rate.