Landing new clients is the lifeblood of any SEO agency, and as a result, creating a winning SEO sales pitch is an essential element for driving agency growth.
But with so many agencies competing for business, how do you cut through the noise and convince potential clients that your SEO expertise is the key to their online success?
In this blog post, we'll delve into some of the essential elements of any successful SEO sales pitch.
Since we also regularly deal with hundreds of digital agencies, we've asked some agency founders to give us their insights into how they create SEO sales pitches for their clients.
By the end of this post, you'll be able to showcase your agency's value proposition, identify your ideal client's specific needs, and translate the power of SEO into tangible results so that you can deliver SEO sales pitches that convert SEO leads into long-term clients.
Key Takeaways
- An SEO sales pitch should assure the prospect that they are going to reap long-term benefits
- Always include examples and case studies in your SEO sales pitch
- See the SEO pitch as an opportunity to educate the client and bring real value to the table
- Don’t over promise what you’re capable of
Marketers Featured in This Post
We'd like to thank the following agency founders and marketers for their insights on how to create an SEO sales pitch:
- Alex Lirette, Founder @ Orbital SEO, United States
- Jennifer Rogala, Founder @ SEODriver, United States
- Hamna Amjad, Project Manager @ DMR.agency, United States
- Vlad Cruceanu, Owner @ Backlinks Box, Romania
- Gareth Hoyle, Managing Director @ Marketing Signals, United Kingdom
- Lewis Koch, SEO Manager @ Distinctly, United Kingdom
What is an SEO Sales Pitch?
An SEO sales pitch is a brief presentation aimed at convincing potential clients that your SEO services will significantly improve their website's search engine ranking and visibility.
It should highlight the unique value your agency brings and how it translates into increased organic traffic and website conversions.
10 Tips for Nailing an SEO Sales Pitch
Now, let's take a closer look at some of the common elements that all successful SEO sales pitches share.
Know Your Ideal Client
Understanding exactly who you're talking to is the first step in creating a winning SEO sales pitch.
Vlad Cruceanu is the owner of Backlinks Box, a link-building agency based in Bucharest. At his agency, they always begin with understanding who their ideal buyer is.
Before diving into the sales pitch, we ensure that we target the right audience through our Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
- Vlad Cruceanu, Backlinks Box
By creating detailed buyer personas that outline the demographics, preferences, pain points, and goals of your ideal client, you can customize each pitch to address their specific needs.
Vlad from Backlinks Box gave us a good breakdown of their ideal buyer persona that you can use as an example for creating your own profile:
- Niche: SaaS or Tech Company
- Location: USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK (major English-speaking countries)
- Number of employees: 1-50
- Roles: Founder, CoFounder, President, CEO, Marketing Manager, CMO
- Contacts per company: 3
With a clear ICP, you can create the perfect SEO sales pitch.
So, how do you build a buyer persona of your ideal client? Here are some steps:
- Existing Client Analysis: Start by analyzing your current successful SEO clients. What are their commonalities? Industry, business size, website goals?
- Market Research: Dive into your target industry. What are the current SEO trends and challenges? What kind of content resonates with this audience?
- Competitor Analysis: Research your competitors' marketing materials. What are their messaging strategies? Are there any gaps you can exploit?
Know the Prospect's Problems
While your buyer persona is a fantastic blueprint, every prospect within that "ideal client category" will have unique situations and challenges.
By researching a prospect's website traffic data, rankings for important keywords, or negative online reviews (all discoverable through research), you will showcase your initiative and research skills.
For instance, you can use SimilarWeb to get an idea of a prospect’s website traffic since you won’t have access to their Google Analytics before presenting the SEO sales pitch.
A quick and easy way to get all the important information about a prospect’s SEO performance and rankings is to run an audit using SEOptimer’s website audit tool.
By understanding the prospect’s problems, you can build trust and position your agency as an SEO expert genuinely invested in their success.
In addition to that, research might reveal hidden challenges the prospect themselves haven't fully grasped.
