How To Get Local SEO Clients In 2024

Now, SEO is a 90 billion annual market, and it's growing at 20 percent per year. That's almost 20 billion per year. That's being added to the SEO industry.

Now, if you're watching this video, you probably don't represent a significant percentage of that hundred billion dollars. My point is that there's a lot of space for new entries. There's an abundance mindset here when it comes to starting a SEO agencies.

My name is Caleb Olcu. I started an SEO agency in 2016, and I grew it to seven figures in three years. Since then, I've been helping a lot of entrepreneurs start and grow their own SEO agency.

So what I wanted to do in this video is break down methods that I've shown people one on one for how they can find and retain their SEO. Local SEO clients. The goal is to find clients who will pay at least 1, 000 a month or more for improved SEO.

But of course, no one pays for improved SEO. They're really paying for more customers, more revenue, and leads. And I really want to focus on methods that still work today in 2024.

So I promise I am not going to suggest mass cold emails, to an email list that you bought on the interwebs, okay? That will not be one of my methods. That type of outreach really stopped working in 2022 or maybe last year in 2023 if you have an excellent, excellent copywriter.

So the first place I'm going to start is that you need to choose a niche, okay? You need to choose a service niche. The reason for that is you need to be able to understand who your ideal client is, what they go through, you need to be able to talk with them, understand the issues they're having, understand the jobs they have, job size, all of these types of aspects.

So that niche, plumbing, HVAC, concrete coating, spray foam, it doesn't matter what the actual niche is. You just have to choose one. Now, the biggest question I get about this is, well, how do I know what niche is good?

How do I know what niche I should choose? And I'll be honest, that's its own video. And I'm working on it.

It'll be coming out soon. So subscribe and turn on notifications to make sure you don't miss that one. The reason that choosing a specific niche like that is so important is because then you can speak to your clients from a place of authority.

You'll be talking to dozens of plumbers of HVAC guys every week. Whereas each individual plumber you speak to probably only talks to one or two others. My phone sales guy, who has been on the phone with hundreds and hundreds of plumbers, he often coaches through plumbers how they should price their jobs.

Because we know the plumbing niche, and we know how to price plumbing jobs better than a lot of plumbers we speak with, and that comes from learning their niche. So to do that, beyond just getting on the phone with lots and lots of service providers, In one easy way, join facebook groups filled with that niche of contractors. Now, in that facebook group, do not post asking for people to hire you.

You're going to get kicked out immediately. So don't do that. Just lurk for a while.

Join and lurk. Read posts. Learn the business.

Eventually, once you start to become a little bit more familiar with it, start replying, adding value. Find forums on reddit, about that niche, you read them, get more and more familiar with that niche. You want to be able to speak to a service provider with confidence and knowledge about their niche, about their job, about frankly, their life.

Doing that will help you build authentic trust. both with prospects and with your customers, with your clients. Do not try to take shortcuts here.

This isn't quick, it will require effort. Very specifically, right, building an SEO agency, we're not talking about a get rich quick scheme, we're talking about building a long term, thriving business. That takes some effort.

That requires connecting with potential clients. That requires learning what the difference between open cell and closed cell spray foam is. It requires knowing.

What the difference between an on demand and a tanked water heater is, depending on what your niche is. So once you've learned the basics of your niche, and you've also learned the basics of SCL, And honestly, the basics of SEO are even a little bit less important than learning the basics of the niche. On this channel, I have a short 5 minute SEO guide if you need it.

But remember, local businesses don't want SEO. They want clients. That's why you don't actually need to know that much about SEO to talk to a local business about SEO.

But you do need to know a lot about their business in order to have an effective conversation. So your best prospects, your best future clients, they're already going to understand the value of online calls and leads, and they're going to want to grow their business beyond word of mouth. This will also make it an easier call with them, an easier first call.

You'll just need to convince them that SEO will get them more leads versus having to Convince them that SEO will get them more leads and then also convince them that leads are helpful. You'd be surprised how many local business owners I've spoken with who have basically said, you know, word of mouth is great and I'm happy and I don't really want to pay for marketing right now. Don't waste your time on the phone with them.

