Offline SEO - How do you get clients? | Warrior Forum - The #1 Digital Marketing Forum & Marketplace

Clint Butler

13 years ago

There is a WSO in the War Room being offered currently that addresses this.

Regards,
Clint

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orvn

13 years ago

These days I get more than enough work from referrals only, but I've tried quite a few strategies before.

1) Classifieds (like Craigslist) / Local Directories (Like HotFrog)
Are easy ways to gain clients. Probably the simplest and most straightforward method.

2) Offer to business owners you know (AND LIKE!). My second local SEO client ever was the print store where I got my first business cards after going into business on my own. They love me there, lol.

3) Print a pretty flier. I REALLY LIKE DESIGN and I did this my first week of getting my business (the same time/print shop where I got my business cards).
OH MY GOODNESS. People liked it.
I got 12 (actually 15, but it's a long story) real leads in two weeks. I only printed 150 fliers.
I didn't know what to do with all the calls. I guess I may have overdone it.
I had stuff on there like
"Obliterate your competition with real Search Engine Optimization"
"guaranteed 1st page ranking! (for a reasonable keyword)"
and a whole bunch of statistics and page examples
(26billion local searches every month,
46% of local businesses have no website,
83% of people search online before trying a product/service,
31% of online searches is for a local business,
64% of USA GDP is thanks to local business)

God that was stupid. I had to say no to so many people.
I never advertised again, lol.

SRSLY, it isn't rocket science.

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2 replies

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stoaf88

13 years ago

Originally Posted by orvn

These days I get more than enough work from referrals only, but I've tried quite a few strategies before.

1) Classifieds (like Craigslist) / Local Directories (Like HotFron)
Are easy ways to gain clients. Probably the simplest and most straightforward method.

2) Offer to business owners you know (AND LIKE!). My second local SEO client ever was the print store where I got my first business cards after going into business on my own. They love me there, lol.

3) Print a pretty flier. I REALLY LIKE DESIGN and I did this my first week of getting my business (the same time/print shop where I got my business cards).
OH MY GOODNESS. People liked it.
I got 12 (actually 15, but it's a long story) real leads in two weeks. I only printed 150 fliers.
I didn't know what to do with all the calls. I guess I may have overdone it.
I had stuff on there like
"Obliterate your competition with real Search Engine Optimization"
"guaranteed 1st page ranking! (for a reasonable keyword)"
and a whole bunch of statistics and page examples
(26billion local searches every month,
46% of local businesses have no website,
83% of people search online before trying a product/service,
31% of online searches is for a local business,
64% of USA GDP is thanks to local business)

God that was stupid. I had to say no to so many people.
I never advertised again, lol.

SRSLY, it isn't rocket science.

Where did you put the fliers?

Thanks

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ADukes81

13 years ago

Originally Posted by orvn

These days I get more than enough work from referrals only, but I've tried quite a few strategies before.

1) Classifieds (like Craigslist) / Local Directories (Like HotFron)
Are easy ways to gain clients. Probably the simplest and most straightforward method.

2) Offer to business owners you know (AND LIKE!). My second local SEO client ever was the print store where I got my first business cards after going into business on my own. They love me there, lol.

3) Print a pretty flier. I REALLY LIKE DESIGN and I did this my first week of getting my business (the same time/print shop where I got my business cards).
OH MY GOODNESS. People liked it.
I got 12 (actually 15, but it's a long story) real leads in two weeks. I only printed 150 fliers.
I didn't know what to do with all the calls. I guess I may have overdone it.
I had stuff on there like
"Obliterate your competition with real Search Engine Optimization"
"guaranteed 1st page ranking! (for a reasonable keyword)"
and a whole bunch of statistics and page examples
(26billion local searches every month,
46% of local businesses have no website,
83% of people search online before trying a product/service,
31% of online searches is for a local business,
64% of USA GDP is thanks to local business)

God that was stupid. I had to say no to so many people.
I never advertised again, lol.

SRSLY, it isn't rocket science.

I may be borrowing this flier idea.

Cold Call. It sucks, but it does work.

Thanks
1 reply

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orvn 13 years ago

Originally Posted by ADukes81

I may be borrowing this flier idea.

By all means!

Originally Posted by stoaf88

Where did you put the fliers?

Oh right, I forgot to mention that. I'm actually really proud of how this part went down.

First, I went around to my favourite businesses in the area, told someone of authority at each one how awesome their business is- that I'd like to promote them, gave them a flier and left.

I did this because I genuinely wanted these businesses to succeed and I knew I'd have an enjoyable time promoting them (and they weren't already ranking highly).

I don't remember how many fliers I had left, but I split them into piles of 8 and noted down places I could put them that would receive good feedback.

I couldn't think of very many wonderful places, but I did manage to get into a trade expo that was coincidentally happening, where I gave out a good 30 fliers.

Then, my girlfriend at the time did something awesome. She made these origami flier holding stands that could be stapled to boards (I did a couple of libraries and the University of Toronto business faculty, lol) or pasted onto lamp posts.

They kind of looked like the image below, but also used the metal part of a clothespin to hold it all together with the fliers in place (so the wind outside wouldn't knock them out).
Each flier was put into a different fold, so pulling one flier out didn't dislodge all the others (eight folds in my case).

I think it was the lampposts that worked out the best (I'll never know because I didn't think to ask nearly everyone). I targeted my favourite major intersections in downtown Toronto, places that I liked and I knew cool SMB owners might venture.

I was going to find an image of the flier and the stand I had and post it up here, but I must have given it an obscure filename at the time, because I can't seem to locate it.

Good luck with your local SEO enterprise!
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mattlaclear

13 years ago

An SEO provider asking how to get clients?

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mad.hat

13 years ago

Its best to show businesses your results. Lets say you're in the DC area and have a lot of good restuarants near by. Set up page on your site for a fake restaurant (call it restaurants r us) and do seo on it so it shows up on the first page of results. Put together a little presentation with your results and send it (mail or walk-in) to all the restaurants in the area.

Don't leave any prices, just contact information.

You'll find that different businesses, even from the same market, will have wildly different budgets for seo. Also, the high-end establishments are not always the best clients.

Keep in mind when you do this that you should be looking at the quality of your clients. If you've got a few that are going to be pains its worth it to go with more friendly clients even if you can't get as much out of them. Remember, they NEED YOU not the other way around. If you are able to rank businesses on page one then you'll have plenty of leads.

SHAMELESS PLUG:
Local businesses love my service and resellers make bank with me.

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orvn

13 years ago

Originally Posted by mad.hat

Its best to show businesses your results. Lets say you're in the DC area and have a lot of good restuarants near by. Set up page on your site for a fake restaurant (call it restaurants r us) and do seo on it so it shows up on the first page of results. Put together a little presentation with your results and send it (mail or walk-in) to all the restaurants in the area.

Don't leave any prices, just contact information.

Clever !

Thanks

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Orun Bhuiyan[@orvn] [linkedin] See what I've been doing lately by visiting my marketing agency's site. SEOcial specializes in content marketing and integrated optimization. We create conversions for businesses by gracefully connecting the realms of design, development and marketing.

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kaiserthesage

13 years ago

Yellow pages and newspaper's classified ads, target those who include their sites on the ad, then check their sites are well optimized, if not, then contact them to offer your services.

Thanks

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MikeLiving

13 years ago

I used flyers and did some good ole fashioned cold calling and cold visiting. I just went into the local shops and asked to speak to a manager. Asked him some questions and left my card. I rarely spoke about pricing and things worked out well when they would finally call or email me.

Thanks

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medi50cus

13 years ago

Nothing beats word of mouth and some few press releases. Live referrals are still the best way to earn credibility and attract some prospect clients as well.

Thanks

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jitendrathakur

13 years ago

Fristly do seo on personal site and try to rich it top position.
Then vist customers and show the seo works of your then definelty customers can reach you..

Thanks

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sortshots

13 years ago

hmm..you need to build contacts first..you can ask your clients to refer you to some other people also..cold calling is really bad but it works out..and i think there are lots of ideas already given above so sum up all of them and start working..

Thanks

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thomashoi

13 years ago

Go to your facebook account and update your status message:

"I'm looking to help a few people to get First Page Google Rankings.
Do you know of anyone who needs help?"

Just this simple message, I have got tons of replies and from somebody
i don't even know....

try it and share your results here..

Thanks

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jbmills1

13 years ago

Originally Posted by stoaf88

We all know that offline local SEO is very easy but how do you get clients?

Doing the SEO work is very easy because of the low competition so thats not a problem.

Where do you get customers/Business owners to pay you?

Lets look at some of the popular methods.

1. Email spam the owners websites/emails. Most emails will never be opened and with all the offline SEO hype these owners have been spammed to death and don't want your services.

2. Post craigslist ads. Has anyone had any success mass posting craigs with these services? This could be good maybe I havent tried it.

3. Cold calling. Not for me.

ANy advice on getting clients signed up without acting like some fake corporation?

I have a WSO running for an offline tool that will allow the user to extract Google places listings for keywords of choice. Once you have the top 20, 50, 100 listings extracted you can sort the information to see which listing aren't quite making it to the front page, missing URLs, are not verified, using wrong categories, etc. With this information in hand it is easy to contact the business and explain how your services could help boost them to the top of the listings for the right keywords. All business address, phone number, and e-mail can be exported to a .csv file for future contact. Other offline consultants are using it with great success. Hope this helps.

Jon

Thanks

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atrbiz

13 years ago

[DELETED]

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orvn 13 years ago

Originally Posted by atrbiz

I'm in the business of SEO and I would never reveal my methods to my competition....

I sort of enjoy sharing my ideas and strategies.
Maybe not in full detail all the time, but to an extent, you know.
I definitely don't think there's anything wrong with sharing how I get clients..

I still consider myself a newbie, but I daresay I've had a couple of really original ideas and techniques. I like to share these with communities (like WarriorForum) because they build up my reputation and keep me motivated to create more of my own new original strategies. Not to mention others give me feedback and help me retrofit my methods with new concepts.

Right now, I mostly work alone, but my plan is to develop to the extent that I own a nice, large and successful marketing company and I sincerely believe that innovation is more the key here than secrecy (I do know how to keep my mouth shut when I know I should though; ).
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Orun Bhuiyan[@orvn] [linkedin] See what I've been doing lately by visiting my marketing agency's site. SEOcial specializes in content marketing and integrated optimization. We create conversions for businesses by gracefully connecting the realms of design, development and marketing.
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evazs

13 years ago

For getting clients you can use regional forums, directories, yellow pages, these are good source of getting local clients.

Thanks

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brp002

13 years ago

1. Build Your Own leads by ranking for SEO key term.... Use that as a selling point.
2. If you really need clients door to door sales. I mean if you need the money very easy to sell... If you are a single person then 10-15 clients can make good revenue.

Then expand.. expand... expand!

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Offline SEO - How do you get clients?

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