Looking At Other Areas Than SEO

[moonviper]

I work with a company that is relatively new to the internet (just over a year) and was hired on to facilitate their expansion. In the course of this year, we've built over 170 different sites for this company. We've gotten really good SEO results, and have managed to get top ten placement on literally thousands of keywords that actually matter (and several, of course, that never get searched).

Now that I feel we've got a pretty good handle on the SEO aspects of this company's business, I'm finding that doing more optimization only brings small results. (I'll get another search term to the top, and get maybe 5 more visitors per day, etc) I feel we've pretty much reached the limit, as far as the SEO aspect of promoting this company's sites, and I'm trying to convince them to undertake some other avenues like, affiliate programs, newsletters, and other such things, but am having a very difficult time.

The answer I get from the owner of the company is that he just wants "a few more" things done, which are SEO related. I've been working with this company for over a year now, and have a partnership stake in it. I've got over 10 years experience on the internet, while the owner of the other company couldn't even send an email a couple of years ago.

In short, the question is: How to you convince a client that there are more than one ways to promote a website, and that sometimes, a certain type of promotion has achieved it's maximum potential?

Thanks

Eric

[bobchrist]

Show him few top competitor website of similar sector that working well and few case study, you need to convince him well the way other site is doing ...and show the need of benchmarking and branding as the next strategy to follow up..

[claybutler]

You may also just be at the owners limit on this one. You achieved great results in a short amount of time and now you are hitting the wall of diminishing returns. This is a good thing as it means you've done your job. However SE rankings is just an abstraction. Why do we all strive for high rankings any? Simple. It dramatically increases our chances of making money. I'd switch your pitch to conversion metrics and ROI. Every business person understands making more money. So when you talk about newsletters, affiliate links and the like, forget about SE ranking and just talk about conversions, customer outreach and retention.

[sofakingdabest1]

The client is cheap. Tell the client he/she needs to spend money on marketing to increase sales.

[The Founder]

We have crashed client servers with main page spots on Digg, Stumbleupon and other social media sites....

[amazonian]

Marketing Sherpa has case studies. Subscribe to them, or get the boss to pay your membership fee for 365-day access.

[Terry Van Horne]

Assuming it's ecommerce selling products than:
Google Base - Product Search & Reviews (if you have them),
Yahoo! Stores
Price Comparison Engines

[zbatia]

Bobcrist is absolutely right. Compile some info about your competitors, put together the small tutorial with charts/flowcharts that would represent entire SEO domain and methods used for SEO at this stage. Educate him! Ask for some time to present your info.
If he smart enough and really wants to improve the things he will listen to you. Otherwise, just look for another job even with having a stake of this company. I personally have a goal to work only with smart managers. It's not always the case but I am trying...

[webfooted]

I agree with ClayButler. Getting traffic in the door is one thing. What you do with them next is important. You want to create a relationship, build loyal customers, customers that trust you and return to you. We spend enough time and money getting new customers, retaining them is easier and less expensive - but you need the right tools and to dedicate yourself to that means.

We use Boomerang email marketing for our email newsletters and promotions. We've seen return customer visits, purchases and revenue increase dramatically since we've implemented this program.

As for convincing your client, my suggestion is to try things on a trial basis. He's probably saying "show me the money." Email is pretty inexpensive, you can segment a portion of your list and track the results. Prove to him how it works on a test group and you'll be rolling out to the whole database in no time.

[astro]

Originally Posted by sofakingdabest1

The client is cheap. Tell the client he/she needs to spend money on marketing to increase sales.

Telling a client he is cheap is going to really improve the atmosphere in the workplace!

Not sure what you are selling but with that number of websites have you thought of linking them to an online service bay and forum/community where questions can be asked and answered? This can build customer/client loyalty and word spreads. Search engines also visit forums/message boards! It is a low cost option and adds another dimension to customer service.

/Astro

[tbond]

Clients can be self destructive: "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." -- Famous farming wisdom

Sometimes you just need to find another horse.

Another famous bit of "on-the-farm" wisdom: "Never change horses in the middle of the stream."

So, don't give up hope on your client. As others have suggested above, the right way to convince him is to show him that the traffic you're already getting is not buying enough.

Teach him about how to CONVERT traffic into SALES.

And, if you don't know how to do that yourself, which is certainly possible, since you're probably and primarily an SEO engineer, not a sales engineer, then you have to spend some time on teaching yourself, then concentrate on him.

The traffic you already have sounds like it is very good, considering that you say you've created 170+ sites for this guy.

Think about this:

If you have 10,000 people a day coming to your 170+ sites, who buy only 3% of the time, that is 300 sales.

Let's say we want to DOUBLE sales to 600/day.

Which is easier, to get yet ANOTHER 10,000 people a day to come into your sites, or to sell more to another 3% of people who are already there?

I can tell you from 30 years of experience in both real-world major media advertising (radio, TV, newspapers, outdoor, direct-mail and magazines) this: For a client who has already saturated or nearly saturated a market (as you may have already done), it is ALWAYS easier to increase profits from selling more to existing customers than it is to try to increase substantially the customer traffic itself.