Weed them out ahead of time by focusing on local businesses already paying for leads. Okay. So find the right people.

Prospects, clients, who are already running ads. There are several pretty quick ways to do this. One of them, go onto Google, search for whatever your niche is, plus a random city, and look at the companies running ads on Google.

Okay, they're paying to run ads. You can also check Angie's List, you can check Thumbtack, HomeAdvisor, You can check the local chamber of commerce websites for the area that city is in. All of these are signs that the local service provider is actively trying to grow their business beyond word of mouth referrals.

And, importantly, they're willing to pay money to do that. One key difference with SEO and these pay per lead type services, if they stop paying for leads, then they stop getting customers. SEO doesn't really work like that.

We'll keep expanding their area with ongoing SEO, but in the unfortunate event for you that they stop, they're still going to likely be ranking and likely getting calls. SEO is an investment that pays dividends over the long term, unless or until their competitors catch up on SEO. So, you often can't stop completely, but once you're ranked, you'll get a lot more leads, a lot more cost effectively than paying for them one at a time.

So, find those companies who are paying for leads, and check on their SEO and map rankings. Running ads buying leads with terrible ranking is the exact type of person you want to find. Once you've found, started to find prospects, Make note of them in a CRM or even just an Excel sheet.

They're who you're going to reach out to. Other options, you can use a tool like Phantom Buster. It scrapes to find unclaimed GBPs or GBPs that link to a Facebook page.

It'll give you contact information and even more. Okay, so that's a way to speed this process up. Now, once you have a list of clients who fall into that category, now we need to start reaching out to them.

And I already said, we don't want to do bulk cold emails, okay? A lot of those email service providers have taken a lot of effort to fight spam and even if that weren't the case, these businesses, they're getting hammered, you know, dozens of times a week, sometimes even more, with emails asking for SEO services. So what we want to do is send a low volume 5 to 10 per day emails per day that are customized.

Those types of emails are still effective, especially if we combine it with reaching out via Facebook Messenger, LinkedIn Messenger, GBP message reach out on other social platforms, and we're not going to spam them. Don't send them 10, 20 messages each day, spread them out a message every few days, but go across the different platforms. I mentioned before you should create a tracking sheet or use a CRM for each client and you'll want to add to that CRM their email addresses, Facebook profile, LinkedIn profile, any other social profiles you've found.

Make sure you categorize them by, right, like buys leads, ranking poorly, or doesn't have claimed GVP, or GVP links to Facebook page. Whatever category it was that you found them in, make sure you categorize them in your CRM or in your Excel sheet. So that you know what type of outreach messages to send.

It's going to be different for each one of those different categories. I want to show you an example of a bad email outreach. Here it is.

I just got this a few days ago. Now, every one of your prospects, as I mentioned, is going to receive so many emails like this, okay? And this is obviously a garbage email that no one would ever respond to.

So the goal in that first email, All you want to do in that first email you send is to get them to respond, right? You want to give them enough information, you want to customize it enough that they know that you know what you're talking about and can actually help them. So, to make this a little bit quicker, and long time watchers of this channel will not be surprised by this, We're going to enlist some help with ChatGPT to write our email sequence.

So here's an excellent prompt for writing the first email if your prospect is a plumber in Houston. You are an email marketing expert and you do an excellent job crafting emails and subject lines. that catch local business service providers attention.

Your open rate and reply rates are much better than industry average. Using your knowledge in this field, craft an introductory email for an SEO expert targeting a local plumbing service provider located in Houston, Texas. The email should acknowledge the plumber's current use of Google PPC ads and highlight the issue with their website's poor quality.

Emphasize my capability to enhance their online visibility with actionable and simple SEO strategies. The competitors outranking them in the Houston area are 1. NYX Plumbing Air Conditioning 2.

Houston Plumbing Services 3. Texas Plumbing The email offer focuses on creating a personalized video outlining these practical steps for improving their Google Business profile and website SEO. The immediate goal of the email is to prompt a reply expressing interest in viewing the video, setting the stage for a potential long term client relationship.

