Help Getting Clients for a Start Up SEO/SEM Company

Hey Asim,
I have been doing "offline" SEO and Web Design service offerings for almost 5 Years and I can tell you that what you described that you have done already IS "the" single BEST way to get clients.

It's just a fact that getting Real people to pay you and to hire you is MUCH easier.
What I found was that the less "complicated" I made our conversations, the better it got.
What I mean is, I used to go into detail about EVERYTHING until one day I was a little discouraged and I didn't have the energy level I should have and I told the client about the results I could achieve for them and depending on their budget (for example) how long that would take, as one option would be more work, but the outcome/result would be quicker or better etc, you get the idea. The price was of course dependent on their budget and motivation, soo I always had two or three price points and I let "them" qualify themselves, instead of trying to guess that magic number they had in mind.

I also learned a few truths and they are:
- You'll be able to see RIGHT AWAY if someone is genuinely interested in what your offering because they are excited and are asking you questions. (no questions= No interest)
- The more people you talk to the better you'll get and the more buyers you'll find.
- If you don't stop doing what your doing right now, (getting out there and talking to small business owners) you'll make money, becouse the truth of the matter is, you ahead of most of the competition as they wont/dont want to talk to the people.
-Your honest with yourself about your shortcomings and do what's appropriate to fill the void, either by outsourcing or self-improvement.

Please feel free to PM me with any questions, I'll be happy to help!

Good luck out there!

Steven

Hi Steven, I sent you a pm.

If you're selling SEO services, why not just get your site to rank high in the search engines for SEO in your area?

Nobody trusts SEO cold callers, the offline businesses we deal with often call them scammers. Which is true if you're selling SEO to others but unable to generate income for yourself through your own methods.

Sometimes the rest of us SEO's get lumped in with the bad crowd who think selling sub-standard services to offline businesses is a shortcut to riches. It gives us all a bad name.

I agree you need to talk to people to get the business.

The best way I have found is to ring round some businesses and tell them that I can increase their website traffic which will get them more orders - they understand more turnover!

I offer them a free article to show them how I can get traffic to their website and then use Article Marketing Robot to spin the article and get it out to around 100 networks. I then make an appointment for a week's time to discuss further and in the meantime email them my menu of services and price list.

It works a charm for me as I am offering them value at no cost or risk from the outset so they are more likely to deal with me when they see results from the article.

Hey Asim,

I'm with Louise on this. (seems to be a trend lately).

I've been doing this for over a decade too and I agree with everything she has said.

Cold calling is NOT - 'THE' best way to get clients.

In fact - I'd put it very low on the list of preferred ways.

In my experience referrals are the best customers - but since you don't yet have any customers that won't come until later for you.

Also I can appreciate that louise's advice might sound to you like something you aim to do but is not immediate so I can accept that you might still want more advice.

I've found that it's very easy to get business from people who like you and trust you - that usually requires some form of relationship.

If you're completely new to this and don't have any local business contacts then I would suggest 2 things:

1 - Think about what type of businesses you think you can really help effectively and then look at your local Yellow Pages and local papers and see who's advertising.

Go out and visit the businesses in your area and have a prepared 'elevator pitch' you can speak to them with.

So for example if you decide that there are a lot of restaurants in your area that pay for advertising but that don't have websites - their website is hard to find.

Go have lunch there and tell them you were looking for their website and you struggled to find it - you'd like to help them out and tell them what you can do for them.

I've had a lot of business from this type of low-key networking.

2 - Go the other way and design a flyer/leaflet that focuses in on a specific group of people and get them delivered (or deliver them yourself) to all the houses/businesses in your area.

This works well if your message is well targeted - for example if there's a lot of students then you might be offering a 'student website starter package'. If it's families then you might be offering a special for people starting or running a home business.

The leaflet method works but is a lot less personal but can be very cheap, so it can be a no brainer to give it a go, but I would focus on getting out and personally meeting business owners in your area.

But don't be random about it - pick a specific type of business or businesses so that you have something relevant and thoughtful to say. You can do a little research and be able to tell them how many people search for their type of business online and run some example numbers of what that might mean if they were visible.

I don't know what else you're offering but you could just hook them up with email systems for automated customer relationship building, or create a video for them etc..

The biggest hurdle you'll face is that they've been cold-called by a LOT of people and if you just go in saying you can get them in Google most of them will switch off right away.

