By Patrick Hare
Sometimes, you just can’t sell search engine marketing to a customer on the merits of ROI. Either you don’t have enough information about the client’s business model, or you don’t know the cost of a sale so you can’t “back in” the value of an SEO or PPC campaign. In quite a few cases, you don’t even have to explain return on investment given that customers already know that high positions drive clicks, and clicks drive sales. There are also many cases where actual clicks and traffic aren’t the driving force behind a prospect’s desire to become visible on search engines, but the desire for visibility is paramount.
For years, the idea of ROI was foreign to an online marketing sales presentation, and salespeople made money hand over fist by selling the idea of a top position on the search engine of the day. In fact, it is still possible to make a comfortable living in SEO by appealing to vanity and your customer’s hidden desire for recognition and fame. Today, Google is the primary medium where everyone wants to be found, and showing up on the front page includes the implication that the most powerful internet site is approving your enterprise. In a manner of speaking, moving up on Google is akin to being accepted as a contestant on “American Idol” since many people crave the fame and attention, but few have the qualifications to reach the top.
To understand how a “vain” prospect can be channeled into a paying client, consider the following: doctors and lawyers make for some of the easiest SEO sales because many of them have an elevated level of pure narcissism. Once, a legal client of mine complained that a competitor did not deserve the #7 position in Google because the guy was a “big jerk.” Doctors have complained that other people in the Google rankings did not deserve high positions because they weren’t “world class.” Attorneys will often bid up to $100 a click on AdWords for terms that may never return a profit. As you might suspect, it isn’t too difficult to sell an advanced SEO and PPC package to a doctor or lawyer with something to prove. On the back end, it is often tough to hold clients like these, because they have an expectation driven by the idea that their site must always be #1, and you should get the search engine to change its algorithm if their personal site is not at the top.
While it may sound Machiavellian to appeal to the “vain” side of the customer, it also makes a lot of sense. Most clients can see their competitors online, and may personally know other people who are popping up in the search results. By nature, executives, professionals, and small business owners are competitive, and they crave endorsements from third parties. In the past, firms put out press releases in the hopes that newspapers or TV stations would pick up their promotion and create some PR buzz. In the same way that people will buy 5 newspapers if they are mentioned in an article, people want to be “seen” where it counts, and today that place is Google. Every day, websites get bought and sold based on search engine positions, and executives take a lot of pride in being “#1” for at search result, even if they are the only ones typing it in.
As an internet marketing firm, it is usually possible to channel this vanity into a real value for the customer. Even though we preach that “it isn’t who you are, it’s what you do,” the site owner often makes a personal association with the website. This is especially true for real estate agents, who will include glamor shots of themselves on every page when their clients are trying to buy a house. As a marketing firm for such a client, your success depends on getting traffic that turns into sales, but appealing to your customer’s vain side is a worthwhile tactic for getting your foot in the door and showing the value of the work that you do.
Tags: seo costa rica
