Landing Local SEO Clients - An Ultimate Guide

Today I wanted to share one of the easiest and quickest ways of landing local clients, whether it be to provide SEO, consulting, web design or all of the above.

As bloggers and internet marketers, we all have an incredible skill set at our disposal, and more importantly, we have a knowledge that others would (and should) pay handsomely for. The problem that most of us face, however, is figuring out how to

  1. Find these potential clients and,
  2. Convincing them to make that investment and spend their hard-earned money with us.

Now I know I am speaking for hundreds, if not thousands, of you out there because, well, I was one of you. To a point, I still am, I guess, but now I am lucky enough that I make money doing what I love and have a long list of delighted clients who pay me to handle their online marketing and SEO. But it was not always like this.

Problems To Get Local SEO Clients

I think the biggest problem is that there is nothing tangible about SEO. If I were selling cars (for lack of a better example), it would be easy to convince you to buy one. A car is incredibly tangible – you can touch it, you can feel it, you can drive it – hell, you can even smell it… (mmmm new car smell) so no matter what angle I choose to take to try and make you part with your money, the job is half done because I can hand over the keys and let the vehicle and the inherent emotion do the talking.

With SEO, however, it is a different story. You cannot see a backlink, and you cannot really see content or social engagement. Sure I can show you statistics that reveal the ROI is better than any other form of marketing, and I can draw pie charts and graphs until we are all blue in the face, but more often than not, this drives the potential client further away. (Chances are this information will be over their head, and making a person feel stupid is not exactly a winning formula)

The Key to Positive Engagement

Marketing and engagement are the same whether you are building a landing page on an affiliate site or trying to land a major local SEO client – the key lies in the emotional connection. I talked about tangibility earlier because, without something concrete, it is hard to get that emotional connection. To go back to my earlier example of car sales, it is easy for a salesperson to convince you to buy a particular car because they can play on that emotional connection. A good sales rep will be able to read your reactions and build a sales pitch around the vehicle’s aspects that gets you the most excited, whether it be fuel economy, performance, or looks.

With SEO however it is a little different… or is it?

Today I want to share with you a little trick that I have used to convince dozens of local businesses to invest their money with me and to focus more of their marketing budget in the online world.

This is a method that works simply because it makes something intangible become real, and in so doing, it allows the emotional connection that is so important in sales to come into play. And once that emotional connection is made – the rest sells itself.

My “Landing Page to Landing Clients” Method

Ever clicked on the Google Ads in search results and noticed how badly targeted the landing page is to the keyword?! Heck, there’s usually not even a landing page – just their home page. It’s because most successful offline businesses like trades etc., have no idea. In fact, they don’t even care. They’re doing well without search traffic and have only tried Adwords because it seemed like a good idea.

Steps To Create Landing Page

Now – you could contact them and tell them that their landing page stinks, but they won’t listen – they genuinely don’t care. Not only that, they are probably getting spammy emails every day from various “SEO” companies offering their services. The last thing you want to do is put yourself into the same box as these spammers.

BUT…
If you put together a landing page (hosted anywhere) that targets the exact keywords, they are buying and employs all the elements of their current site (like header graphic and navigation menu options, etc.), the whole game changes.
Now you are providing this potential client with something tangible! Something they can see and read, and if they can see and read it, then there’s a good chance they will ‘Feel it’ too.

The boss only cares about making more money. So if you show him/her a good quality landing page (you’ll have to do your homework relevant to the industry, obviously), then you allow yourself the opportunity to connect on their level.

That boss doesn’t want to hear about SEO and stats and conversion rates, BUT he knows his business and knows his customers more importantly. He’ll look at your landing page, and it will be hard for him to ignore the potential something like this could have for his business … you’ve managed to create an emotional connection from an otherwise intangible subject (go you good thing!)

Of course, add to that the fact that you aren’t in his ear pitching him … All you’ve done is send him a link to your new ‘idea’ with a brief message introducing yourself.

He/she will call you back to discuss – and now the ball’s in your court. The whole conversation changes at this point because you are not pitching them anything, in fact they are pitching you!

Want more like this? What’s that – you want to discuss the whole gamut of online ideas and the potential it brings? Sure – just sign on the dotted line and I can take care of everything, month by month

How To Create The Landing Page

I need to point out that when I say ‘Landing Page,’ I am simply referring to the page you land on from a Google Ad. I am perfectly aware that it is illegal to send paid traffic to a ‘squeeze page,’ and I am well aware that we tend to think of landing pages as the same thing as Internet Marketers. In this post, I am simply calling them that, for lack of a better word.

I find the most effective way to build these mockup pages for potential clients is to take a screenshot of their current site and then use the header image and the nav menu as one static image on the top of your new page. Granted, the navigation buttons will not be clickable, but that is not necessary at this point. You simply want to showcase how the page’s body’s information should be presented to the keyword they are paying for.

By copy-pasting the header and nav menu into your own site, you not only save yourself a tonne of time and effort, but you also give the potential client something they can relate to and understand. If they see their exact site presented to them, with a call to action within the body that is actually targeted and relevant, then your chance of that ‘call back’ increases exponentially!

I recommend Elegant Themes to showcase these landing pages because of two main reasons:

  1. They are insanely good value for money! $39 for basic membership and only $89 for Developer Membership gets you access to over 85 themes and a myriad of plugins to make building a site incredibly easy.
  2. They are easy to build, with absolutely no technical skills or coding required!