This local business likely receives dozens of emails like this, so the subject line and body of the email. need to be unique and attention grabbing. Google ranking, digital marketing, SEO should not be mentioned at all in this subject line.

Fear of loss is more important than want of gain. So the email should utilize fear of loss as well as foster a competitive spirit with the competitors who are currently winning and getting all the calls. So, with that prompt, ChatGPT, in my opinion, does an excellent job giving you this first email For this particular client, we've customized it.

We're mentioning their competitors. Here's an example of chat GPT's output. I think it's great.

It mentions their number one competitor in the subject line. That's likely to get their attention. Business people are competitive by nature.

One email usually won't do it. So, the next prompt for the next email is, Please write an additional follow up email that adds value and doesn't simply bump the prior email to the top of their inbox. Emails that say something like, just wanted to follow up, or, I know you're busy so wanted to reach out again, are trash.

Please come up with something compelling and unique for a follow up email to the same client who has not yet replied. I'll show you that one Here it is again. I think this is a pretty good follow up email Maybe some quick edits here and there load it into an email sequencer.

And of course The next prompt, please write another email with a similar goal and similar restrictions. And then basically just keep that up. You can do that, you know, 10, 15, 20 times and essentially have a quote unquote never ending email sequence for these prospects.

Similar prompts with ChatGPT will also help you write outreach for LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms. Just change the prompt to mention the platform that you're interested in and ChatGPT can write to you. Excellent, you know, never ending sequences across all of these platforms.

Okay, another excellent way to find SEO prospects is to set up an alert for Indeed and LinkedIn Jobs that emails you when a plumbing company or whatever your niche is, whenever they post an internal marketing job, and then apply to that internal marketing job, there's a good chance they'll become a client since you should be able to do that marketing for less than a full time hire. Plus, you'll have a lot more experience and breadth in working in their niche and with working in Google, because you'll be working with plumbers across the country and dozens and dozens of them, okay? You also will have the same goal as someone posting on Indeed who's looking for an internal full time marketer.

So that's a really good tip just to get your foot in the door with some additional companies who are already looking for marketing. On top of that, you'll Use Upwork. There are a lot of videos on this channel about how to use Upwork.

I'll admit, it is hard to do a specific local niche on Upwork, just because there aren't very many local companies in this particular niche posting. That being said, Upwork can be a great way to get you SEO clients. I built almost my entire seven figure agency initially, From Upwork before I expanded to other ways to land clients.

Okay. Let's talk about inbound leads while you're working to build your database of local companies that can use your help. You'll also want to take this time to build up your inbound marketing.

It's excellent when it's working and set up properly because then future clients start to come to you. So first you're clearly going to want to publish a website. On that website, you'll give people step by step directions for how businesses in your chosen niche can improve their rank and get more leads.

You'll want to write that content specific for that niche. So that if a business owner is searching for how can a plumbing business grow, how can a plumbing business rank on Google, things like that, then your content can start to rank for. Also, record YouTube videos.

Again, focus on how that niche can improve their SEO, can improve the number of leads they're getting. Tweet, post on Facebook. Again, helpful advice.

Start to participate in the Facebook groups. Again, never post looking for clients. You're very likely to get kicked out immediately if you do that.

But, anytime someone is posting there asking for help, asking for advice, add value and reply, give all the information you have, you would be surprised how many people will then reach out to you via direct message if you're replying and adding a lot of value to the conversation, okay? Another excellent way is to Find niche specific conferences and attend them. Or, once you're a little bit more established, apply to speak at niche specific conferences, like a national plumbing conference.

Join your local chamber of commerce and attend every single event they throw, and tell everyone you meet there that you help plumbers grow their business. or whatever your chosen niche is, okay? Build your name so that you eventually become the plumber SEO guy.

Inbound marketing takes time, but once you establish it, you are well on your way to growing your six figure agency to seven. You probably won't get to six figures Initially, your first six figures with inbound marketing, but it will definitely help you grow once you're there. So let's talk about your offer.

