How to Establish Long-Term Relationships with Your Clients
One of the keys to success in any consulting or service focused business is to build repeat business. The more value services you offer a prospect the greater the chance of signing that prospect to a contract. Show a decent ROI and you improve your chances of repeat business from that client.
Become More Valuable to Your Clients
Most businesses are busy running their companies and need to rely on outsourcing to develop and implement their SEM campaigns. Even some of my prospects who have their own marketing departments have no idea of the difference between organic and paid search. And why should they? If they don't have the personnel to dedicate to SEM research then they need to outsource. As a search engine marketer, if you only offer SEO services then you may be missing out on major opportunities. Clients are willingly to relying on you to be the expert. They want you to provide a solution for them; therefore, the more knowledge you have the more valuable you are. Anybody can learn SEO and provide a solution. But providing complete Website marketing strategies and showing a return on investment is certainly a greater challenge. If you are capable of developing professionally tailored solutions that show decent returns on the investment then you improve the chances of that client returning to you in the future.
Brand Yourself as the Expert
So many businesses don't understand what their search engine marketing needs and options are. And some businesses, despite having an adequate marketing budget, will knowingly allow the competition to own the top search engine positions. This is due to a lack of understanding. As a professional search engine marketer it is your job to educate these people of their options.
To be your client's expert you need to: