It’s a known fact that the SEO industry is crowded. Many agencies offer SEO services, and in time, you will find yourself competing for business. That's the bad news.
The good news is that it’s easy to differentiate your services during the SEO sales process. How? By creating a unique experience that creates contrast. The contrast between your sales approach and the mainstream approach will help you close the deal.
So, how do we create this contrast? It’s not price. And it’s not false guarantees.
Differentiate your SEO services in the sales process using these three techniques:
- Sell the end destination,
- Avoid industry jargon,
- Make it a simple decision because it's a small decision.
In this post, we’ll elaborate on these three SEO sales techniques. Want more guidance? Review the other posts in this series to master the art of selling SEO services.
This Post is Part of a Series about Selling SEO Services:
Sell the Destination
When we first started selling SEO services at our agency, our pitch centered on wowing potential clients with our knowledge. We would review the prospective client’s website and then share a laundry list of items that needed to be changed in an effort to “bring the website up to SEO best practices”.
It turns out that our potential clients didn’t care if their website met these best practices. They didn’t care if their title tags and meta descriptions got an A+. And they’d probably instead have never heard of a robots.txt file.
We accidentally overwhelmed them with our smarts in our attempts to woo them. We also sounded like every other SEO agency selling SEO services, which meant pricing was the only thing we could compete with.
We missed the core dynamic of why a business hires an agency in the first place. We forgot to remember that our potential clients had specific end goals in mind. And they’d be asking themselves whether or not our services would get them to this desired destination.
Today, we sell SEO services with an entirely different approach using the bridge framework, as discussed by Chris Lema. Using this same framework, you can sell a prospective client your SEO services by identifying these three fundamental points:
- Pain/Destination — Start by acknowledging their pain regarding SEO. What challenges do they face? Then, highlight the destination. What are their goals? Where are they trying to go?
- Roadblocks — Many prospective clients have invested in SEO in the past and hit a roadblock. Maybe they went DIY and invested a lot of time without results. Maybe they hired an agency that didn’t do anything. Reminding prospective clients of the common roadblocks helps increase your solution's value.
- Bridge — This is the solution. The bridge is what your agency offers to help move the prospective customer from the pain point to the desired end destination.
That’s the short version. Check out this video to learn this framework directly from Chris Lema. It’ll be time well spent.
Following the bridge framework throughout the SEO sales process, our agency now closes over 90% of its leads into clients. You can too!
Avoid Industry Jargon
There is another important dynamic at play in the sales process and it has to do with language.
Have you ever had a doctor's appointment where the physician speaks to you using medical terminology that you don’t understand? It happens and it's overwhelming. The physician is speaking to you like a colleague when you are a patient.
When selling SEO services, it’s easy to fall into a similar trap and use terms like “301 redirects” and “Core Web Vitals”. These phrases can immediately alienate the prospective customer.
Instead, our goal is to make the prospective customer feel at ease. We do this by communicating in everyday terms to avoid overwhelming them with the SEO industry lingo.
To do so, try slowing down and replacing SEO lingo with relatable concepts. Here are some examples:
- Instead of saying “SEO services,” try “getting your website found on Google.”
- Instead of saying “XML sitemap,” describe this file as “your website’s public resume.”
- Instead of “Featured Snippet,” explain that this is “an opportunity to appear above the #1 position on Google.”
Make It a Simple Decision
When it comes time to sell your services, we want to make it a simple decision for a prospective client to engage. We do so by selling something small first to act as an on-ramp service.
Within the SEO packaging framework that we recommend at Pathfinder SEO, the on-ramp service is the SEO Assessment.
SEO Assessment
This is your on-ramp
SEO Set-Up
This is your accelerator
Monthly SEO
This is for maintenance & evolution
The SEO Assessment serves as a low-friction, small engagement that becomes a feeder into your larger services — the SEO Set-Up and Monthly SEO. This is why the SEO Assessment is considered an on-ramp.
For those clients that want more immediate action or have a new website in active development, it is possible to start with an SEO Set-Up.
Think of the decision to sell an SEO Assessment vs. an SEO Set-Up as the on-ramp product, like a car merging onto a freeway.
Either way, your prospective customer is presented with an easy decision to first engage in SEO services by being sold a one-time project. They understand the dynamic that SEO is ongoing and that there will be the option to continue to engage with your agency long-term, but without forcing a long-term commitment right out of the gate.
Bonus Tips: How to Sell SEO Services
Here are a few additional tips to keep in mind while selling SEO services:
- Follow-through counts. If you tell a prospect you'll have a proposal to them by the end of the week, be sure to hit that deadline as it establishes early trust.
- It's about the client, not your agency. Center the sales process around your prospect. By understanding their challenges and goals, you'll differentiate your agency from the crowd.
- Don't give too much advice away for free. That's what the SEO Assessment is for. It's a paid project to create the SEO strategy.
What's Next?
You are on your way to mastering the art of selling SEO services!
Next, learn about the steps included in a sales process.
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