How I got someone to pay me 9 TIMES what they are already spendin!! Just to do some keyword research
I've covered this technique before, but I wanted to emphasise how you could be making a lot more money.
The Referal...
Yesterday I met with a lady that runs a small business. The way I got to meet her was by asking my book keeper who she knew that might need some help with their SEO.
(This is a tip all in itself. Make sure that you are building relationships with clients and suppliers so that they will refer you.)
So i'm sat with this lady and she's telling me that she's had SEO for a number of years. They company been pushing to rank for over 30 different keywords.
They hadn't seen any real results in terms of increased traffic and no sales that they could attribute to being found online.
Also, the company they used never really kept in touch or explained what they were doing for her.
At this very point, I have a decision to make. I can either say "i'll fix that and it'll cost X" ... or I can dig a bit further.
Now I knew from my research that this company had been doing next to no work on the SEO.
I also knew that she was paying a small monthly fee.
I'm pretty sure I could have spilled my guts, told her what was wrong and then asked for a bit more than the other company charged and i'd have had the sale.
However... I decided to position myself a bit differently.
Positioning.
Here's something i've learned. You can be three types of person in front of a client:
1. A salesman.
2. A consultant.
3. A trusted adviser.
A salesman delivers what the client wants.
A consultant delivers what the client needs.
A trusted adviser uncovers the real need.
Guess who gets paid the most and makes the most difference to the client.
The Trusted Adviser
With this mindset, I then spent the next hour talking to the lady about her business. Something along the lines of this:
What's her reason for wanting to get the marketing right?This is a very sketchy overview of the conversation. But you can see that the conversation has shifted from getting traffic, to the thing that she's passionate about which is growing the business.
She wants to increase the volume of work.
Why do they want to increase the volume of work?
They have a strong team of workers that cost a lot and they are at 60% capacity.
Why's that an issue?
Because if she can increase their workload, her overall costs stay the same, which increases profits.
So?
They need to increase to keep going. They've built this from scratch and it must work....
People buy emotionally, they justify afterwards intellectually.
9X what they already pay
So here's what happened next. I told her that one of the main reasons their campaign had failed so far was that the existing company did not understand the market she was after and they didn't understand what people would really search for to find them. Simple.
So we would do an audit. The audit was the equivalent of nine months of their current SEO. But she knew that once we'd done that, they would have a clear idea of what a real SEO (and other online marketing) Campaign would look like, what it would cost and what they're likely to get back in return.
Why have I told you all this?
Lesson 1: Businesses really want help and they will pay for it.
Lesson 2: Learn to investigate the business, not just sell your stuff.
Lesson 3: Become a trusted advisor, not just a salesman.
Let me know if that's useful.
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