If You Aren't Making Money as a Local SEO Consultant You Aren't Alone

[Linda Buquet]

Yep it's all about how you package yourself and when you only have 2 seconds to make a good 1st impression, just a small tweak in wording can make all the difference!

 

[Brian]

Pricing is tricky in our business. However I have often priced things low, only to find out later that the client was spending $5000 on a single marketing video. So it is very important to sell value in the service and price it where you can make a profit. It is also important to pick industries where the value is high. I chose attorneys because the pay back for them is incredibly high. For many of my clients, it would have been a great deal for them if they had paid 5 times the price I was charging. Also I think it is really important to identify the sales prospects that may be trouble or low margin and just avoid them. I have been doing this for ten years and am really careful not to waste my time with prospects that:

• Are young or new into business. For them cash flow is tight and they tend to be impatient in the process.
• Like to tinker. These are people that are excited about learning SEO and feel they can eventually could do it on their own if I can just give them a few tips. These people end up taking more time and don't value your service because they think they could do it with out you.
• Not nice, polite or reasonable. If someone is not easy to deal with at the beginning, when there is nothing to be stressed out about, then they well really will be a bear to deal with when Google loses their reviews. This sounds obvious but it is really important because one bad client can put you out of business. I really listen when I talk to a new prospect and try to get a sense if this is a nice person.

T

 

[Travis Van Slooten]

Wow...great reply Brian! You hit it out of the park on this one. I've only been doing this for a couple years now and it's been a bumpy ride to say the least. I am just now finally starting to learn everything you've outlined here as I have dealt with every kind of "bad" client you've outlined to avoid.

I want to add to your list that you should listen to your gut. Every time I have ignored my gut, I have gotten burned. If you get a bad feeling that a potential client is going to be a pain, run for the hills! Your gut doesn't lie. Ignore it at your own peril.

I also want to comment on something that I'm sure most here will find controversial and will disagree with vehemently but I don't care. It's o.k. to fire clients. I just had to fire a client over the weekend. He was rude and didn't respect me or what I do. I finally had enough and kindly told him I couldn't work with him anymore and I was letting him go. I refunded his money and that was that. Yes, I lost money on the deal but life is too short to deal with bad clients.

Travis Van Slooten

Pricing is tricky in our business. However I have often priced things low, only to find out later that the client was spending $5000 on a single marketing video. So it is very important to sell value in the service and price it where you can make a profit. It is also important to pick industries where the value is high. I chose attorneys because the pay back for them is incredibly high. For many of my clients, it would have been a great deal for them if they had paid 5 times the price I was charging. Also I think it is really important to identify the sales prospects that may be trouble or low margin and just avoid them. I have been doing this for ten years and am really careful not to waste my time with prospects that:

• Are young or new into business. For them cash flow is tight and they tend to be impatient in the process.
• Like to tinker. These are people that are excited about learning SEO and feel they can eventually could do it on their own if I can just give them a few tips. These people end up taking more time and don't value your service because they think they could do it with out you.
• Not nice, polite or reasonable. If someone is not easy to deal with at the beginning, when there is nothing to be stressed out about, then they well really will be a bear to deal with when Google loses their reviews. This sounds obvious but it is really important because one bad client can put you out of business. I really listen when I talk to a new client and try to get a sense if this is a nice person.

T

 

[Nick.SEOSpark]

Your right on Linda with having a quick sales pitch. I used to say I do SEO and everyone kept giving me that deer in the headlight look. Now I say "I help businesses generate more leads with their website." or "I help businesses make money with their website."

This always leads to a more valuable discussion and ultimately will make you look harder at your overall value proposition as well. SEO is a form of Lead Generation so now I've been looking at the components of SEO as Lead Generation instead of Rankings Generation which makes me target better content and better links to foster the lead gen which makes for better SEO. It's a fundamental shift that sounds like a small thing but really isn't.

Yeah, this is really great advice. If you simply say that you "do SEO", it's really not a compelling sales pitch. In fact, the phrase has (unfortunately) received a bad name from all the cowboys that sell it each day. We can see from Moz (who have just rebranded) that even they are trying to get away from the phrase "SEO". If you can (instead) translate it into something more positive, then people will listen.