Offline Marketing Pro: How Do You Educate Small Business Owner on SEO?

Q: Just wanted to say thanks for some of the tips you have shared regarding offline marketing / consulting.

I am trying to get into this area and your advice is really inspirational. I am hoping to be high negotiable with my rates at first but know as long as I can pay my bills I will be happy and will enjoy the work.

My only obstacle I believe is educating customers regarding the value / need for SEO and gaining clients.

Hope everything is still going well for you and look forward to reading more of your posts.

A: Thank you for sharing your appreciation for my postings.

Depending upon where you’re located and who your market niche is you can command the fees you want. It’s up to you to say how much your time is worth.

I mentioned $500/mo for services on the forum you’re on. That’s not really true. But it’s more believable than what we actually command. We start out with $1500 for the site and then $1000/mo. As we prove we can produce results that $1000 slowly grows to $3,000 and more per month per client.

It doesn’t really matter what others are charging. What does matter is that you can produce results for your clients. How much do they value your services?

For example: Let’s say my client is paying $2500 per insertion of a quarter page display ad, per week in their local Sunday paper. That means they’re paying a total of $10,000 a month for their advertising. How valuable would I be if I could show my client how to get better placement, more readership/views, a bigger space and better conversion for only $149 per insertion? Same paper on the same day. Instead of paying $10,000 he would now be paying $600. I’d save him $9400. Do you think he might think I’m worth $2,000/mo to him?

But not knowing the above, you might feel very awkward telling a client your fee is $2,000/mo. You might believe that he would never pay you $2,000/mo. You can’t possibly see him or anyone paying you $2000/mo for a simple solution. But when you see that you’re going to save him $7400/mo after your fees, you think, “hmmmm….maybe I’m not charging enough for my offline marketing services!”

Your mindset then changes.

You’re correct, you do have an obstacle when it comes to SEO to small business owners and professionals. The fact is that most small business owners are over 40 and really don’t understand SEO or Twitter or anything else that’s techie.

They don’t spend 14 hours a day on the computer. The Internet is a mystery to them as far as how to drive traffic to their business. I remember an episode of Cheers, the television show, where Norm walks in and someone asks him, “How’s life on the fast lane?“. He said, “Don’t know, I can’t find the on ramp.”

This is how most small business owners feel. They simply don’t understand. They know they should be on the Internet but they can’t see how it will work for them.

What’s the solution?

Don’t sell SEO!

Educate your client on the marketing solutions. Educate your clients on the benefits that they’ll receive from you offline marketing consultations. Sell them on the fact that you can and will produce the results they expect and deserve.

My Offline Marketing Consultant licensees don’t start with SEO. They never mention SEO or Social Media or anything else that is a mystery to the business owner. Instead, we show them something they already understand. We introduce them to video websites. They understand video. They already know that video is expensive. Most importantly of all their competition doesn’t have video.

Video marketing is much easier for the small business owner to understand. And it’s a marketing solution that’s much easier to offer.

This helps to eliminate the problem of trying to convince a business owner about the merits of SEO or any other technique you may want to sell to them.

Take a look at what my licensee have to offer:  Video Traffic Builders

Replace “YourNameHere” with your name and take a look around.

Our advance licensees can also offer television commercials and other high end services. Then you become an offline marketing pro

If I can be of assistance, please let me know.

Think about it,
Talk to you soon….

–Leonard Manion
“Training New Offline Marketing Consultants to Maximize their Business Profitability”

Copyright 2009 OfflineMarketingTrainer.com All Rights Reserved.

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