Active Franchisees: Offering SEO services to your clients

Active Franchisees: Offering SEO services to your clients. SEO can be overwhelming to clients who are only just starting out on their digital marketing journey. Especially if they’ve only just launched a new website and are looking at the next steps. You have the job of convincing them why it’s such a great investment. Clients often don’t realise its true potential and have loads of questions whilst wanting to hold you to specific guarantees. Here are some of the most common and how you can support potential clients with their queries:

• Why aren’t I #1 on Google?

First thing’s first, this is far more challenging than some SEO providers will allude to. It’s important that clients understand just how much work goes into getting that #1 position. Particularly, that it can take an awfully long time to get there. Plus, all the complicated technical work that goes into it. It’s your job to manage their expectations whilst still promising quick wins and improvements when it comes to SEO. It’s a long game and reaching that #1 position is often made up of much more than just SEO activity.

• How much does it cost to get me to #1?

How long is a piece of string? There are a number of questions that will help you determine how to cost this work. These include where they rank currently and where they want to be (realistically!). SEO obviously involves writing a lot of content and often small businesses don’t have access to content writers in their business. So they may be subject to additional charges from you on that. The cost can also be influenced by how competitive their marketplace is and how many competitors are all vying for the same #1 spot. The cost can be easily packaged up, just like we have here at activ.

• Can I pay you after I see results?

We would likely advise against this, particularly as a lot of labour-intensive work goes into SEO. You can certainly scale your payments based on the type of results you end up delivering. But don’t forget it takes time to get there. Offering clients the chance to set KPIs can be a way to negotiate. However, it’s often better to work on deliverables so they pay for the work you’re putting in.

• Why does it take so long to build?

It depends on many things including the quality of the business you’re supporting to the technical advances needed on the website. It can also take time to build up a portfolio of ongoing content like blogs, articles and relevant copy on pages.

• How come my competitors are out-ranking me?

This is a totally valid question and one that should be advised on carefully so it doesn’t look like you’re trying to oversell on services. SEO work should and could include a competitor overview when it comes to what they do well and what you need to do to compete effectively in search engine ranking.

It might also involve difficult conversations around the quality of the website belonging to your client in comparison to their competitors. It might be outdated, need some work to improve the user experience or generally an overhaul. Luckily, we can help with all of that here at activ.

Becoming a franchise at activ Marketing Group will give you access to a team of professional SEO consultants who can advise, make recommendations, constantly improve and report on their activity for your clients.

You don’t need to be an SEO professional to sell these services, but feel confident in having the backing at the head office to provide a well-rounded service to digital clients. Find out more about our current franchisee network.