Butts in Seats

If you think that the premise of your business is how you can make money off of a client you have it all backwards and I'll share why below.

At one time I had the opportunity to buy into a minor league baseball team down in the State of Florida with a group. My investment would have been small and my part in the operations would have been next to nothing as I was just part of those putting up money.

During the discussions the phrase, "Butts in Seats" came up often as that is the measure a ball club uses when determining the chance of making a buck or not. If there is nobody at the game, there is no chance to sell them hot dogs, beer, popcorn, etc. Every person that came into the ball park would have a dollar figure attached to their head as, on average, a fan would spend X amount of dollars and thus the more "Butts in Seats", the more revenue.

The talk was continually about how would we get more "Butts in Seats" to increase the projections and thus increase our ROI.

Simple enough.

The same applies to those of us that serve clients but with a bit of a twist. Our job, as a service provider, SEO guy, FB optimization guy, Social Media manager, ORM guy, etc, is to generate a ROI, or put "Butts in Seats" for our clients. If we are not doing that we are not doing our jobs properly.

As an SEO provider I believe it is important to find the proper KWs that would generate a stronger traffic flow to the site of my clients. That means getting organic traffic that are buyers so that my client gets the kinds of visitors that spend money whether that be in the form of clicking adsense ads, filling out CPA offers, shop in their eCommerce store, visit their brick and mortar, etc. We do a fair amount of thinking on that end and that is before they are actually a client in order to be sure that we can serve them properly.

As a Social Media Management company you need to be thinking the same. Is what you are doing generating buzz enough to get people to be thinking of your client when they are ready to pull their wallets out?

Same with all the other various services we, as professionals, supply; we need to continually have this question in front of our faces.

Is my client getting more butts in seats and thus more revenue and thus a return on the dollar they are spending with me?

If the answer is "No", then you need to step back and do some soul searching and see how you can improve your service experience so that your client is making money from you.

It is not how can you make money from them, it is how can they make money from you as that will provide quality for your client, grow your business and provide a long term living for your family and yourselves.

So, next time a client asks you about your service, think, "How can I put more butts in his seats?" as that is the key to making a living as a service provider.

Another Classy Post, Smashing!

I don't think I'll be able to stop saying "butts in seats" anytime soon now that I've read this.

Good stuff nevertheless!

Very good point BTB - it's simple, it's true and it's obvious, but it's amazing how many people don't think like this.

If your focus is on how you make the customer happy, you almost don't even need to think about the money - it will just happen.

To be honest, I am glad I have competitors who don't think like this, because I have won a lot of business with some very large companies in my time - purely because the incumbent service provider (my competitor) gives a bad service and I give a good service.

I look at it like this:

Putting the money first is what I call over promising and under delivering - promising the world just to get the money and then not delivering because delivery was not your priority (and it should have been).

The right way to do it is to under promise and over deliver - I can't ever remember a client who got rid of a service provider who operated this way.

I hope 'experts' and 'gurus' from this community will learn something from this thread. I doubt it, but hope dies last. Good point

Another great post thanks for share.

BassTrackerBoats said:

...It is not how can you make money from them, it is how can they make money from you as that will provide quality for your client, grow your business and provide a long term living for your family and yourselves....

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^^^ This is what so many people overlook. Some people are too busy trying to chase an easy buck and missing out on the big money.

Good point well made, and the difference between those of us who retain local clients and those 'experts' who continually have to cast their nets further afield.

I don't have any services at this moment in time, but when that day comes, I thank you for this fulfilling share. I do plan on doing some small weak sites and hopefully rank it in order to get my investments back (softwares, services etc.) so anything else I earn is clear profits.

Yep, as annoying as it may get to work with clients who think in terms of 'so if I pay you X/mo, I can expect my keywords to be on page 1, right?'...the subtext is just what BTB was talking about...what they're really saying is 'Look, I don't have $ to burn on advertising, so this better make me some cash or I'm not going to stay.' That is perfectly reasonable, and ought to be somehow baked into a SEO's sales pitch. One way I have done this in the past is to show the client a spreadsheet comparison of the ROI between AdWords and SEO...both are great for getting business, but helping the client to justify your fee in terms of visitors to the site/conversions is the key to the close.

BTB your post inspire me. this one was funny when it comes to title. and serious when it comes to content.

I totally agree with you. Long story short: focus on increasing your customers' ROI, and not your own.

Increasing your customers' ROI will automatically increase your ROI, as well.

christianbed said:

so if I pay you X/mo, I can expect my keywords to be on page 1, right?

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My answer is usually, "Maybe, maybe not, but the keywords I choose will not only show up on page 1 but they will also convert to dollars". I do all I can to steer my clients to the KWs I choose because I probably know how the internet works better than they do and I know a little bit about business.

...so this better make me some cash..

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I could have probably just used that one quote and called it a day in the OP... well put.

That's what I always say to these social media gurus.

It's all well and good getting engagement to a national page, but how many likes I get from cat pictures doesn't equal the amount of sales I get in the e-commerce store!

Always enjoy your posts. They aren't spoon-fed methods, but rather some food for thought to get you thinking outside of the box.

Butts in seats.

Swordude said:

Always enjoy your posts. They aren't spoon-fed methods, but rather some food for thought to get you thinking outside of the box.

Butts in seats.

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There are a million posts to get spoon fed, and they serve a very good purpose, but then you can only eat for a day; I try to offer something that will give the IMer something that will allow them to eat for a long time as well as feed their families and have left overs for those in need.