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Your thoughts about my plan to start a digital seo agency

by onlinemarketingpro94
15 replies
The last weeks I often thought about establish my own agency. I am already familiar with Websites, SEO etc. I still have some very small Niche Websites from long time ago and ranked them well in the past. I just want to say with this, that I am not a complete beginner.

My Plan: I want to specialize on Google Maps, to help local Businesses to reach top results. For example if you google "Dentist, City XYZ" or "Plumber, City XYZ" there are tons of local businesses, that are far away from beeing in the Top 3 Results in Google.
Google always shows, if you google for "Service in City XYZ", the Top 3 results from Google Maps.
I would contact the businesses, that are very far behind in the Maps results and tell them, how many potential is wasted etc. And offer a solution.

So how I would get the costumers? Of course I would create a professional agency homepage, and my plan to contact the costumers are 2 different ways: Since english is not my main language I would hire a professional Telemarketer, for something between 8-20$ per hour. For my part, I would cold E-Mail the potential customers with a professionally written sales mail.

Bevor starting this, I would create a big database of potential customers.

When I would have my first costumers I would resell professional Google Maps SEO from established Agencys, preferably with a monthly plan to have a recurring income.

My budget for this would be around 4000$.

I would be happy about any suggestions, maybe an owner of an agency also can give me a few suggestions.


Thanks
#agency #digital #plan #seo #start #thoughts
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  • Profile picture of the author Profit Traveler
    Banned
    Why limit just to google maps? That would also be limiting the results?

    You have a good budget...Here is one option...

    Here is a WSO (no affiliation) that does all the work for you and you still create your own brand then you have advertising budget in place.

    https://www.warriorforum.com/warrior...e-reviews.html
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  • Profile picture of the author Margaret Low Tremolieres
    Hi ! I think the key concept of doing a B2B reachout to plug in the gap for those who have been lagging behind in their rating via Google Map is brilliant !

    But I feel by focusing on just the SEO alone to move up the Google Map ranking is insufficient. I would include some small consultative kind of advice to these companies as a value-add. Yes, the keywords do help for sure but most of the time, I am speaking from my own experience, people google the name or certain keywords and like you said the top 3 companies will appear first for those who are ranked at the top but if the Google Map when drill down further, shows negative reviews about the company, it does not help at all with just merely SEO.

    Hence, I do think that guiding these companies how to circumvent and 'rebuild'their image as well as helping those who are ranked at the top to 'reinforce'their image, is a very imprtant aspect that has to be taken into consideration in the grand scheme of things.

    Hope my suggestion helps to trigger some thoughts or some other thoughts in you. :-)

    All the best !
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  • Profile picture of the author FreshTalk


    This is a really nice post! Informative also. Thank you for posting this and giving us ample of information.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jason Kanigan
    I was talking with the operator of a high end cigar bar last night and was surprised to learn he had heard about geofencing. He understood the concept. But was anyone doing that as a service for them? No.

    I wonder how many other profitable retail operators are out there who have already heard about these kinds of services, but haven't met someone who could implement those for them. I'm not the guy--not my focus.

    Incidentally, they also had an email list but were not employing it. Not doing cigar review videos, either, despite having ultra-knowledgeable founder and team members.

    But as far as marketing goes, filtering for people who already understand what you're offering and the value of it would be a smart start. My biggest recommendation would be for you to figure out how you're going to Stand Out... there are a ton of people offering what you are in the marketplace. It doesn't have to be what you do or how you do it, but there must be some Stand Out factor. Otherwise your prospecting attempts will get lost in a sea of similar-sounding noise as it reaches the inboxes of your target market.
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    • Profile picture of the author Matthew North
      Originally Posted by Jason Kanigan View Post

      But as far as marketing goes, filtering for people who already understand what you're offering and the value of it would be a smart start..
      Here's how you do this. It's what I do to prequalify my list for a similar service:

      Purchase a list of businesses, can be from Fiverr or somewhere else cheap. It doesn't need to be a good or clean list as we just want to use the URLs.

