Unique Offline Client And My Solutions

I'm in talks with an offline client that was referred to me by someone I talked to about SEO 6 months ago.

The client only delivers their products in my city.

The client has NO competition in the city.

The client has 3 main competitors online that serve/deliver nationwide.

[city name] [business type] and variations do not display any local places listings.

[city name] [business type] and variations are google'd by 0 people in the city. (The client is aware of that)


It looks to me that the client should mostly advertise offline (local radio, papers etc.)


But they still want SEO.

I researched their competitors on quantcast and alexa.

quantcast says the three competitors get about 200,000 visitors each.

Alexa says they get 40,000 each.

The customer demographics are just as I expected: female, caucasian, 40+ of age, blah blah

There are tens of thousands of people on facebook withing this demographic.

FB PPC is not something I want to pitch directly, as they might think they can do it themselves after learning all this from me. And honestly I have no experience with PPC and dont want to lose them money with something that might not convert.


So my action plan so far is:

1. Convince them to deliver nationwide, and go for the generic SEO service with me. If they can get orders from the whole country, why not go for it? They might be thinking that their established competitors are too good but I want to explain to them that SEO can still outrank them. And the cost of SEO will be justified even if they get a fraction of all the online customers.

2. This one is my best idea in my opinion! I'm in talks with a guy I know who makes short movies / music videos with a team. They're not big, but good enough for local stuff. I want to pitch my client this idea of shooting a 30 secs long video commercial (maybe two), thats going to be both funny and will help raise awareness of this service. The funny part will make sure that it goes viral. At the end of the first video it will say "go to our facebook page to watch the second part of the video". Their fb page will be content locked and will say "LIKE" to watch the second part. Which will help it go viral. Not to mention, any funny stuff get re-posted by FB users so the video will self advertise itself.

3. Offer them an iphone/android app that wll let the customers order from them right on their phone. Better than a offering them a mobile site I think.

I dont see how I can offer them reputation management yet.

The pricing I was thinking was:

SEO (3-4 keywords at a time, 6 month contract) - $2000/month

Viral Video/FB page promotion - The cost of the vidoes (which I dont know yet) + $2000.

iPhone/Android app - $750



Question 1: whats the most reliable way to check how much traffic their competitors get? I need this for a possible ROI demonstration.

Question 2: Is there any way to find out how many people from my city form a part of that traffic for a competitor website?

Question 3: Any way to find out how many people from city search for this online delivery service, GKT only shows the US searches.


Any tips, advice, feedback before I go ahead with the proposal will be greatly appreciated.

If there are zero searches for "<city> product/service" it doesn't mean no one is searching for them, it means they aren't searching for it with the city name. One way you can find out if anyone is searching for it is by running an Adwords campaign for a month for the city.