How many offliners have websites?

I am thinking about making a website to offer offline services to local client. At times, I think that it's not really necessary. But then again, I think about what services I am going to offer local clients. SEO related work. So shouldn't one who is offering SEO services, should at least have their own website. Getting it rank also helps to show that you can do what you offer, and can even use your site as an example.

What do you guys think?

i have to agree. you gotta make sure your house is taken care of first. I would feel like a dummy trying to convince a business they need my services when i don't even have my own site to show

Always offer websites if they don't have them, and if they don't be sure that they sign up for hosting under your ref link so you can get some extra scratch!

I am in the process of creating mine , you can't really give something that you already missing ...
Plus it will show how professional you are , it is your image in some way

You have to build your website. Website is your number 1 marketing tool. Then you want to provide seo which is an online type of work. And you'll never know if someone throws you a question if your firm is ranked or seo'd already.

Hell yes, this is not even a debate but it's marketing 101!

Absolutely, it's a necessity.

I don't have one but I have been asked if I did.

Replying with "I don't find it necessary to have my own website, when I'm busy managing and working on my clients properties/campaigns"

Just let them know you're not a commodity, you don't want every business contacting you, you target specific prospects that you research, and know can benefit from your services. So being available to the public isn't necessary and is counter productive in that case.

But if you're going to be spamming your services to every business owner, then a website is absolutely necessary. Really depends on the way you'll do business.

sirthomas said:

I don't have one but I have been asked if I did.

Replying with "I don't find it necessary to have my own website, when I'm busy managing and working on my clients properties/campaigns"

Just let them know you're not a commodity, you don't want every business contacting you, you target specific prospects that you research, and know can benefit from your services. So being available to the public isn't necessary and is counter productive in that case.

But if you're going to be spamming your services to every business owner, then a website is absolutely necessary. Really depends on the way you'll do business.

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Agree with your comment bro. But you can also keep you site away from public, and still focus on just getting specific prospects client. By having your site not index and giving url to only who you choose.

Alot of people just tend to be amazed at what you can show them. If you have a nice website with social media presence and all those goodies will most often generate sales. If they can see how professional your websites is, chances are you will also do the same for the client thus making an easy sale.

I have a corporate site, a marketing site and I have sites for every service I sell.
I have demo sites, I have portfolio sites, I have ranked sites, I have new sites.
I have working online online entities that can be demonstrated to a client at anytime.

That works for me. And I've been in this a few years.
One of the first things you need to establish is your credibility.

I have a website. I don't particularly like it. It's too complicated. It talks about all the details of services. Offline business owners could careless about the details of seo and IM. They just want more customers and an overall lower marketing budget. I agree with sirthomas that it is much more impressive to show potential clients how you've achieved results for other offline businesses. The most important result they want is more customers for less ad/marketing spend.

I hate websites. More than half the time it totally distracts the client from a monthly marketing campaign. You get all these objections like, I'm not ready yet, there is x, y, z I still want to do on the website. They get to string out the expenditure. In the end its to their detriment.

I would be willing to create the website for free, as an after thought if they sign up for an annual contract.

With all that being said, I think I am going to redo my site very simply. Very brief summary of the features. Lots of details on the benefits (in order to establish value), testimonials, case studies, and a guarantee.

The business owners I deal with want to know that they will be able to turn down (or off) their expensive offline advertising in exchange for relatively inexpensive online marketing and get the same or better results.

That's my two cents for what its worth.

I will say that if you could create a webpage that is just a homepage just showing that you exist and what service you offer, this would be enough.

I offer SEO services to local clients, and not 1 has asked to look at my site or portfolio so I never show my website. The only thing my website is for at the moment is for adwords advertising, everything else is through my pitch. If you can pitch your services and have a presentation ready, that will more than justify your client buying your services.

I've had basically the same experience as squidkai1. Oxenbeef, do you have all those sites for credibility or do they generate decent leads?

I do have a website, I do not use it to generate leads, just credibility.

I feel that it shows clients that I can build a solid website, and I can use the website to show them how I go about identifying the best keywords to target and then show them that I have in fact ranked a website (mine) for identified key words.

If you have a customers already then you don't really need to have a site. Now it does help close some deals where they can go to the site and see what you are about.

Now as far as having your own site ranked that is up to you. If you can get customers without your website its no big deal. We went years before we ranked our personal site. Now we did not have to market as we had a big referral base.

But if you have the time it will help you out down the road to get a site up and get it ranked now.