If you've found your potential client by identifying an issue, such as no Google Business Profile ownership claim, no SSL, bad schema implementation, or whatever issue you identified, you should start by offering to fix that issue for free. Most of these issues take less than 10 minutes to actually fix, and that will give you an opportunity to identify other areas where that business needs to improve their website. Otherwise, if the prospect is a business owner who's not ranking well but paying for leads, then simply show them they aren't ranking well, and show them how well their competition is ranking.

One of the best ways to do this is a local ranking scan. There's an excellent tool called Local Dominator. And here's an example that you could pull up to show they aren't showing up on Google properly.

You can also make sure to inform them that only the top three results are the first page for map results. So, here's them, and then, show them one that looks like this, one of their top ranked competitors. Those two examples are, in this case, the same GBP, a client of ours.

But the point there is just to show a prospective client where they are on Google, and where some of their competitors are on Google. How much ranking do you want? They're losing to their competitors.

Remember how competitive business people are. People are much more motivated by loss than by gain. So show them what they're losing with these.

ranking shots. Now, if you don't have an existing client to show them ranking, that's okay. You don't actually need an existing client to show them how they're ranking versus their competition.

The tool like Local Dominator, you don't need access to the GBP or anything like that. You just look up the name of the GBP and it will run the scan. It's an excellent tool to help convert clients to their competition.

to come and work with you to improve their ranking. Now, if you do have clients, especially in a city of a similar size, show them the call volume that comes when you have a green local ranking scan, okay? Here's an example of what that call volume might look like.

So find out their average job size and close rate. Ask the potential client, have them give it to you, okay? And you should have a good idea.

If their average job size makes sense for the niche they're in. With those two figures, average job size and close rate, you can estimate their lost revenue. with these call reports.

So this year, 429 calls. So if we assumed a 33 percent close rate, it's 141 new jobs, an average job size of 500. And that's 70, 000 in revenue.

Now you can ask them questions like how would 70, 000 change your business? How would it change your business if your competition would We'll continue to get these jobs and you don't so depending on how big that city is if you follow my methods for ranking local businesses Between a thousand and two thousand dollars a month. We'll get most businesses right in most cities within three to six months Obviously two thousand dollars a month won't do it in houston, texas But if you're talking in houston, texas, you probably know what you're doing So find plumbers or service providers that are in moderately sized cities, five, 600, 000 maybe, that you can actually have success with in a few months.

Would that client be okay with paying 2, 000 a month for 70, 000 a month in revenue? Hopefully they would be, and that's why you focus on clients who are already trying to pay. A quick side note, do not negotiate pricing.

Broke clients negotiate pricing. Every time I've ever negotiated pricing, I've regretted it. I've ended up firing the client and moving on.

A business focused client pays to hire professionals who are effective and know what they're doing. It's a giant red flag if someone tries to negotiate pricing. So just walk away.

The last method I'm going to talk about. Once you have happy clients, it's time to start talking about your generous referral program. This isn't a 5 or 10 Starbucks gift card that I'm talking about here.

I'm talking about something like 5 10 percent of ongoing billing from any client that they refer. I understand this seems high. It works out to around 1, 800 per year for a 1, 500 a month new client.

But, compare that to the marketing costs and time involved for your current customer acquisition. Of course, if you have no customers yet, this referral based program won't work. But if you do have customers, you should understand how much it does it cost you to acquire a new customer.

Okay, if your referral fee is significantly higher than your customer acquisition cost. Well, first of all, lucky you, great job with keeping your customer acquisition costs low. The simple solution is to decrease the offered referral amount, or, in my opinion, one of the best ways is to put a time cap on it.

10% for the first three months for any new client that signs up based on your existing client's referral. That way you can bring your referral fee costs in line with your existing customer acquisition costs. But keep in mind that referral leads are very very powerful.

They're more likely to close than a cold lead and they also have an excellent long term retention because they come to the business relationship. Already trusting you. All right, so hopefully you found some value from this.

Those are the best methods that I still talk about for bringing on board brand new local SEO clients here in 2024. If you thought this was valuable, do me a huge favor. Leave me a comment below.

Which one of these methods resonated the most with you? I'll go ahead and respond. Let you know my thoughts.

Beyond that, please give this video a like. And If you want to see more content about building an SEO agency with the help of AI, make sure you subscribe and turn on notifications for more.