For instance, maybe their competitors are dominating a specific keyword niche, or their website suffers from technical SEO issues hindering user experience. Highlighting these problems strengthens your value proposition as a proactive SEO partner.
Put the Focus on Their Problems
When delivering your SEO sales pitch to prospects, shifting the spotlight onto their specific problems and challenges can significantly improve the effectiveness of your presentation.
As Jennifer Rogala from SEODriver puts it:
What’s important to remember is that people are not interested in the specifics of the services you provide. They’re more interested in the pain points you can solve for them.
Highlighting their struggles demonstrates that you've done your research and understand the current SEO landscape within their industry. This establishes you as a credible expert who can navigate the complexities of SEO and deliver real results.
Here are some common SEO problems that you can use as a starting point for when you're preparing your SEO sales pitch:
- Low organic traffic
- Poor keyword rankings
- Bad website user experience
- Content that doesn't rank
- Difficulty measuring SEO ROI
When presenting this in your SEO sales pitch, you should remember to add in there what the prospect is missing out in comparison to a business that is getting all of these right.
For instance, let's imagine that your prospect is a local gym based in Austin, Texas, and their website isn't really ranking for an important keyword such as "gym in austin".
Apart from highlighting the fact that their site is not ranking for their target keyword, you can also mention that the top ranking business is likely getting several hundreds of monthly visitors from this keyword position alone, and that they're missing out on getting a share of the pie.
Suggest a Solution (Your Services)
Once you've done some thorough research on your customer and their specific problems, you'll have a clear picture of how you can position your SEO agency as a solution to their pain points.
Here are two tips for when suggesting your services as a solution:
- Don't bombard prospects with technical SEO jargon. Instead, translate your services into tangible outcomes directly addressing their pain points. For instance, if their website struggles with low organic traffic, focus on how your SEO strategy will lead to increased rankings for relevant keywords, translating into more qualified leads and website visits.
- Back up your claims with industry data and relevant SEO statistics. For example, showcase the average conversion rate increase that websites experience after implementing a strong SEO strategy.
At the end of the day, most of your clients only really care about their bottom line. Will the money they spend on your services translate into real tangible results?
If you can, you should try and equate your work into monetary value.
- Gareth Hoyle, Marketing Signals
Use Case Studies to Backup Your Claims
When delivering SEO sales pitches, you should certainly use case studies from previous clients to support your claims.
By presenting concrete examples of past successes and demonstrating the results that you've achieved for previous clients, you can provide valuable proof of your expertise and the effectiveness of your SEO strategies.
The key to a successful SEO sales pitch is to avoid fluff and focus on delivering real value. We ensure every claim is backed by data and case studies that showcase measurable results we've achieved for similar businesses.
- Alex Lirette, Orbital SEO
The best and most effective case studies share the following properties, try to include them in your own case studies when pitching SEO services:
- Focus on Results: Quantify the impact of your SEO efforts. Showcase metrics like increased organic traffic percentage, improved keyword rankings, and conversion rate growth.
- Client-Centric Narrative: Frame the case study as a client success story. Briefly introduce the client's business, their challenges, and how your SEO strategy addressed them.
- Client Testimonials: Include a short quote or testimonial from the satisfied client expressing their experience working with your agency.
Use Visuals
People process visuals faster and retain information better when presented with charts, graphs, and images.
According to various studies, 90% of the information processed by the brain is visual and humans process visuals much faster than text.
Adding visuals to your SEO sales pitch can significantly boost the impact and effectiveness of your presentation.
You have to remember that most small to medium sized business owners don't have advanced SEO knowledge.
As a result, complex SEO concepts can be difficult to grasp verbally. Charts, graphs, and infographics break down information into easily digestible chunks, making your message clear and engaging.
Here’s an example of a segment of our SEO report that breaks down website size into an easily understandable pie chart.
In addition to that, visualizing SEO metrics like keyword ranking progress or organic traffic growth brings complex data to life, making the impact of your services readily apparent.
