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What's your experience with offline marketing?

by mraffiliate
4 replies
I have ranked several websites for clients and a few months ago I made a decision to back away from doing it mainly because a client stopped payment once I got her site to the first page of Google and I got tired of clients wining that their site isn't on the 1st of Google in a week.

Since then I have gotten several calls and emails from businesses that wanted their sites ranked and I turned them down.

Well in the past week I decided to give it another try and I closed one deal 2 days ago and set them up on recurring payments and I'm trying to close another client now. Both of these businesses emailed me by referral. This is the crappy side of offline for me is that this client has his web hosting through a reseller which is charging them $10 a month and supposedly this $10 a month includes ranking their site.

Here is the email I received today and it amazes me how people trust and believe these "want a be SEO guys" when they know nothing about SEO or anything else. And when you tell the truth and tell them what you can do for them, they don't believe you but believe the SEO idiots.
I followed your pay pal link and it sparked a few questions. I am not familiar with how the ranking increases, or how you will do it, but I assumed it was a one time fee? if it is monthly how long until we notice results? can we cancel after a period of time? What will the difference be from what are web guy is currently doing. I have attached 2 documents from our web hosting guy. I mentioned increasing our traffic months ago but he didn't seem interested. These new documents indicate he is trying; however, we would still like your assistance and advise on what he has done.
Yea, they want my advise and assistance so they can forward this information to this goof ball so they can continue to pay the $10 a month hoping and praying this guy can pull off a miracle and rank their site. They sent me a document showing the keywords he put in their title and description trying to rank their janitorial business LOL:
office cleaning, commercial cleaning, janitorial services, building cleaning, cleaning,
This business is trying to target keywords for a specific city and state and this goof is using keywords like this and since he doesn't know what he is doing they want me to advise him. Well I will advise him for a monthly fee with 2 months upfront.

I search out companies online to see what they charge for web hosting and the one's that show clients they have ranked, I look at the keywords they use and it's so funny. They mainly use keywords that have zero searches and one's that contain part of the business name in which those can be ranked in a matter of hours or a day. It's sad these people are getting ripped but for some reason businesses seem believe these jokesters and don't believe legit SEO experts.

Anyway, my rant for the year.
#experience #marketing #offline
  • Profile picture of the author gtlovesellipsis
    I can relate to your mraffiliate. I have had 2 such cases and I simply say "sorry, there's going to be conflict of interest; so either cancel your current contract, or come back to me when you are ready".

    I specifically ask the clients to provide me all the domain access etc. and sign a contract with them.

    One thing that you must focus on is providing weekly reports to your clients showing how your efforts are helping them. This will build trust in the long run and will also make them understand the importance of continuous improvement in the SEO world...

    Hope this helps! And I couldn't agree more with your rant!
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    • Profile picture of the author wasp
      I understand your frustration as I have been there with some of my own clients and it's exhausting spending hours on the phone trying to help them understand. I changed the way I approach them some time ago and moved away from just "I can make you number 1" to looking at their business in a broader sense. ie I have a client who are a band so I focused on how to sell more CD's because their band is known regionally but their genre is Global. When you break down what they want from SEO it is mainly in business as I want to sell more - just thought I share this to help your frustration and change the $10 to $500
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  • Profile picture of the author ImDanHoward
    One thing you can do is set up a targeted optimized keyword mini-site that is related to their niche. Use it as a lead cap and then re-direct to the businesses website after. Make sure you have tracking in place to see if you are converting leads/calls for proof.

    You do this with the social media accounts also. So, when they say that they don't need you any more, you can just take their links off the accounts and take your sites/accounts to their competitors down the street.

    To set it up, so they don't try to say they have the rights to those pages since they pay you, let them know up front they are Leasing your optimized sites/accounts for a monthly fee, so if they don't need your services any more then they can't sure your accounts.

    This is so important because you won't lose all the work you put in to getting ranked and what not.

    Hope this helps!
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  • Profile picture of the author rbecklund
    Wasp - you're right on. We have clients that don't get SEO no matter what we tell them and think magically they will be a bunch of business right away. So we work with these clients (and all of our sales challenged clients) to come up with ideas to help promote their business whether it is online or offline.
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