This article was first published on August 31st, 2020. It was last updated in August 2021.
In our blog, we’ve talked about how to pitch and sell SEO services to your customers, but before you make your pitch, you have to get your SEO clients. Taking it back even farther, you have to know how to prospect for the right kind of customer to be able to pitch them your services. We know that SEO can benefit all businesses. However, it can be more difficult to do client prospecting for your particular agency and style of doing business.
Think first about how you generate leads right now for your agency. Is it through traditional digital marketing means? Do you search for customers in your area that fit in your desired niche? Maybe you use more traditional marketing tactics? Or perhaps you have a very strong SEO game and customers find you.
There’s nothing wrong with any of those. And even some combination of all of it could really help your agency. However, we have a few specific tactics that we’ve shared with our partners over the years. In this article, we will go over different approaches on how to prospect for new clients. There are a variety of different methods that your agency or business can use. Read on for some ideas on ways to prospect for new clients and improve your incoming lead funnels as a white label SEO reseller.
Table of Contents
How to Prospect for More SEO Sales
- Optimize Your Own Website
- Build on Previous Relationships
- Prepare Your Pitch
- Identify a Business on Page 3-11 of Google
- Do Free SEO Site Audits
- Client Prospecting Straight to the Source
- Create a Video
- Email Outreach
- Content Marketing
- Create a Sales Funnel
- Specialize in a Specific Niche
11 Strategies on How to Prospect for More SEO Sales
Optimize Your Own Website
If you’re looking into client prospecting for sales, you first need to make sure that your own website is optimized and ranking high. Organic leads that come through search engines directly to your website convert 8 times higher than paid leads. That could be a game changer in the long run! So, you first need to make sure you have implemented a good SEO effort into your site. It’s important to do this for potential clients to find you when they search for “SEO services” or other keyword specifics in your area and within your business niche.
Beyond your website, make sure your social media channels and other marketing efforts point back to your business as a way for people to get in contact with you. Lead with the value of your company and the SEO product that you offer. If people see value in it, they’re more likely to become customers.
Build on Previous Relationships
Unless your business is brand new, you have past customers or connections. That can be a huge asset to you as you prospect for sales or prospect for leads. Even if they’re not customers, when you’re prospecting, it’s a great chance to reach out and tell them about your new SEO product that you’re now offering. Ask if they’re interested, or if they know someone else who might be. Past clients and previous relationships are much easier to have a conversation around than cold calling new prospects.
Prepare Your Pitch
Once you have identified a good lead you want to reach out to, you need to prepare your pitch. You can prepare your pitch by setting up the following:
- You can cold call and tell them about what you found in your research.
- Send them an email with your findings.
- You can use a video that you created to introduce yourself and what you can do for them (that gives it a personal touch).
- Having a list of open ended questions that you may ask during the conversation. Open ended questions help clarify points and perspectives and help continue the conversation.
But ultimately, you just need to prepare for when those leads start to come in. And they will come in.
Identify a Business on Pages 3-11 of Google
We have some partners that only serve law firms. Others focus on little one-man or tiny small businesses that just want more traffic. There’s even some who focus on just medical providers. Whatever your specific customer type or target audience, do a simple Google search. Then go to some of the lower pages. THOSE results that you find are the customers who need SEO services! Knowing how to prospect for leads through SERPs will become a huge advantage for your business.
Do Free SEO Site Audits
You might end up needing to do some good ol’ fashioned cold calling. Along with having a sales spiel, have some data and talking points around why they need SEO. You can even use this Free SEO Website Analysis tool to give you some information about their website and where it’s lacking. This report gives data around competitors, keyword rankings, a website score, and other SEO metrics that can show where a website could use some help.
Besides this tool, you can do your own research to see if they have different business directories like Google My Business, Yelp, or a social media presence. You can check to see if their website is mobile-friendly. Look up other businesses in that same area competing for the same customers to see how they rank in comparison. There’s dozens of other tools and research methods that can help you.
