How To Generate Exclusive SEO Leads

Okay, so you’ve heard that SEO is a profitable business and you’re interested in getting your piece of the pie, just like us when we got started. One thing you really want to decide before you get started is if you want to be on the sales side of things or on the delivery side. We recommend starting on the sales side as you will have much more leverage and can create passive income if you choose to outsource the SEO work to a white label agency. If you want to know how to get more SEO clients, here are various methods you can use for your SEO lead generation campaign:

1. Choose a Niche or a Few Niches

In 2018, digital marketing is quite a crowded space, so it may be hard to distinguish your SEO agency as top of the line. To solve this, you can simply niche down. For example, it is hard to build the best SEO brand in the world, but easy to have the best SEO brand in the HVAC niche. If you would like to do multiple niches, you can build out a unique agency site for each niche.

2. Inbound Marketing

Here is how a typical sale goes in almost any business:

Lead -> Appointment/Proposal -> Sale -> Upsell

So in order to get more sales, you first need to get more leads. Leads can come from a variety of sources which you should constantly be pursuing, but here are the most important:

SEO

SEOs will go out of their way to get their clients ranked, but all too often we see that they don’t even SEO their own agency sites. If they have a website, they are not putting any work in to rank for related keywords for their own business! This is a must for building brand and getting high intent traffic that may want to hire you.

Here are some keywords you can rank for in the HVAC niche for example:

• HVAC leads
• HVAC marketing
• HVAC advertising (if you offer that)
• HVAC websites (if you offer that)

These keywords are not very competitive and from our personal experience, are a good source of leads.

Content Marketing

This is one of the most effective ways you can build brand/authority, get SEO leads, and eventually charge more for your services. Beyond just ranking for your main “money” keywords, it is a good idea to build some authority in your particular niche by creating content for Google and/or YouTube. For example, you can rank for keywords like “how to start an HVAC business”. If you are creating in depth high quality content, people will often start to view you as a thought leader and authority in your niche.

Remarketing and Email Lists

It is said that on average people need to interact with your brand 7 times before they buy from you. So after getting the traffic from SEO, it is a good idea to set up remarketing ads on Google AdWords and Facebook to remind people of your services. Even beyond that, you should be catering these ads to where people are at in your sales funnel. For example, if people have gone to your website but have not purchased anything or subscribed to your mailing list, maybe you run an ad offering a free ebook if they subscribe. On the flip side, for those people that are already your clients, you can run an ad offering a discount on some kind of upsell.

Facebook Groups

Facebook groups is a great place to network with potential clients in your niche(s). Just keep in mind that it will probably not be well received if you spam them with your services right off the bat. Instead, you should consider introducing yourself with something like this: “Hi, thanks for the add guys. I’m glad to answer any questions you may have about HVAC marketing and advertising”. Or you could even avoid doing that and just answer questions when someone asks about something you know, and even joke around from time to time. This will allow you to show your expertise and provide value similar to content marketing. In addition, make sure that your Facebook bio properly displays what you do. For example, your bio can state “I do SEO for HVAC companies!” and you can have a link to your agency website.

Referrals

If you have not yet reached out to your friends and family about anyone who might need your services, you are missing out on a great source of exclusive SEO leads. In addition to this, every time you acquire a client, or network with someone who may know another person that could use your services, you should let them know that you have an referral program. You get more customers and the referrer will receive a certain amount off of their monthly bill. You can even create a page on your website and rank for keywords like: “SEO referral program” or “SEO affiliate program” to potentially get more leads. Keep in mind though that you should probably keep this page off of your main navigation so that clients don’t see it and think that the person referring them is just trying to get a commision.

Meetup Groups and Other Networking Events

Face to face networking is far from dead and much appreciated, particularly by clients who may not be as tech savvy. Regardless of whether you choose to organize, speak at, or just attend a networking event, they a great source of leads. Keep in mind that when you speak with the business owner, you should just try to hang out and make friends. Do not just try to sell your services right off of the bat. Once you hear about what their business is, let them know that you think SEO would be helpful for them to expand what they are doing. Then let them know that you can provide an audit and proposal via email if they are interested.

Local SEO, Craigslist, and Facebook Marketplace

Although your local area may be sort of competitive to rank for, you should be able to figure out how to get some local rankings relatively easily. These are lead sources that we use all of the time for our clients’ businesses and for our own, all with decent results. As with any leads, especially those coming from Craigslist, just keep in mind that they will need to be screened properly to make sure they are quality SEO leads before wasting too much time on them.

Facebook Ads with Cold Traffic

Although Facebook ads generally work well with remarketing traffic (those that already know you), the targeting also allows you to go after business owners who you’d like to get in front of directly.

Trade Shows and Conventions

If you’ve niched down like we mentioned, you can do more in person marketing by going to industry related trade shows and conventions. This will identify you as an industry expert and help you meet new potential clients.

Offer White Label SEO Services

In general, you can’t charge as much as you would on your own for SEO services because there will be a middleman between you and the client. That being said, if you can partner up with some large agencies, there is a good chance that you can get to the point where you are overloaded with work.

Offer Related Services

One great way to support your SEO lead generation campaign is to offer related services that business owners may need. An example of this is would be graphic design and business card printing. Even if you are not an expert in these fields, you can easily rank your agency website for them and outsource the tasks to a freelancer. That, in and of itself, will bring in some profits, but the big money will probably be had when you have an opportunity to upsell them on SEO.

Buy SEO Leads

We personally have not tried this one before, but there are companies out there that are currently selling these leads.

3. CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization)

Now that you have used some inbound strategies to get traffic to your site, it is time to try and maximize the leads you generate from your visitors. This can be done through getting a nicer looking theme, adding optin popups, and/or just by using a simple site auditor. You see site auditors like this one being used on all kinds of agency websites, including Neil Patel’s.

4. Cold Outreach

While cold outreach may be a little harder for those people that are not experienced in sales, it has a unique advantage when compared to inbound marketing. That advantage is the ability for you to prospect your ideal client before reaching out to them.

When doing inbound marketing it is likely that you will get some unqualified leads along with the qualified ones. Oftentimes, screening these unqualified prospects may take up your time and at the end of the day you may still not end up with your ideal prospect. It essentially becomes a game of chance when someone that actually can pay you lots of money lands on a piece of your content and reaches out to you to become a client.

That being said, cold outreach still goes hand in hand with inbound strategy since some of the clients you outreach to may have already heard good things about you, or even wanted to contact you but had not gotten around to it. Overall, you or someone you hire should be simultaneously doing cold outreach in addition to the inbound marketing strategies you are doing.

Choosing Qualified Prospects

A good way to find qualified prospects is to see who is already spending a lot of money on marketing and advertising, especially if they don’t look like they are doing it correctly. You can do this by searching for a popular keyword in your niche and viewing the AdWords ads that show up. You can then put their website into a tool like SEMrush or Spyfu to see how much they are currently spending with Google. If they are spending lots of money, you can mention in your pitch to them that you can save on their ad spend by getting the same amount of traffic or more with SEO.

Know Your Numbers

Cold sales is mostly a numbers game. You can make some tweaks to your script to have a higher conversion rate, but chances are you will still need to reach out to a lot of people. When you know your numbers it can help you continue on with your outreach possess. For example, if you know that after 200 cold calls you will land an appointment, and that you need 4 appointments to get a client, every call you make becomes easier because you know you are one step closer to success.

LinkedIn Outreach

If you are patient and put in the time to doing this, somewhat in bulk, this is a skill that can yield you great clients. Essentially what you need to do is connect with about 20 people a day with a simple message. We recommend testing various message copies in the beginning and then keeping the ones that have high response rates. There are also companies that provide this service for you that you can hire.

Cold Calling

This may not be your favorite thing to do, but there is no doubting that it can help you get more SEO clients if done properly.

Cold Email

There are a many people who have had success with cold email outreach. One popular method you can use is to provide video audits of the person’s website so that you can stand out from the competition.

In Person Sales

Here’s one that we don’t see discussed much in the SEO industry. It may take a little longer to do, but it will set you apart from the competition. Once you have a few qualified local prospects, simply drive down to their storefront with free coffee or breakfast for the staff. Then let them know what you do and that if the decision maker (better if you know their name) is available for an appointment. The staff will likely appreciate you more and you will probably be better received than a cold caller.

What to Do Once You Have an SEO Lead/Appointment?

Now that you have the appointment, it is time to close the deal. There are various schools of thought on how to do this, but here are some things to consider:

• Qualify them by offering a rough estimate and price range for what you would charge. If this is not in the ballpark they are expecting, then don’t waste too much time giving them a proposal.
• Be thorough with your proposal/audit, but don’t waste too much time on it if you are offering it for free. You need to scope out which one of these potential prospects is worth more of your time.
• Speak in a language they understand. Business owners don’t always understand the benefit of SEO, but if you can explain it to them how many potential leads they can get it, becomes much more tangible. We have heard of some agencies offering a guarantee of X amount of leads by the end of the first 2 months or so. If they can’t deliver, they have to give all or a certain portion or the money back until they can. If you are worried about not being able to achieve those results fast enough with only SEO, don’t worry. We recommend using other lead sources like Craigslist and/or SEM to meet your lead quota, then continuing to run those in the background, at your own expense or at the expense of the client, until the SEO is doing well and even beyond that. Of course, this will require you to also set up call tracking so that you can properly report all of the leads that come in for the client.
• Show them how much people are spending on Google AdWords, and if they are someone who is also spending a lot, let them know how much money they could save every month by getting the same amount of leads or more from SEO.
• Take them out for food or coffee (if possible). If this is a good prospect, take the time to actually build a relationship with them beyond just the proposal. If they sign on as a client, you two will be working together on a regular basis, so you want to show them that they can get along with you.
• Ask questions. Each client will have hire you for different reasons, and often what they want isn’t always what you’d expect. Simply ask them what is important for you, as their marketing company, to achieve for them.
• Make the most “visible” changes in your first month so that your client feels good about you helping their business. Your client may not have enough SEO knowledge to really understand and appreciate the improvements that you are making, and probably won’t until they actually receive more business.
• Make sure to follow up on your proposal, but not too often. Chances are spending money on your services is not on the top of your prospect’s priority list, so it is important to follow up after giving them a fair amount of time. When you do you can simply ask them if they have received your proposal and if they have any questions, comments, or concerns about it.
• Use a contract. Were assuming you already know this, but sending them a professional looking contract can lower your liability and make you look more legitimate.
• Know when to walk away. At some point you may realize that this particular client is not likely to take any action anytime soon, or is haggling you too much on price. It is a skill to know when to walk away from negotiations in order to save you time.

Take Action

This may sound like a lot to do, but if you can do all of these things or even just a few of them, you should be able to generate more exclusive SEO leads.

If you would like to learn more about generating SEO client leads, check out this course.