Where do you find new business opportunities for SEO and clients?
Regular flow of leads and queries to regularly feed your pipeline is critical to the growth and success of your SEO agency and / or your profession.
In our latest State SEO survey, Search Engine Optimization magazine collected insights from 2,830 SEO professionals with varying salaries, experience levels, and specializations.
In this article, you will find important insights on how independent SEO, consultants, and agencies create new business and earn customers. You will learn:
Contents
What is the Most Successful Channel for Driving New SEO Business?
According to 45% of SEO State respondents, their personal website or company is one of the top three channels for creating new business.
Google Search is also a popular search engine for SEO benefits (no surprise), according to a dedicated sales team.
(Question asked: What is the most popular channel for your new business, or the company you work for? Up to 3 options can be selected. Open to all respondents, filtered results 1,241 and worked directly with customers through agency (875) or as an independent (366). 51% worked in B2B, 41% were B2C and 8% fell in the “other” category.)
Obviously, making your site up-to-date and organized is important for most of the benefits and SEO agencies.
Izzi Smith from Ryte, for example, realizes that natural search leads to leadership, which in turn can foster change through content.
“Biological search results in the most traffic, but these are data-driven sessions that do not always lead to direct conversion,” Smith explained. “To transform these business opportunities, we take advantage of quality content (webinars, ebooks, etc.) to enhance their journey and guide problem-solving to solution- and productivity.”
In-Person Networking and Conferences Still Effective
Although limited in the past year, networking in person is still an effective and popular channel for developing new businesses.
Professional business networks are still one of the top three channels in the business building with 22.8% of respondents.
However, conference discussions last at only 6% of the list, despite how effective it is in raising brand awareness and business acumen.
Public speaking is not for everyone and can be a time investment. It is also not a predictable process.
But for the small percentage that invests in speech, it pays off to boost their reputation.
Barry Adams, founder of Polemic Digital, has invested heavily in his personal brand by being active on social media and speaking at conferences.
Most of my new business comes from referrals, with some going through my email newsletter and conference discussions, ”Adams said. “My personal brand of expertise in a particular area plays a big part in finding new leaders.”
As we emerge from the tragedy and confidence begins to build, we expect meetings to once again become popular places for networking as people seek to rebuild social relationships.
How Does Marketing Strategy Differ for SEO Agencies & Freelancers?
While each agency or consulting marketing strategy will be completely unique, we have seen some changes in how different types of SEO benefits drive a new business.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, an SEO agency (32%) is more than twice as likely to have a sales team dedicated to a top channel as an independent SEO (12%).
Professionals are more likely to use a marketing site like Upwork, as shown by 18% of SEO reporters against only 7% of SEO agency respondents.
Freelancers also reported great success in winning new business by submitting to their website, with 31% opting for a top channel against 22% of SEO agencies.
When it comes to the difference between B2B and B2C, we have seen that almost twice as many B2C SEO professionals (14%) have chosen paid channel forwarding sites, compared to only 8% B2B.
We also found that 30% of SEO B2B profits are used by a dedicated sales team to create new leads, compared to 25% B2C.
What’s Working to Gain New Business in SEO?
The results of our State SEO survey show the importance of:
Self-employed people have great success on labor commissions and markets, while agencies seem to have more budget for dedicated sales professionals, cold calling, and other delivery.
Download your copy of the full report to get all the data from the Search Engine Journal State of SEO survey 2021.
Image courtesy: Paulo Bobita / Search Engine Magazine