Client Prospecting Straight to the Source
As times change and evolve, there are countless ways to meet and prospect for increased leads and sales. The best way to continue this success is going straight to the source. Find where and how your business gets the most customers and invest in that area of focus. Whether this be through a trade show, an online seminar, through a referral, a call, or even through your website. Invest your efforts into what’s popular and what’s converting. By doing so, you will discover countless client prospecting opportunities for your business.
Create a Video
Video plays such a huge role today that 96% of consumers find videos helpful when making purchase decisions online. Many people may feel intimidated by video for their business, but it’s a platform that works and it’s a unique way to prospect for new clients. Especially in a day where TikTok or live videos seem to be everywhere on the internet, you can do it for your business, for your product, or personalize it when client prospecting. But here’s the exciting bit, it’s nothing to be intimidated about. At one time, creating a video may have been a huge production. But our phone or web cameras are good enough now that you can just do it yourself.
There are tons of platforms out there that can help you screen capture while you talk about your product. There’s platforms like Vidyard or Loom that you can use online. You can use the platforms built into your device. On your iPhone or Mac computer you have iMovie. Most Windows computers have Windows Movie Maker or a feature within the Photos app. If you want a more professional touch, Adobe offers month-to-month plans of its creative suite which includes Premiere. Do your research online to decide what platform, app, or software is the best fit for you and the clients you want to reach out to. Overall, creating videos can help you prospect for better leads if you give people more of a reason to choose your product or service over other competitors.
Email Outreach
Having more of a personalized email outreach strategy helps separate your business from all of the other bulk emails that other businesses send. There are different ways in which you can make your emails feel personalized. This could be through personalizing content, how knowledgeable your business or agency comes across, or being specific about their needs or what you can offer them. It’s also important to have a direct focus on who you’re creating these emails for. Otherwise your email outreach efforts will go to waste. Creating direct, creative, and personalized emails is one of the many unique ways to prospect for new clients.
Content Marketing
There are many unique ways to prospect for SEO. One of the best ways to do so is through writing and sharing content that your customers are interested in. When you have relatable content or informative information that your clients are wanting to know more about, your business becomes more valuable to them. Clients crave new research and data that pertains to their business. Being able to conduct and share this information helps prospective clients choose you over your competitors.
Create a Sales Funnel
In order to increase prospective SEO leads and sales, you must have a sales funnel strategy in place. For a sales funnel, you have one way in, and one way out. You may have a lot of different marketing efforts that lead people back to your business, but ultimately you need to have a way for customers to get in contact with you. That could be a lead form on your website. It could be a good ol’ fashioned call in. There’s no wrong way. Just make sure that as prospective clients get in contact with you, they get into that sales funnel where you’re providing them with information that will hopefully turn them into a sale.
Specialize in a Specific Niche
When your business specializes in something, clients will want to recognize and be aware of it. Specializing in a specific niche can help you stand out amongst the competition, especially against other digital marketing agencies. When a client lands on your website, having your niche highlighted on the main page helps them recognize your capabilities and what you can offer them. Highlighting this information will help to filter out the types of prospective leads you don’t want and attract the right traffic to increase your prospective SEO sales. Your customers will be impressed by unique and creative expertise that’s related to the niche the client is seeking for.
Do the Work to Prospect for New Clients
There’s no silver bullet or magic one-size-fits all solution into how to prospect for SEO leads and increase sales. You have to do the work in order to do the prospecting. It could be only about an hour per day that could ultimately bring you great success once you find a system that works for you. But you still need to put in the effort to make it happen.
However, if you are ever in need of some assistance, Boostability is here to help! Learn more about our white label SEO services and how we can help scale your business without the associated costs and risk.
If you’re unfamiliar with white label SEO, check out our Ultimate Guide to White Label SEO Marketing for a step-by-step walkthrough of what this is, what to expect, and more!
