Search engine marketing companies, or SEM, sprouted like mushrooms in the past decade. As technology advances, more and more tools become available to make search engine marketing easier.
If you have one, your key challenge today is competition. There are many SEM companies targeting the same market—website operators and businesses that want to earn revenue through ads on search engines.
Today, I will share with you some important tips on how SEM agencies can effectively secure new clients.
These are:
- Focus on a few niches only
- Provide hard facts and positive results
- Take advantage of affiliate marketing
- Walk the talk and practice what you preach
- Be a thought leader or innovate
Let us get started!
Focus on a few niches only
Too often, SEM agencies look for clients in all niches. I believe that this does more harm than good. There are thousands of niches out there, and you need to be an expert in a few before you start moving on to others.
You see, marketing effectiveness for a software program is not the same as the gambling niche. These two have different customers, and how you present your ads should be different.
While the process on how to create a Google ad is the same, the messaging and targeting are different. If you want to attract new clients, you need to be able to target would-be advertisers or entrepreneurs on specific niches—your expertise.
As you do this, you may also target entrepreneurs under the same umbrella of industries. For example, let us say that you know how to do SEM well in retail. In this case, you can target clients in:
- Dropshipping
- Etsy selling
- Amazon sellers
- Clothing business
As you can see, all these clients are in the retail business. Customer psychology is the same, and you have the assurance that you can do great service for all of them.
Provide hard facts and positive results
One of the effective ways on how marketing agencies get clients is through providing reasonable and believable results.
And when I say results, I am referring to sales, revenue, and any positive return on the client’s ROI. While you do not have to name your clients, you can show potential clients that:
- For a retail client, you generated $5,000 in revenue for a budget of $300
- You increased your client’s traffic by 30% between the periods you ran SEM campaigns
- You generated this amount of email subscription for your client’s email list
These are the results that new clients want to see. If you market yourself as nothing more than an SEM agency that makes ads and uploads the ads on Google, you are not going to make a difference.
You see, a lot of entrepreneurs can hire somebody to do graphic arts. Then, they can hire a copywriter to make the ad text, and then they can upload the ad on Google themselves.
What this means is that entrepreneurs do not pay you for your efforts in creating an ad; they are paying you for results. I am not saying that you must guarantee results—you just have to show potential clients your achievements.
Take advantage of affiliate marketing
Whether you are a new business or not, you have to take advantage of affiliate marketing. In almost all business models, it is one of the best ways on how to get clients for a new business.
What you want to do is to set up an affiliate marketing program and look for marketers to promote your service.
In a nutshell, this is how it goes:
- Set-up an affiliate marketing program
- Determine how much commission you will give
- Look for marketers
- Provide them marketing materials
- Pay the commission to those who successfully make a sale
You do not need to have your own coding team to get this done. There are many affiliate marketing software programs that you can install on your website, but this works mostly if you are using WordPress or Shopify.
The alternative is to use affiliate marketing marketplaces like ClickBank and CJ Affiliate. All you need to do is to sign up on both of these websites. You will be able to create your affiliate program from there, and also set-up an automatic payment of commissions.
ClickBank and CJ will take care of showcasing your program to marketers, and they will also be responsible for all the technicalities, such as issuing affiliate links to those who register and tracking the sales and payments.
Walk the talk and practice what you preach
One of the most effective ways on how to get clients for digital marketing is to walk the talk. What does this mean? It means that you have to use your own service to get clients, and then use your success story as an example.
For example, you can publish ads on Google for your own company and then measure the results. Next, you can write about the results either on your blog, home page, or portfolio.
As you write about your success, you can tell the reader bits and pieces of information about your techniques.
Here is some more information you have to show or tell:
- The revenue that your technique generated for your company
- Other important statistics about your campaign, lie impressions click-through-rates, and more
- How you planned the marketing and how the execution went
This is not a new tactic. Many people who offer services do this. They show potential clients how their “secret” technique worked for them, and they use this success story to lure their clients to do business with them. If you walk the talk, it is much easier to convince a prospect to buy your services.
Be a thought leader or innovator
Innovation is about creativity. You need to find new ways to serve, and also learn how to get clients fast. You need to be proactive, seeking out problems that nobody has seen before, or problems where you think you can provide a better solution.
Here are some tips on how you can do this:
- Study your competition
- Create a survey for potential
- Use your own company for experiments
- Give freebies and discounts
You can also add other non-traditional SEM services that focus on the results that customers are looking for.
Only companies that learn to adapt are going to survive in this business. Creativity always starts with finding out what your competitors are doing. From here, you will learn what things are missing—things that you think customers will be happy that no one is currently providing.
Summary: how SEM agencies can effectively secure new clients
Unlike commonplace businesses, SEM agencies need new clients all the time. Why? Because a customer is not likely to advertise on a monthly basis. Usually, they advertise once and then come back after a few months—only if you managed to get results.
Unless, of course, if you secure a client like Nike—but it is likely that it has its own marketing department, so don’t get too hopeful.
As such, you need new clients all the time to earn revenue. Customers in this industry are not what you can call repeat customers. Take a closer look at the 5 ways in which an ad agency can gain clients, which I provided, and start working out a plan for how you can make them happen.
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