Comments on: The Perfect SEO Pitch

By: Robert Stanley

Robert Stanley — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:20:30 +0000

“Best Sellers May Not be the Most Senior People” – absolutely right! When it comes to technologies i guess juniors have great ideas than seniors. And there is no such perfect SEO pitch unless you were able to target the market. – Robert

By: T-SEO

T-SEO — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 03:03:51 +0000

Good to hear it from the other part of the equation, most SEO posts target SEO specialists working in agencies this might be one amongst few that target the sales team inside SEO agency

By: ajit

ajit — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 14:58:49 +0000

Its nice post. Very interesting information about pitch SEO.

thanks

By: Evgeni Yordanov

Evgeni Yordanov — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 07:21:04 +0000

Yes, this post looks quite nice! I agree with what Chelsea said, especially when it comes to “Best Sellers May Not be the Most Senior People”. Totally true! Keep up the good work, dear!

By: Chelsea Blacker

Chelsea Blacker — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 17:39:19 +0000

Jay, I do agree that many of these tips can be applied to pitches in a variety of fields. As Patricia says, it’s a bit of an industry standard to keep your “client documents” top secret. Which leads me to a tangent on ….. Evaluations!

What is it about people not wanting to share their evaluations? You can’t pry an example of a client website evaluation from most SEOs. If you’ve seen a variety of SEO evaluations –may I ask, were they really all that different? Or pretty standard? Obviously, give as many details as possible.

By: Chelsea Blacker

Chelsea Blacker — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 17:38:22 +0000

Ben – thanx so much for your input, listening to a client should always be the first priority, instead of boring them with “how SEO works at our agency” for an hour. And ROI over rankings – nice thinking, they’ll def take that into account when selecting their SEO agency!

By: Chelsea Blacker

Chelsea Blacker — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 17:37:10 +0000

Great points, def show off a bit by sharing some of your agency’s fabulous work on past clients in a similar area (and their excellent ROI as Ben says below). I totally agree on putting in a little bit of a competitive edge by showing how a new business opp’s competitor is performing better than them! Get ‘em hungry for SEO!

By: Sarah

Sarah — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 17:04:39 +0000

As I think we discussed a little Chelsea I have to disagree with a lot of the points that were raised in the book, and some that you have re-iterated in this article.

Having worked client side as well as agency, I can honnestly say that had any of the agencies that pitched to me started re-arrangin rooms, there would have been a big black mark against them, it would immidiately suggest to me that they were over confident.

Additionally I don’t think that anyone who is experienced & confident eough to pitch should have to have two practice run throughs of their presentation. Unless you have never sat in front of a client before, most of what is discussed in a pitch should be second nature to you, and as long as you have familiarised yourself with their requirements and website, too much practice may only have the effect of making yoru presentation stilted.

My best advice for any pitch would be to try and provide something original, no matter how small, and never underestimate your client, because you don’t know what SEO blog (or book about pitching?) they have read.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 15:26:38 +0000

Important thing: Don’t make yourself ridiculous.

I’ve been looking for an SEO agency for one of our clients, a major fashion label active in ecommerce since a couple of years. The sales person of one agency finished with talking about how important it would be to not only setup an SEO campaign, but to invest in SEM as well.

Naturally, our client already had an SEM campaign. This told me that the salesman didn’t even care enough to check for this, and I don’t deal with people who don’t care.

By: Ben Potter

Ben Potter — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 09:04:37 +0000

I think the most important aspect to selling SEO services is to focus on the client. Ask plenty of questions to demonstrate you have a genuine interest in their business with a particular emphasis on what the prospect is looking to achieve. This allows you to tailor your solution (assuming you offer a bespoke service!). The very worse thing you can do is go into a meeting and talk about nothing other than your agency, credentials, the Intricacies of SEO, etc. If the client if focused on their business objectives the only thing they will really care about is how you are going to help them achieve those goals.

I also recommend focusing on ROI, not rankings. If the client spends X, they will get Y. If you sell your services based only on the promise of rankings you shouldn’t even be in the room pitching!