How To Get SEO LEADS ($100 for a GOOD answer)

Yes, I will give someone $100 via paypal if they can give me a good answer/solution to my problem on/before Sunday. (only 1 winner)

Hey guys,
My boss gave me a weekend project in which he told me to come up with ideas on how to increase our SEO leads.

Premise: We have an SEO company which is totally brand new. We have gotten clients (about 20) just by referrals because we have about 1500 clients who buy "wholesale lists" from us, ex: telemarketing lists, direct marketing lists etc. We also do commercials/infomercials.

He said: I am going to give you a project. With a budget of $2,000, make a plan, or give me your best idea on how to increase our SEO leads.

Our perfect client would be a dentist, doctor, franchise, or anyone who can afford a 1k-1.5k a month SEO plan. We do national SEO and do it well. Other firms usually stick to local SEO because its easier.

Whoever can give me a do-able method, white hat of course (this is a real company, name to not be disclosed).
No lame answers like: adwords, whitepapers, postcards, etc.

example of a good answer: Try to get a national company with franchises. ex: do SEO for subway LLC, and when their franchises sign up for SEO, the lower their (subway LLC) SEO plan cost gets.

another idea: enter a internet marketing sector which is unsaturated but similar to SEO. ex: online reputation management? build relationships with clients, upsell or offer them SEO in the future.

some kind of referral method with a twist?
How can we use the lists and video production to our advantage when trying to get SEO clients?

My boss is no idiot. His mind moves at 100 miles an hour and will kick me out of his office if I give him shitty ideas.

Please help!!!

Do keyword research and find long tail keywords which would likely be from people looking to hire you. Rank yourself for those keywords with your own SEO services. When people come to your site, they will be likely purchase your services. They will be especially impressed since you managed to rank your own site highly, that is proof your services work. Oh, also I just remembered, we don't allow Crowd Sourcing here. If you want to do this, you need to post in Hire a Freelancer section. If you want FREE help, that is fine, but no Crowd Sourcing.

Post ads on craigslist and other ads sites about your SEO service. This method will enable you to get highly targeted lead and contacts.

Also, join forums and communities of businesses and make quality posts related to the services that you offer. In this way, you gain the trust of members and potential customers.

Create an analysis (with any of the professional tools out there) of the website and give them that for free and make an appointment to discuss it..
real simple, low effort, no cost...

1) Mailing campaign to your customers lists
2) Adwords : yeah i dare to say it, and look for websites which are paying adwords instead of beeing well ranked on the query
3) Hire a sale force team with objectives to make it profitable
4) Phoning Campaign
5) Set up an affiliate program and promote it
6) Find a SEO company who is looking to outsource their work.

1. create a basic business listing site for your city
2. call the business, offer a free featured interview on your site
3. go to the interview and in the interview ask them how they are currently advertising. offer them free seo info. how to setup places, etc.
4. they won't want to do the seo work. instead, they might ask how much it is for you to do it for them. give them something for free and they will want to pay you to do it.
5. sign them up in the interview for a monthly recurring seo program
6. post their ad on your business listing site.
7. rinse, repeat

You can either hire telemarketers and pay by the lead or buy leads from telemarketing companies.

This is really the best source for this kind of info and can get you a lot better answers than anybody here (I don't telemarket, but I've read up on it on this site):
http://thetelemarketingforum.com/

I believe you can buy leads from people on that site, also.

Read this thread and you'll get some ideas:

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...empire-earning-15-000-month-three-months.html

Kickflip said:

Do keyword research and find long tail keywords which would likely be from people looking to hire you. Rank yourself for those keywords with your own SEO services. When people come to your site, they will be likely purchase your services. They will be especially impressed since you managed to rank your own site highly, that is proof your services work.

Click to expand...

The best advertisement for SEO is often SEO.

Along the same lines you can create a new site to rank for a term like "miami dentists" and then contact all the dentists in miami to see if they want SEO or are willing to buy your new website.

Thanks guys, some good stuff here

kickflip: ok thanks for the heads up about the rules and whatnot. I definitely like your idea and appreciate your input. I don't think my boss is looking for an answer like that (although most SEO firms don't bother ranking themselves on the first page, probably because its too hard). Ranking for certain seo niches isn't something that would impress him.

ericbenson81: gaining trust with customers is definitely a big part of it (when it comes to acquiring them as clients). But, if you were the CEO if a multi-million dollar company, would you put ads on Cragslist? That would hurt your brand in my opinion. My boss wants an idea that will work, posting on forums and whatnot and "hoping" that someone likes me and what I post isn't going to fly with him.

nikao: this is a good idea. in the analysis, make sure you tell them how much their website needs help, create a relationship with the potential client, and they will hire you because they trust you. But, this can only be done on a small scale and slowly. It will be my job to feed the sales reps good leads on a consistent basis. I think an web app/ API(?) could spit out an analysis quickly... but there are already a handful (if not more) of those out there.... how can we make it different?

abysse:
2) adwords funding (2k) would run out rather quickly because there is a lot of competition. People who are currently using adwords is a good idea... offer them the chance to get organic rankings which will last longer (unlimited clicks). how do I "scrape" the internet to find websites like that? I know spyfu.com allows you to see their adwords campaign, but how can I find these people in mass quantities?

a couple good ideas here... keep them coming!! my life depends on it!

