A Catch-22 In Selling SEO

 Any good SEO Internet marketing firm will tell you there are many challenging factors that need to be overcome in selling search engine optimization and social media types of services in today’s market place.

The most challenging factors reside in demonstrating the technicality of the SETUP process along with the necessity of ONGOING SERVICES concerning the positioning and ranking of websites to the Generation X and Baby Boomer’s. It isn’t that these particular folks are any less wise or don’t employ current marketing techniques necessary in structuring their specific corporation(s). What is more likely a possibility is:

1. These business owners are dead set against change.
2. They need much more education concerning SEO, SEM, Mobile and Social Marketing services.

Local small business owners or mid-sized company decision makers whom are within — the ladder era of Baby Boomers as well as those folks whom were born in the beginning years of the Gen X age — have been doing business for ten, fifteen even thirty years with what we refer to as Traditional Marketing Methods. Using sales methods, profit methods, marketing methods and methods of developing databases by way of telemarketing, cold calling and classic networking techniques, etc.

Throughout the past fifteen to twenty years, marketing and sales have been slowly shifting to the digital dominion with the creation of Internet marketing, search engines as well as the relationship that’s begun with regards to being able to develop associations through social media sites, which is taking people away from using the traditional methods of marketing.

To be visible to the entire target market today including all of the demographics and age categories – you must compete on the multi-functional playing field which includes the combination of Internet Marketing, SEO, Local Listings or Google Maps, Social Media, Mobile Applications mixed with some of the above mentioned traditional marketing techniques. Bundled together in such a way as to produce prospects and conversions.

Impediment Of Selling SEO to Baby Boomers!

As powerful as Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, and Social Media might be, demonstrating these awesome tools to more mature decision makers (i.e. Baby Boomers) is usually a complicated task. Especially being that we as (SEO-ers) are in an intensively growing market with the continuous flow of new IT-SEO and Social Media type businesses popping up everywhere.

Not to mention the part-timers attempting to supplement their income and international SEM businesses that vow to provide similar outcomes at a percentage of the price. Without divulging the truth that they have no intentions of attempting to rank for good keyword phrases and social media conversions.

This is one of the main reasons why you now have an intrigued but doubtful audience. An audience remaining faithful to their very own conventional ways of marketing and is in desperate need of being educated regarding the Online advertising, marketing and conversion probabilities of SEO, social media and mobile applications.

As powerful as these new technologies are: Common myths, thought patterns and unsure feelings, are directly involved when buying SEO and Social Media services by these misinformed Boomer and Generation X clients.

Taking in to consideration that not all Boomers and Gen X age entrepreneurs fit this mold but the following are everyday concerns that have been emerging within the SEO, Social and Mobile Media product sales procedure.

SEO and Conversion progression??

SEO – Some prospects have been known to say something like -”I could find a small Off Shore Company to get these tasks done for around $400 per month as well as getting my business high rankings. Why should I fork out a premium price to your SEO Company that can perform a similar outcome?”

Local business owners or any business owner for that matter, is flooded daily with unwanted telemarketing calls and emails. These days a few of these email messages and random calls are from off-shore or mom and pop type SEM and/or Social Media companies offering “The best page rankings” for about $300-$500 per month.

They take advantage of unsuspicious company owners with unrealistic Internet perceptions offering proposals cleverly disguised as PPC or promising second-hand services such as Internet search submission. And unfortunately the fact is a lot of the techniques used by “low-end” companies are considered to be using bad SEO techniques.

Meaning that the final outcomes they produce through their “almost illegal” methods could actually do more harm then good by having their client’s website penalized by search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

And if these companies are following methods approved by the search engines then another trick they try and pull is showing #1 rankings for queries like “auto repair shops in Denver Colorado.” Which has no Local Monthly Searches and no Global Monthly Searches according to the reliable Google AdWords Tool.

To some business owners “auto repair shops in Denver Colorado” may appear to be a good keyword phrase since a portion of their clientele fit this category and can view them ranking 1st for that key phrase. The issue is that — that phrase has NO search volume PERIOD. Instead they should use a SEO service like 1st Page Success LLC that can get them ranked for a phrase like”Auto Repair Denver” which brings a much, much more potent 1st page ranking result – having an exact word search of approximately 720 Local and Global Monthly searches. The dilemma here is that they, (as Local Entrepreneurs,) do not understand queries have different quantities.

Which reminds me of another issue concerning small business owners. Some are still under the opinion that they cannot be positioned for top level phrases in any case,so the wise action to take is pinpoint the very long particular keyword phrase which only produces a few or as seen above zero searches each month.

This is one of the reasons why there are Local Small Business Owners out there today claiming that SEO and Local Business Listings Do Not Work. When in reality if a Small Business Owner invests in an SEO Company that can rank them on the 1st page, in one of the top 4 positions, for at least 3 quality keywords it is going to double or triple their business and change it forever.

The Other Side Of The Coin, Are You A Victim?

So, now lets look at the other side of the coin, ??where there are several companies getting extravagant sums of money for SEO and Social Media products and services which usually victimize non technically educated local small business owners.

There are many businesses around today still charging extravagant fees and one business in Denver comes to mind charging $2895 just to submit a website to top search engines like Google and Yahoo.

These days this type of service is needless mainly because sites are already indexed. And if for some odd reason your business wasn’t indexed then the indexing task could be completed in as few as 10 minutes. It is in fact just about sinful but I know of small business owners who have actually purchased these services lacking the understanding of the value associated with what they were actually receiving. This is a shame and justifies the importance of educating the business owners in our markets.

What is considered to be a good online consumer experience?

Some still believe, if their website has a form somewhere on it along with a “contact us” page that has their address, email and contact number then they are providing a good online consumer experience.

Even though some would consider this to be a beginning. In general web sites are developed inadequately or are built on non-sufficient themes,which impede their clientele’s navigation. Another needed aspect of any good website is the call-to-action. A lot of websites out on the World Wide Web do not incorporate even one call-to-action.

In addition to all of this, small business owners with websites, a-lot-of-times do not have an understanding of their specific click through and conversion-rates.

What some still think in regards to Social Marketing.

With regards to Facebook some people believe:

• “Young people information, it’s stuffed with games and social events and it’s not something to be used for company promotions.”

With regards to Twitter some people believe:

• “Tweeting is filled with boring data, that I can do for myself all day long, why would I buy from you?”

With regards to LinkedIn some people believe:

• “Why would I have to insert people I know or that are current customers or business acquaintances?”

Influencing Baby-Boomer and Gen Xers to shell out for social, Internet, SEO, SEM and/or Mobile products and services can be a bit of a struggle because frequently these entrepreneurs do not utilize Internet and Social Media Marketing. And by chance ifthey actually do use these services on a rudimentary basis they don’t usually understand the extreme sales potential, of these powerful avenues.

Several people who run businesses still observe social media marketing to be complicated and a time consuming task that target audiences outside their specified market.