So then, what type of visuals should you add to your SEO sales pitches to make them more visually appealing?
Here's a list of effective visual aids that you can add:
- Keyword Ranking Progress: A line graph showcasing a client's website steadily climbing search engine rankings for targeted keywords demonstrates the effectiveness of your SEO strategy.
- Organic Traffic Growth: A bar chart illustrating a significant increase in organic traffic over time paints a clear picture of how your SEO efforts are driving more qualified website visitors.
- Competitive Landscape: A pie chart depicting your client's website share of voice within their industry compared to competitors visually highlights the impact of your SEO efforts on their online visibility.
- Website Traffic Sources: A pie chart showcasing the breakdown of website traffic sources (organic, referral, social media) allows you to emphasize the significant contribution of your SEO efforts to the client's overall traffic generation strategy.
Educate the Client
When delivering your SEO sales pitch, you should see it as an opportunity to educate your prospects about SEO.
Now, I’m not saying that you should give them an in-depth guide on how SEO works. However, the prospect must be more knowledgeable about SEO after you’ve delivered your sales pitch, compared to when before you entered the meeting.
Hamna Amjad from DMR.agency, says that they empower prospective clients with knowledge about SEO and its potential impact on their business.
We use the sales pitch as an opportunity to educate them about SEO best practices, industry trends, and the competitive landscape.
- Hamna Amjad, DMR.agency
Anticipate their Objections
Truth be told, you'll likely be met with some opposition when pitching your SEO services to prospects.
Business owners are savvy, and it's natural for them to have questions and concerns. The key is to anticipate their objections before they even voice them.
Anticipating these objections before presenting your pitch allows you to proactively address them and instill confidence in your agency.
Here are some common objections that you might encounter when delivering an SEO sales pitch to prospects:
- SEO Takes Too Long: SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. Be transparent about the timeframe for achieving results, emphasizing the long-term value of organic traffic growth and website visibility. Showcase case studies with timelines to illustrate the process.
- It's Too Expensive: Frame SEO as an investment, not a cost. Focus on the ROI (Return On Investment) potential of your services. Highlight how increased organic traffic can translate into more leads, conversions, and ultimately, revenue growth.
- We've Tried SEO Before, and It Didn't Work: Explore the reasons behind their past experience. Maybe they weren't working with a reputable agency, or their previous strategy lacked focus. Emphasize your unique approach, data-driven methodology, and commitment to ongoing communication.
- We Can Do SEO Ourselves: Acknowledge their initiative, but gently explain the complexities of SEO and the ever-evolving search engine algorithms. Highlight the time and expertise required to stay ahead of the curve, allowing them to focus on their core business strengths.
By preparing beforehand, you'll avoid being put on the spot and can answer their questions with clarity and composure, further solidifying your position as a reliable SEO partner.
Manage Client Expectations
We’d all love to deliver amazing results to our clients, grow their businesses twice fold, and help them dominate their niche.
Unfortunately, that’s not always possible. And in some cases, clients expect these kinds of results.
Here’s where it’s really important to manage client expectations.
Especially since SEO takes some time to pay off, clients may start getting anxious about not seeing results right off the bat.
It’s wise to not oversell or overpromise results before they are likely to appear.
- Lewis Koch, Distinctly
Give Them Examples of Your SEO Reports
In the final stage of your SEO sales pitch, offering the prospect a physical copy of detailed SEO reports can have a significant impact on showcasing the value of your services.
Examples of SEO reports that you could give the prospect include:
- Website audit report
- On-page SEO report
- Technical SEO report
- Keyword rankings report
For agencies looking to streamline lead generation and offer valuable insights to prospects, consider leveraging our Embeddable Audit Tool.
By embedding the form widget on your website, this tool automatically generates white-label SEO reports for visitors, providing a personalized snapshot of their website's SEO performance and actionable recommendations.
Conclusion
Creating a winning SEO sales pitch is essential for agencies looking to attract new clients. By following these steps, you can craft SEO sales pitches that convert and propel your agency to the top of the SEO industry.