Tell your boss you aren't there to impress him, you are there to make him more money. "Multi-million dollar company" is a phrase which meant something 20 years ago, but these days it really doesn't mean a lot. Posting a good looking ad on Craiglist in the proper section isn't going to hurt the brand at all. Its about telling people they need your service. Getting in their face.

It always concerns me when internet marketers have trouble marketing themselves. For new companies, it is understandable if you can't make that investment of time and money to rank or market your own site the same as you would a client, but since your boss is willing to invest the money, and you guys have the resources, why can't you just do what you would do for a client?

My idea is worth 10 times that amount.

Nigel Farage said:

My idea is worth 10 times that amount.

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Great!

Take that idea and run with it and make mad cash... any help you need please ask and I'd be willing to help as I am sure so would many others.

Not looking for $100...but this works for me:
One
1. Scrape Craigslist for any city in jobs/services
2. Bulk mail all of them offer them something for free so they can see how SEO will help them
2a. I often add a time-limited call to action, like "first 10 respondents get ___ for free" etc. but I'll still offer the free item to everyone
3. Close sale after they see the benefit

I have time on my hands, so in part 2 I usually put together a very nice report detailing their current optimization good/bad points and how they're ranked.

However, since you are a larger firm and likely don't have the time to make a lot of reports, you can at least add up all the monthly searches for keywords for their company, do a quick rank check with software, and show them how many people are searching vs. how many people they are losing out on because of a bad rank.

Two
Get daily lists of businesses using Groupon. These people are looking to build their clientele and have marketing on the mind. Much higher probability of conversion and you can use the above/below method to get their attention. There should be a Groupon API to get all deals for a location, but you would need to visit the sites manually to get the contact info of course.

Three
Get a fleet of people doing stupid simple phone calls offering the same free service from method One. These people usually don't need to understand SEO; they need to merely understand your free service and how to read a script, which cuts down on training (no training needed really, and they don't need to be in-house) and expands the potential pool of people who can work for you. Lead rate is much higher than standard cold call sales because they are offering something for free. Pay a commission so you are not stuck with hourly overhead. This is assuming you have access to a lot of people interested in bringing in additional income or are completely out of work.

BassTrackerBoats said:

Great!

Take that idea and run with it and make mad cash... any help you need please ask and I'd be willing to help as I am sure so would many others.

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Thanks! I feel the same way. But since the OP introduced the notion of compensation, the thread transistioned away from an open conversation about giving and sharing and instead has become a sales thread where the offered amount, compared to what is being asked for, is chump change.

If only the OP had simply asked for help, I might have been willing to share openly, but since he's low-balling for high-level expertise (which is a bit insulting), I figured I'd give him a clue on how some people might react to his proposition.

Nigel Farage said:

Thanks! I feel the same way. But since the OP introduced the notion of compensation, the thread transistioned away from an open conversation about giving and sharing and instead has become a sales thread where the offered amount, compared to what is being asked for, is chump change.

If only the OP had simply asked for help, I might have been willing to share openly, but since he's low-balling for high-level expertise (which is a bit insulting), I figured I'd give him a clue on how some people might react to his proposition.

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It seems the OP was just doing what he thought was right by offering the money. He didn't know that type of action wasn't allowed, he just wanted to encourage some creative conversation and advice, and money always gets people going. We can't say what his real motives were, but judging by his replies, he didn't offer the money to be a cheapo. If the OP had just asked for help, maybe nobody would have posted in the thread, maybe more people would have. We don't know. What he did is done, he can't change the past, but you still have the opportunity to change the future and do something nice.

Nigel Farage said:

Thanks! I feel the same way. But since the OP introduced the notion of compensation, the thread transistioned away from an open conversation about giving and sharing and instead has become a sales thread where the offered amount, compared to what is being asked for, is chump change.

If only the OP had simply asked for help, I might have been willing to share openly, but since he's low-balling for high-level expertise (which is a bit insulting), I figured I'd give him a clue on how some people might react to his proposition.

Click to expand...

I would not take the guys money for some advice but I know there is solid advice in the thread I suggested... I also doubt the guy that started the thread I pointed him to would take his money as I know him personally.

Email Marketing works great i get 2 seo projects/week by sending out 100k mail(to non optins)

My idea was the best

You guys have the budget, why not use the money to service your own businesses the same way your trying to get client to get customers online, am sure sales will come when you can rank for seo related keyword.

Another one, make a youtube advert about your service, consult with viewtornado to skyrocket your youtube advert. viewtornado did the same thing on their service now their business has exploded I guess.