What comes before SEO? How to add value and make more money from simple requests

We often get clients that believe they understand what we do so they try to speak in our language. You need to reset this and realize what they claim they need is not really what they need and more important they will pay much more for a complete solution to their real issues that makes sense to them once properly framed.

In this example lets talk about an SEO request.

Like me you probably get contacted from a referral or ad and someone says:

"I was referred by such and such, hear you did a good job for him, wondering if you can do some SEO for me and get me ranked a bit higher"

Years ago I would of replied, asked for a link to their site, what keywords they want to increase, what seo they have done etc...
but now I say something like this:

We can certainly handle any SEO and ranking needs you may have.
Have you completed all the pre-seo steps that must be done before the SEO starts or did you want us to do that too?

I wait for a response. I generally get "not sure exactly what those are, I think our site is optimized."

My reply.

Oh sorry, let me explain further. Obviously what you want is more sales and leads for your business or you would not want to rank higher. SEO takes time and money so before you go about ranking for phrases there is a set of tasks you do first.
This is a brief list:

1. Structure the site for maximum response.

2. Purchase buyer traffic for keywords you feel are worthy of SEO that is immediately available through sources like Google Adwords.

3. Monitor how they respond and perform some split tests on ads, keywords and landing pages to get the best conversions and profits possible.

Once these steps are complete you should have a list of the top performing keywords and landing pages that help turn that traffic into profit. You can now justify the expense of SEO because you are no longer guessing that there is value in making the spend.

If this makes sense lets hop on a call and discuss initial budgets for carrying out these tasks and time frames for getting it done. Your ability to scale and handle the new business is very important. I don't want to overwhelm you with new business. That can be as bad or worse than not having enough!

P.S When we massage the purchased traffic so that it is profitable it would be foolish to simply turn that off and it may make sense to explore other forms of paid traffic to further boost profits. Again something we can discuss on the call.

regards,

Peter

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you do this you are providing education, actually making the client more money and setting them on the right path and you make more money because what you are doing actually has proven financial value.

Also if you structure your message properly you can logically handle objections.

Example: "I tried adwords and I just lost money."
Your answer " ah yes that happens often when you leave out the steps of split testing and massaging the landing pages until they become profitable". etc...

I am sure from this very basic example you can see 100 ways to change the conversation so that it helps all parties concerned profit.

UP-SELLS

We often talk about up-sells as though it's a way to take or get more from our customers.

My point of view is that almost 99% of the time if I sold a customer what they wanted they would lose money BUT if I am patient, educate them a bit and take the time to really find out what would help them then these so called up sells could easily be re-termed as essentials!

So sell something basic that is an expense
or
sell them what they need and let it become a profitable investment.