There are roughly 15,000,000 Internet users in Australia which is just over 70% of our total population. 94.4% of these Internet users use search engines to find and access websites each month, yet research shows 54% of Australian business cannot easily be found in Australia’s major search engine - Google!
These statistics were re-enforced earlier today when I was at a networking breakfast. I spoke with about 25 small - medium sized businesses owners and not one of them were involved with any form of online marketing. None of them had a clue what the mystical acronyms SEO, SEM or PPC meant and terms like Social Media or Web 2.0 was like trying to explain astrophysics to a 3 year old.
So how do you make technophobic business owners see the benefit of SEO?
It’s simple - communicate in a language that they understand. Don’t try and sell them things like link building services or Pay-Per-Click - sell them the one thing that all businesses want more of - LEADS!
Let’s look at a self-employed tradesman for example - the local plumber. He has no interest in a website as he runs small advertisements in the trade section of the local newspaper. He’s the last person who could benefit from SEO, right? WRONG!
We registered a keyword rich domain name and built a small generic plumbing site with some stock photos, a couple of paragraphs about typical plumbing problems and dropped-in some local suburbs and areas that we can service. Added an online inquiry form stating that if you need a plumber - leave your details and we’ll contact you.
A few inbound links later, the site is now ranking quite well and generating a hand-full of leads each month. We then sell these leads back to the plumber. He still doesn’t have a clue about SEO - he just knows that somehow we’re getting him more work than he’s had in years by using this magical thing called the Internet.
If you find an untapped market that is easy to optimise for, yet you cannot find anyone interested in SEO - Simply build-up a site yourself. There will always be those business owners who can’t seem to justify the costs of having a website or employing someone to optimise it - but tell them you have a dozen qualified leads and you’ll have their attention instantly!
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I’ve been tapping into this myself! It’d be great to have a discussion about pricing of these leads. I’ve been experimenting. A flat rate for plumbing type leads would be fair, but for larger jobs I would like to be able to make an alliance and build a trust with a small business to charge a percentage. 5% 10% 15%??? It sounds like a lot, but traditional advertising companies or other companies that just contract the work out (that they usually get from referrals) will take up to 40%
What you charge would depend on the quality of the leads and how competitive the industry is (ie. how much time/effort was required to attain the leads in the first place).
Another guy I know treats the leads like pay-per-click advertising. He’ll auction off the leads to the highest bidders. If there’s more than one companies who wants the leads, he’ll distribute the leads based on the amount each company is willing to pay. The more you pay, the more leads you receive.
I like the percentage idea you mention as well - There are a lot of other approaches you could take and I think that what you charge would also depend on the industry.
If you want to chat about it more, shoot me an email - info at sitemost dot com dot au
Good post Pete - I agree there are a lot of opportunities with this.
Not only good thinking but what is more important - good action Pete. Also good to see that you go to networking events!
Keep up the good blogs and work. Chris
I have seen SEO and lead generation together over the years, the problem is getting clients is tough and it requires a long term commitment from clients for a sustained model. Most of the times the clients do not appreciate the lead value (they compare with the other forms of lead generation) and so its viable only if the revenue potential is high (not certainly for plumbing businesses !)
- probably real estate, software, and other type of high-potential niche b2b businesses might work out well, if you want to migrate from SEO to lead generation.
my 2 cents though
~BALA
http://www.vmarketics.com
this article is great pete. its telling businesses can increase their profit without hiring some service like SEO. but for it would be best it businesses will hire a SEO service coz it would be an advantage to gain more profit than the usual.
I agree with Vmarketics.
I have worked for a real estate lead generation .com for over 3 years and we were constantly (and probably still are) constantly struggling with clients that complain about lead quality. We even attempted to “clean” the leads and still people complain.
What’s worse, is you are typically charging the client with a credit card which can be refuted (aka charged back). Get too many of those… and you can’t process credit cards anymore.
Last, depending on the industry, you probably aren’t the first person to think of lead generation. So you will have a lot of competition (at least we did for real estate leads)
It’s like Communism, sexy on paper, not in practice.
But, you are obviously experiencing success… so maybe taking your approach is the way to go? Taking a very personalized approach to lead generation.
::shrugs::
I do it with auto and boat dealers - it’s a bit like talking “Muppet Show” when talking SEO so I get myself ranked where they want to be and ring goes my ‘phone
I can so identify with your plumbing scenario.
We run a free SEO seminar every month and we target small to medium businesses to attend.
To date we have not had ONE plumber, electrician, carpenter, bricklayer etc turn up.
Thinking this was strange I actually rang 100 tradesmen personally to try and get them along. In almost all cases the answer was “sorry we don’t use the internet to get business”.
The irony is that the various trade categories are all very popular on the dLook directory averaging over 2,800 searches per day Australia wide.
It seems that there is a mindset amongst a lot of Australian tradies that the “work wanted” adds or the Tradesmen” section of the local paper is the only place to solicit new business.
Theo Tsiamis
National Marketing Manager
dLook.com.au
I’m not entirely sure why my search got me to this blog concerning SEO… (I went with “how to make money as a plumber”) there must be a wormhole or something in google.
That aside, my company does this on a large scale in the states. We’ve published yellow pages for years (120 to be exact), and the market is moving towards the internet. Not really because more people are finding specifically plumbers there, but moreso because people assume that customers are searching there. As with all large purchases, we actually find that most customers search in multiple locations for contractors (print, online, recomendations, etc etc..)
Anyway, check out our site if you’re interested…
http://www.dexsearchmarketing.com/
-Mark