The short answer is - you can choose how you do your business, but my advice is to start building relationships rather than treating it like a numbers game and cold-calling strangers to try and convince them they need you. Find people that need you and then make it easy for them to feel good about you doing it.

Andy

Awesome advice there Andy. That's the way to do it.. from the ground up.

Steven, it's my customers who call those type of SEO's "scammers", I happen to see their point. I never called you a scammer. No point making things about you when they're not.

By the way, the examples you've given have very low search volume but each to their own, what works for you might not work for me and vice versa.

Scroll up and read the comment I made (which you quoted), you'll see that I clearly pointed out that my customers call cold-call SEO's scammers. And I still agree with them.

Keyword software has 40,000 monthly searches. while keyword tool has 823,000.

And back on topic.

Most SEO's that I know build their repuation as they go, through learning and testing, which takes years. Meanwhile they are building their private networks for when they are confident enough to start up with their own business. Ya gotta sow the seeds before you harvest.

If we must do this... you're missing around 96% of the potential search volume (please double check my maths, it's not my strong point, that sounds like very high loss of sales, let me run those numbers a few more times).

Besides, you're on the second page for your target keyphrase. Your business is your business, if you're happy with it then who am I to question. Not bad for a 3 year old site. Good luck to you Steve, there's nothing personal in a professional debate.

I'm not missing any traffic, I didn't tell you what the other keywords are I rank for, nor the competition for those keywords. (which is somewhat important)

As you seem to be consistent at missing my point, let's not do this and agree to disagree.

I have also never sold anything on this forum because I'm busy, You know, I just don't have the time.

I naturally assumed you were leading with your best foot forward.

What's the point I'm missing? You optimise for the number of competing pages, I optimise for ROI. Many ways to skin a cat right? Ahh. this forum is a great place to get more folks into your sales funnel, but that's just my crazy business sense at play or something.

Well here is a thought. It doesn't MATTER what you are selling. First you have to be able to sell. How good are you at that? ---- and by selling, I don't mean cold-calling. I mean, going out and building relationships.

cold calling.... rofl

{click}

Interesting thread..however I am not willing to give a long detailed response as others have done so far. The fact is, you are willing to offer SEO services to "fund" your "internet marketing venture" ... i don't know about you, but that doesn't make much of sense to me.

If you don't have the budget to fund your own ventures, how will you then promote my site? Offer me some crap stuff that I have done like 4 years ago? Why instead you don't use those crap stuff on your marketing venture and try to make your money from that, instead of wasting peoples time and money...the essence AND the reason you are willing to offer your services are simply backward and I doubt you will make any success but just waste time to others and to your self.

However, thread is asking for advise, so I will also give you an advise. Since making a website rank won't be something you would consider, as you just want to get into this business to fund your internet marketing venture, then just try to look for clients on forums, keep your promises to your "future" clients low and the price as well. But my real advise is to stick off of it as I believe it will distract you from your main goal.

Just my 2 cents.

The Topic is: "Help Getting Clients for a Start Up SEO/SEM Company" NOT cold calling...you and another poster made it that, not I.

Here's a thought though, why don't you offer some suggestions to the thread starter instead of trying to prove something to everyone, ....give the guy "some advise".

Talk about being defensive, most of you gibberish is self-serving and you haven't contributed anything to this thread.

Hey thanks for that input Steve.

Speaking of self-serving gibberish, let's review, shall we?


All before my initial response in your effort to be completely disagreeable with the majority of the others who responded to this topic.

And then, of course, the best part of your self-whatever gibberish to me...


Steve, it seems that you've done nothing but try to prove something in this thread from the beginning (not to mention be argumentative with anyone else that disagreed with you - me being just the most recent).

Then you've taken this incredibly arrogant tact with me over how I happened to choose to respond to the original poster - who most certainly made the entire second paragraph of their three paragraph post about... what was it????

Oh yeah... COLD CALLING.

To which my reply was...



Nowtherefore, since you've simultaneously promoted yourself as the titan of web success while debasing others with your flippant quips of "self serving" and "defensive", I'm going to go ahead and take my liberties with you and school you a little bit.

I have been selling "offline marketing" since 1987.

In 1994 I started a web dev company that did work for a few little outfits with names like Chrysler, P&G, Champion Window, Reynolds & Reynolds.

