If you run a digital marketing agency and want to up your SEO game, it’s time to launch your action plan to take advantage of the current high demand. But how? How can you reach out to potential clients and add them to your list of loyal customers? How can you retain clients? How do you explore the space and stand out as an ideal SEO solution?
These are all valid questions, and they all center around gaining and retaining quality SEO clients. Let’s dive deeper into how to succeed in this crucial area of digital marketing.
Note: this article is about maximizing your reach for gaining and retaining SEO clients. It assumes you already have a client or two and know how to perform SEO work. But, if you’re new to digital marketing and looking for a guide to gaining your first few clients, we have a guide for that, too.
First of all, How Do I Gain SEO Clients?
As a marketing agency, you need a credible portfolio to gain the trust of your future customers. To craft your portfolio, you will have to stay on your toes and try out different methods of getting clients for your marketing agency.
Given below are some methods and tips that can help you in gaining SEO clients:
1. Use the Power of Social Media
From influencers to the giants of the corporate, creative, and fashion industries, everyone recognizes the power of social media and uses it to push their mission forward. You need to do the same. The current generation skews heavily towards social media use.
Consistency is the key here. Formulate content that is promotional and engaging at the same time. With a strategic approach to social media, you can easily reach out to your potential audience. Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest are some of the major platforms that can draw traffic towards your agency and help you get SEO clients.
Pick one to start with and establish a presence. Regularly post relevant content to your audience, and build it up over time. Remember that this is a long term play, but one that pays off when potential clients begin to recognize your authority in the world of SEO.
2. Cold Emails
Cold emails are an effective way of getting SEO clients. To prevent your emails from landing in the spam section, ensure that you do not get your email list from a mined list or a directory. Research your target clients, and reach out to them via LinkedIn or other social media platforms to get their emails. Construct a short, crisp introduction that conveys the crux of your marketing agency and SEO services.
Construct a well-designed email campaign. Remember, the email you send might act as a sample of the campaign your potential client might require. So put your best foot forward and formulate an email with a clear call to action steps, contact information, and an overview of your marketing agency.
3. Content Marketing
Content is still king in the digital marketing space. To gain more SEO clients, you need to develop a content marketing strategy for your agency. Before you market to others, you need to build a base of content for yourself. Even if it doesn’t score you clients instantly, your content will highlight your market presence and spread the word about your agency.
You can utilize platforms like Quora, LinkedIn, Medium, WordPress, to help you attract more traffic to your site and ultimately fetch more SEO clients for your agency. You can also experiment with different content marketing trends to boost your reach and help your clients trace your content and connect with your firm.
Okay, But How Do I Retain SEO clients?
Once you get your SEO clients you want to work hard to retain them. The old adage that it’s easier to keep a customer than gain a new one rings true even in this space. Plus, happy clients tend to beget more clients as word-of-mouth spreads. So make sure you have a strategy in place for retaining your clients–even before you close them.
Below are some of the simple-yet-effective tips to help you retain your SEO clients:
1. Come with a Next-Phase Strategy
Near the end of your SEO campaign, form a strategy for upcoming campaigns. Present an analysis of the ongoing campaign, and tell your client about your plans for future ones.
Inform them of the SEO plan, content list, schedule, editorial calendar, target analysis, and plan of action. Invite them directly to keep working with you, whether it’s on SEO or another wing of their business.
2. Take and Incorporate Feedback
Sometimes your clients will be impressed with the results of your campaign and let you know. Other times they may seem unhappy or dissatisfied. In either case, ask for feedback. Even if it hurts to hear, negative feedback will help you grow. It will also give you the chance to turn the situation around.
Some of our best clients are the ones who had a complaint about us at the beginning. When they saw that we went the extra mile to resolve the issue, they became more loyal than most of our clients who never had a problem at all. Apply this same mindset and watch your retention rate grow.
3. Don’t Neglect Your Team’s Culture
If you’ve grown to the point where you have extra team members working under you, make sure you pay attention to the team culture. As representatives of your agency, your team has a great deal of influence over whether clients stay or go.
When issues arise between a team member and a client, or even between two team members, you have to mediate the issue respectfully and in a healthy manner. If you notice them making a mistake, kindly and gently correct them. But remember: you grew by making mistakes yourself. You have to give people the space to learn and experiment because it will make them better for your agency in the long run.
Make sure your team knows how to talk to clients, how to perform the work, and what to do when issues arise. Develop training materials and scripts to enable the learning process.
If you incorporate these steps, you’ll see a noticeable increase in solid leads… and more clients will stick around for the long haul. Best of luck!
Further Reading: 4 Ways Established Digital Marketing Agencies Create New Streams of Revenue