      Once you have them, get a developer to create a script to check for dead and redirected urls of the database.

      Now export those clean URLs into a tool that checks the Majestic, Moz and Facebook API. Now you know which companies are spending money or effort on SEO/backlinks/social. Those are the people who you want to speak to and build local citations for because they don't need to be sold on the idea.

      You can take it a step further by also checking if specific directories exist on the site such as /blog/ or other indicators that they are already invested in online marketing.

      I also do cold emails. I recommend you buy two domains: one for your existing clients and use another for cold emails and replies. Make sure DKIM/SPF/DMARC are set up on your email domain otherwise you might have trouble with delivering your emails. Buy your email domain now and start warming it up before sending out messages in bulk for the same reason.

      Finally, I recommend you link to a dedicated landing page in your email, not a company website. Your cold email should sell them on clicking the link through relevancy and personalisation. You can tailor it precisely towards local SEO and nothing else.
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      • Profile picture of the author Jason Kanigan
        Or you could be the middleman and take a cut from selling the end user client on having Matthew here do the work ;-)

        Originally Posted by Matthew North View Post

        Here's how you do this. It's what I do to prequalify my list for a similar service:

        Purchase a list of businesses, can be from Fiverr or somewhere else cheap. It doesn't need to be a good or clean list as we just want to use the URLs.

        Once you have them, get a developer to create a script to check for dead and redirected urls of the database.

        Now export those clean URLs into a tool that checks the Majestic, Moz and Facebook API. Now you know which companies are spending money or effort on SEO/backlinks/social. Those are the people who you want to speak to and build local citations for because they don't need to be sold on the idea.

        You can take it a step further by also checking if specific directories exist on the site such as /blog/ or other indicators that they are already invested in online marketing.

        I also do cold emails. I recommend you buy two domains: one for your existing clients and use another for cold emails and replies. Make sure DKIM/SPF/DMARC are set up on your email domain otherwise you might have trouble with delivering your emails. Buy your email domain now and start warming it up before sending out messages in bulk for the same reason.

        Finally, I recommend you link to a dedicated landing page in your email, not a company website. Your cold email should sell them on clicking the link through relevancy and personalisation. You can tailor it precisely towards local SEO and nothing else.
        Signature
        >> How To Grow Your Online Business [FREE Training Video, No Opt-In, from 10+ Year Vet]

        >> For Agency Founders: The Fast Shortcut To Selling SEO, Leadgen, Webdesign & Other Services
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      • Profile picture of the author 1Bryan
        Originally Posted by Matthew North View Post

        Make sure DKIM/SPF/DMARC are set up on your email domain otherwise you might have trouble with delivering your emails.
        Is that true for sending out smaller batches -- like 10-20 a day?
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        • Profile picture of the author Matthew North
          Originally Posted by 1Bryan View Post

          Is that true for sending out smaller batches -- like 10-20 a day?
          It depends on the aggressiveness of the spam filter, but in general yes. Having these records will reduce the spam score of your emails which means more of them will go to the inbox. Also, without them it's much more difficult to monitor delivery trends and the reputation of your domain. From a security standpoint they should be added anyway.
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          you cant hold no groove if you ain't got no pocket.

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          • Profile picture of the author 1Bryan
            Originally Posted by Matthew North View Post

            It depends on the aggressiveness of the spam filter, but in general yes. Having these records will reduce the spam score of your emails which means more of them will go to the inbox. Also, without them it's much more difficult to monitor delivery trends and the reputation of your domain. From a security standpoint they should be added anyway.
            Okay gotcha.
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  • Profile picture of the author DABK
    Jason and Matthew gave you good advice. I want to add to it, from experience, business owners get lots of offers from marketers. Many of these offers sound good, but the delivery behind them is not.