Assuming that you've done at least a fair job of SEO across the board on all those sites, which is probably true, your best bet is to work on what we call "conversions".

Simply put -- salesmanship!

Present your customers with compelling reasons to buy what you're selling. Dramatize these reasons. Do product comparisons. Do price surveys. Do charts showing main reasons to buy. Analyze things for your customer. Show large, detailed photos that illustrate how your products work. Use extreme closeups. List customer testimonials about how great your stuff or service is. If you don't have them, call exisiting buyers and get some. Get permission to quote them. Produce FAQ pages listing features and common questions about your products.

All the fancy technology using email blasters, newsletter trick-nology and the rest can't fix a deficit in salesmanship.

Sell, sell, sell! Convert the visitor into a buyer. Think of your sites as you would if they were large stores... with thousands of customers coming in the front door(s), wondering the isles and then 97% or more of them wondering back out the door again. These people may have been "just shopping" or information gathering. But, how hard is it to convince only 1 or 2% more of them to buy?

Not very hard.

But, it can be nearly impossible to get another 95-100% more people to come in the door in the first place, which might have the same effect as converting only 1-2% MORE of the people you've already got.

Focus on selling to the visitor while they are already in the store or sites. That's where your money is.

Okay, it doesn't hurt to add a newsletter or email here and there. But none of that is as powerful for profit-raising as selling each person while they are already there, looking at your sites.

That's the way to sell. You'll find out you can double, triple and even quadruple your existing sales, even though you don't increase traffic a bit.

Good luck!

[RichAtVNS]

Originally Posted by webfooted

I

We use Boomerang email marketing

pitching your product immediately upon joining should be a no no....

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by moonviper

I work with a company that is relatively new to the internet (just over a year) and was hired on to facilitate their expansion. In the course of this year, we've built over 170 different sites for this company. We've gotten really good SEO results, and have managed to get top ten placement on literally thousands of keywords that actually matter (and several, of course, that never get searched).

Now that I feel we've got a pretty good handle on the SEO aspects of this company's business, I'm finding that doing more optimization only brings small results. (I'll get another search term to the top, and get maybe 5 more visitors per day, etc) I feel we've pretty much reached the limit, as far as the SEO aspect of promoting this company's sites, and I'm trying to convince them to undertake some other avenues like, affiliate programs, newsletters, and other such things, but am having a very difficult time.

The answer I get from the owner of the company is that he just wants "a few more" things done, which are SEO related. I've been working with this company for over a year now, and have a partnership stake in it. I've got over 10 years experience on the internet, while the owner of the other company couldn't even send an email a couple of years ago.

In short, the question is: How to you convince a client that there are more than one ways to promote a website, and that sometimes, a certain type of promotion has achieved it's maximum potential?

Thanks

Eric

GREAT QUESTION!!!

Somebody that looks beyond SEO, I like that a lot.

However, I don't agree too much with your choice to go for newsletters and affiliate programs. Those can be a dissapointment. Since you have so many visitors, if I were you, I would focus on conversion rates first.

Newsletters don't always work, it depends a lot on what you sell and pretty much always you need to give it a personal touch which means you spend a lot of time on it. Not saying here that it is a bad idea, but it wouldn't be first on my list, and it is a hard sale to your business partners (believe me, I have that experience too.) Affiliate programs are also a lot of work for a relatively small chance of success. You'll find you have a really hard time to find enough affiliates interested to get enough sales from it to justify the investment ($$ and time).

But you have the luxury, an asset, from which you can get much more results. It's your current visitors.

I don't know what your current conversion rate is of course. Perhaps you don't know your self either. Do you measure it? How many visitors on average per sale?

Let's assume you have a conversion rate of 0.25% (i.e 400 visitors per sale). If you could do something to your website that turns that 0.25% into 0.75%, what would that really mean? I know it seems obvious, but many businesses never thought about it untill it's presented to them. It means an increase of 200% in sales. That tiny half % of increase in conversion rate actually represents you sell 3 times as much as before. Keep in mind that even if you just manage to turn that 0.25% into 0.3 %, you already have an increase of 20% in sales.

Now the most important question is: How difficult is it to increase the conversion rate?

Learn everything you can about split testing, try different versions of pages, different locations in pages of certain content, simplify the checkout process (if you sell online), make sure your phone number is easy to find, reduce the number of fields in contact forms. Add trust marks (logos of what ever you´re associated to, well known suppliers, etc.),.. there are so many things you can do to increase conversion rates and the advantage is, especially with the fact that you already have so many visitors, that it is not expensive to do and you probably know after a couple of days already what works and what doesn't,.. then just repeat the process again, try to every time do a little better.

And this you can easily sell to your business partner(s). More sales without extra costs is always interesting.

[tbond]

You know, I have been thinking about your client. I've learned that most people who have built successful businesses are pretty sharp. In fact, they are darned sharp!

Except for those folks who inherit the reigns from their parents... that's a different story.

But if your client built this business of his himself, then he's "a keeper".

His problem is the Internet. He thinks he doesn't know anything about this new world, so he relies on you.

And you DIDN'T build his business, and chances are, you couldn't have done it, right? Just being frank.

So, talk to your client about the secrets he's used to SELL to customers before the 'net came along.

Chances are, he knows how to sell what he does or what he makes. He knows why people should buy it. And he knows what his weaknesses are.

Interview him deeply.

Then share that intelligence with your visitors better than you have been doing. You'll significantly increase sales, and both you and the client will be happy campers.

[DONtk]

I don't know what products your selling.But if you're looking for some new avenues to promote your site. try using video. I came across a web site the other day it came to me through one of these newsletters. it's called Traffic Geyser: Get Top Search Engine Listings in Google, Yahoo and MSN Within Hours they can take still pictures and make a video stream for you. they submit your site to 30 different video sites including UTUB. it something you might want to think about.

San Francisco, the city made for discovering, over & over again!

[cbosleeds]

From my experience, there are some customers who just happily take good advice, some who can be steered towards doing what's best for them, and then there are those where you just have to admit defeat and give them what they want rather than what is best for them.

Reminds me of a small tehcnical support customer of ours - an old fashioned company who are struggling to find a new customer-base as their old ones are dying out and their sales team is small and not too effective. I even offered these guys some free SEO to give them a boost and they weren't interested, and yet they'll pay us for a support contract every month that they barely ever use!

Anyway, you're circumstances are quite different since you have a stake in this. Maybe put together a project plan or feasibility study showing the benefits. You're only moving from SEO to SEM, so its not really such a big leap, and SEO is a continual process not a one off project, so you can assure your boss that SEO isn't going to stop just because you're branching out more.

[sofomor]

Hello,

I think your client is deeply obsessed with your SEO services and really doesn't care about variations to increase sales. I would say create a plan as bobchrist but don't unleash it on your client (it wont make any difference). Just keep updating it with the latest information and when the time comes (always comes) when he/she starts screaming "i need more sales, SEO is not paying off, what do you suggest...blah blah"

that is right time to drop the bomb....

Thankyou

[Fitank]

What does he actually want the website to do? Why is he using SEO? It could be that he is keen to create a huge web presence to build brand awareness, to get one up on his competitors, to prove he can have a significant presence both on and offline. Of course, he may also want to make money and sell stuff, but it doesn't sound to me like that is the case, oddly enough. I think the clue is that a couple of years ago he was a complete internet newbie. He may be excited by how many sites can be on Google p1, what rankings his site is getting and generally a bit obsessed by the whole thing. Is he an obsessive kind of person? Does he like to take on and master new things? I think there is more to this than meets the eye.

best wishes
Fiona

[astro]

Originally Posted by Fitank

What does he actually want the website to do? Why is he using SEO? It could be that he is keen to create a huge web presence to build brand awareness, to get one up on his competitors, to prove he can have a significant presence both on and offline. Of course, he may also want to make money and sell stuff, but it doesn't sound to me like that is the case, oddly enough. I think the clue is that a couple of years ago he was a complete internet newbie. He may be excited by how many sites can be on Google p1, what rankings his site is getting and generally a bit obsessed by the whole thing. Is he an obsessive kind of person? Does he like to take on and master new things? I think there is more to this than meets the eye.

best wishes
Fiona

Here we go again, can't see the wood for the trees! Good points quoted here, as there are in all the other posts but why the sinister ending in the quoted post? I suspect no secret agenda, just a desire to make a web site work more efficiently. And why not?

Breaking it down, I agree this interweb thingy (www) never made a bad sales dept. good, but it can make a good sales dept. really fly! I can also see sense in getting more out of what you have as opposed to driving more dross (waste of time visitors) to a site. In the early days I would get rid of the time wasters with "Free this" and Free that" type of banners, on which they happily clicked on and bothered someone else! they did not fill in my online form just because they had nothing better to do at the time. This meant I had more time to spend on the enquiries I did get. These days I am not so brave! but I still wonder if it is the right way to go, playing the numbers game can get tedious at times.

However I do now look at site stats, what pages people arrive at the site, what pages they leave on and how many pages they visit plus for how long on each page. This tells me the "turn on" pages and the "turn off" pages. The latter I then try to improve. I also believe (as mentioned in another post) contact details are vital. Too often even in this day and age people still want to contact someone warm and breathing, and not deal with just a computer and automated messages. (Just for the record I delete those as they come in, it says to me they cannot be bothered to talk/contact me, I am sure I am not unique) It depends on what you are selling. If it is a book or CD people tend to know exactly what they are getting for their money so will click and deal with a computer, if it is a service or item that can have grey areas then they need reassurance that their money is well spent and they will get what they expect. Hence good communication. 12 hours old is a dead enquiry. An email or online enquiry form is a "polite" telephone call. It needs dealing with immediately. Offer human contact where required, work with what you have, not what you hope to get in the future!

Thats it, too damn hot to sit here any longer! Pool calling.

Astro