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How to Establish Long-Term Relationships with Your Clients

By: Darren Z, Sat Dec 10th, 2005 12:41:38 PM

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 Webs ite 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:

1. Know their products or services

2. Understand their customer

3. Study their competition

4. Understand their goals

5. Set their expectations

If you can identify the above statements to your client then you shouldn't have any problem fulfilling the client's expectations. Often it may take a few meetings or conversations with your client to gain the necessary understanding to plan and implement the right solution. And for those unique situations that you have less experience with, expect that you may have to do several days of research before recommending the right solution.

Stay Current

Striving to be a search engine marketing expert isn't just about search engine optimization. Some clients may have a difficult time justifying the cost of the long-term SEO strategy. And sometimes SEO is only a small part of a larger solution. And in some cases SEO is not a solution at all. It's all up to you to uncover the solution. A great way to stay current with the latest search engine marketing news is by subscribing to rss feeds. A good feed could keep you updated on the latest developments and save you loads of time in your research. Make it a habit to read the feeds several times a week. Clickz, Search Engine Watch and E-Commerce Times provide great feeds that will keep you up to date.

Below are a few effective marketing approaches that we search engine optimizers tend to ignore.

1. Google Site Targeting

2. Yahoo Behavioral and Occupational Targeting

3. Industry Portals and Newsletters

4. Email Campaigns

About the author: Darren provides professional SEO services and Website marketing strategies to businesses throughout the Philadelphia region.

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