    You need to stand out and deliver. The best way, for my money, to stand out is to refer to past successes. With the same type of business.

    If I ran a cigar shop and got two good offers for what you sell and one had:
    let me show you what I can do and one did not. I'd go with the one who did.

    By 'show you what I can do,' I mean something like this:

    Jay's Cigar Fumes is a shop in Waukanda. Not only was it not in the top 3 for Waukanda cigar shops and similar terms in the map, you could not find them on the first two pages if you clicked on additional... They are now #2 in the 3-pack for those search terms and they're popping up in the surrounding cities for some of those terms. Here's what Jay says about the results I got him (and here you have a testimonial from Jay...) You can call him directly at the number on his website and ask how he feels about getting those extra sales I got him.

    If I were the owner of a cigar shop and got two good offers, both with "Let me show you what I can do" but one had wedding dresses and accountants and one had cigar shop owners, I'd go with the cigar shop owner

    PS, your interactions with them must reflect that you understand their business...

    And communicate often... and have little videos or nicely written out steps for everything you want them to do. Including such basic stuff as how to add a user to their Business page.... Or how to log into it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Webrowdy
    Hai,
    We offer affordable social media marketing services in the company. Actually you have good plans, creating a lead-generation engine is the best idea to build some valuable relationships. Set the right business model. Find your Niche, launch your website, and have a good social media presence. Start working on a marketing team and be good at the services you offer. I really wish you and your small team could create fully operational marketing strategies.
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  • Profile picture of the author onlinemarketingpro94
    Thank you very much for your thoughts and recommendations!

    I did not think about the issue with the E-Mails yet. Altough I will write specific E-Mails I am worried about beeing blacklisted or something and that my Mails don´t get delivered then.

    So is it maybe better to create free Mail Accounts always after sending 30 Mails for example like Yahoo GMX etc. to do the Cold E-Mail Marketing? To prevent getting blocked?
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    • Profile picture of the author Matthew North
      Originally Posted by onlinemarketingpro94 View Post

      I did not think about the issue with the E-Mails yet. Altough I will write specific E-Mails I am worried about beeing blacklisted or something and that my Mails don´t get delivered then.

      So is it maybe better to create free Mail Accounts always after sending 30 Mails for example like Yahoo GMX etc. to do the Cold E-Mail Marketing? To prevent getting blocked?
      Good that you are thinking ahead.

      If your emails are targeted, personalised, and you include research that DABK suggested above, it's unlikely you'll run into reputation issues. Sending the same email to each person or very similar content is how you get blacklisted, but there are ways around this. Note that this generally happens when you are sending emails at a high volume.

      Split test different email copy, use mail merge personalised fields, and remember to send emails to users and not generic catch-alls such as info@company.com or contact@company.com as these are commonly harvested by spammers.

      The two tools I recommend using are Klenty for delivering emails and Hunter.io for finding emails.

      It's also important to read up on the laws of sending cold emails. In some countries like New Zealand and Australia you can send cold emails under deemed consent, which means you may email them if the address is conspicuously published somewhere online provided that your offer is relevant to them. Hunter.io will show you if the address is available, which you can then cross-check with Linkedin to find the business owner's name.

      But other countries like Canada and Germany for instance do not have an deemed consent, so sending emails to users in these countries is illegal unless you have their express permission first. In the USA I believe you can send cold emails but please double check.
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  • Profile picture of the author Medon
    It's a good thing to do at this time. It's like most things will be done online if the new trends areanything to go by. If this corona thing is not nibbed in the bud as soon as possible people will have no option than do most of their things online. So your agency will come in handy.
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    • Profile picture of the author DABK
      Alas, Cornoa's bloomed. No more chances at nipping it in the bud.


      Originally Posted by Medon View Post

      It's a good thing to do at this time. It's like most things will be done online if the new trends areanything to go by. If this corona thing is not nibbed in the bud as soon as possible people will have no option than do most of their things online. So your agency will come in handy.
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