I sold that company to one of the largest direct marketing companies in the US - the owner of 30% of the nation's Val-Pak franchises... where we do 200,000,000 direct mail pieces a year. Since I fufilled my consulting agreement with my partner post-acquisition, I have continued to consult in the marketing business, leveraging our customer list of over 200K business owner CUSTOMERS all over the USA. I employ 8 full time graphic designers alone and presently manage $500K a month in PPC campaigns for clients (I have 3 people managing just the PPC campaigns). We do $5 million a year in strategic marketing consulting and sell that much per year in CRM system implementation to business owners all over the United States.

I didn't need to introduce myself to this thread with my resume and assertions of my authority. That's because I have the confidence that comes from knowing that I was quite successful before most of the members of this forum even heard of the internet. I'm only doing so now in response to your direct insults, your flippant arrogance, and your attempts to dictate that which is a proper reply from others - apparently rooted in your self-aggrandinzing sense of authority that was displayed prior to my first post.

So thanks for your lessons in how to conduct a forum discussion and I've sincerely enjoyed you and your three employee autobiography.

p.s.

Should you doubt the veracity of my statements, here's a link to an archived article from Editor & Publisher magazine (that would be THE defacto trade journal for newspaper publishing) that I was quoted in with my full credentials in 2000. Not that it particularly means anything special, but simply providing 3rd party verification.

http://www.allbusiness.com/services/...4676725-1.html

Mike,
I wont list my clients on this thread in a 5 paragraph post, it's just of no benefit to the thread starter unless he wants to hire you.
All the quotes you made, make perfect sense to me and I think your the one that's being defensive.

I will from this point on, certainly think long and hard about offering advise on ways people can go out and get business as it's seemed to have sparked unnecessary fodder and despite my best efforts I will raise the white flag!

If ANYONE cares to read this entire thread, they will see that I haven't been defensive Nor have I been rude, nor have I attacked anyone's way they feed their families. I have simply responded to what were unnecessary comments directed at me, you have show to be prolific in that ability.

Anyway, Please feel free to quote away, at the end of the day, I merely offered someone my input to what I have done to make a living online.

Mike, I'm unsure why your so upset, when your attitude from the outset has been what it was. Anyone can go back and read it if they wish too, (without all the quotes) although like me, it all just seems a little silly now, doesn't it.

Best of look to you all in your offline endeavors! (however you choose to do it)

Look, when you deal with as many bricks and mortar clients as I do, you understand the average business owner's attitude towards SEO and SEO marketers. Internet marketing in general has a pretty bad reputation overall, and SEO marketers are like the bottom of the dung bucket. Business owners think it's a joke, a scam, and they believe the people who engage in the practice to be shysters - FOR A REASON.

Anything that I can do to discourage anyone from cold calling business owners to buy SEO services is doing both the SEO provider and the business owner client a favor.

Hi Asim,

I think a good way to start the ball rolling would be to do some free seo for

a non-profit and get a testimonial from them

Asim,

I agree with perpetualmike, the best way to get the ball rolling is to start doing some work for free or at cost... because even if you do get a meeting with one of the businesses that you are calling, they will want to see your portfolio do you have one?

Another tidbit, as you can see seo is getting pretty thick, so think about the other ways that you will be able to provide value to your future customers and think about what makes you different from the other seo camps.

As far as making money right now, here is an idea that you might not like... Call up the major SEO firms in your area and apply to work for them. Doesn't sound ideal, but you never know+ you might learn a thing or two.

Hey everyone,

As a person who has been following this thread for the past few days, I have been trying to "bite my tongue" not to respond but I just can't do it anymore.

I don't know why Steven (whom I never dealt with before just so you know) is being attacked when all he did was post his own experiences as to what he thinks is a good way to attract clients.

I've been doing offline for the past year now and guess how I got my clients... cold calling! For some one to come here and write that anyone who cold calls is a scammer/spammer is ludicrous in my eyes!

What do you want a person who is starting out to do? Create and optimize a site catered to people looking for SEO services and wait for the calls to pour in... come on!!!

From the get go, Steve has posted an answer to what has worked for him (and others), offered to help and sprinkled his messages with smiley faces, an indication of a well intentioned post and eagerness to help.

You may not agree to his methods and that's okay and you have every right to come here and post what has worked for you. But to call out all SEO "cold callers" scammers and then attack him and call him arrogant is absolutely ridiculous.