Upselling SEO services is about offering additional or improved SEO services to your existing clients. This is not just about extracting more money from your SEO clients to keep your digital marketing business afloat. It’s also about providing more value to them to further improve their SEO situation and improving agency-client relations.
But how do you upsell SEO services to existing clients effectively? How do you appear genuine and not just trying to get more money out of them? Here are some tips.
Table of contents
- Evaluate their current SEO situation
- Offer complementary SEO services
- Back up your proposal with data
- Emphasize the SEO benefits
- Offer tiered SEO packages
- Share success stories
- Present new opportunities
- Communicate with your SEO clients regularly
1. Evaluate their current SEO situation
First, you need to evaluate their current SEO situation, so you can make recommendations that actually make sense for them. That’s the key to successfully upselling SEO services to existing clients – you make sure that the additional or improved SEO services you are offering are actually beneficial for them and not just a quick buck for you.
- Perform an SEO audit. If the client is already under your wing, obviously, you are already monitoring their SEO situation. But if you want to offer more SEO services to them, it helps to do another SEO audit just to make sure you are not being biased and you actually see room for improvement in their current SEO situation. Thankfully, there are many tools that you can use to perform an SEO audit, such as Moz, SEMRush, and even Google Analytics.
- Present data-driven insights. The great thing about these SEO audit tools is that they are backed by data. With these tools, you can track different kinds of metrics, especially those that your specific client needs. When you are planning to upsell SEO services to existing clients, make sure to use the data from these tools to make your offer more convincing. Use visuals like charts and graphs to make the data easier to understand.
- Identify strengths and weaknesses. Look at the data and identify what’s working and what’s not for your SEO client. Highlight the strengths, such as high-performing keywords and well-ranking pages. And then highlight the weaknesses, such as low-ranking keywords and technical issues. When your client sees both strengths and weaknesses, they see a better picture of their SEO situation, and they become more open to your recommendations on what to do next.
2. Offer complementary SEO services
After auditing and analyzing their current SEO situation, you can present your client with complementary SEO services to make improvements. Now you will appear genuine, like you are fully committed to the success of your client’s SEO journey. You will appear like you can and you are willing to make adjustments along the way. This will help not just with your branding and credibility as an SEO agency or contractor. This will also help in deepening client relationships and trust.
- Identify areas for synergy. What are you currently doing for your client? Are you doing content marketing for them? Maybe paid advertising or social media marketing? Whatever it is, you can upsell SEO services to existing clients by looking for synergy. For example, if you are doing organic SEO for the client, you can consider offering paid search too if you find out in your audit that it can be beneficial for them. Offering synergies is also a great way to demonstrate your expertise in multiple SEO faucets.
- Quantify the benefits. Combining SEO services can be very effective in boosting a company’s online presence. You can improve brand authority and awareness, organic visibility, user engagement, conversions, and many more. Make sure to explain this to your SEO client who you are trying to upsell to.
- Present clear objectives and actionable strategies. What are the objectives of the additional or improved SEO services? Is it there to further increase organic traffic, improve rankings for even more competitive keywords, or whatever else? Define the objectives and present actionable strategies on how to accomplish them. This will make upselling more convincing because the client will be able to see what they are getting into.
3. Back up your proposal with data
Using data is particularly effective when you are trying to upsell SEO services to existing clients. They will know that you are not upselling just for the money but for its obvious benefits for their SEO situation. Make sure to quantify the potential benefits and the necessary investment required for the additional or improved SEO services.
- Quantify the gains. After identifying objectives like improving conversions and increasing organic traffic, quantify them, so the client can clearly visualize the potential gains for the upsold SEO services. Calculate your projected increases using data, numbers, and visual presentations like charts and graphs.
- Do a competitor analysis. Your client is not just doing SEO in a vacuum. It’s doing it in a competitive online landscape. Getting additional and improved SEO services may even be necessary to get a competitive advantage. To convince your client for more SEO services, do a competitor analysis. Show your client gaps and opportunities that you can take advantage of.
- Break down the investment required. When you are upselling to existing SEO clients, one of the questions they will have is “How much?” You should clearly answer that question after presenting the benefits. Your breakdown doesn’t just involve money. It should also involve expected outcomes, scopes of work, timelines, and even milestones if necessary.
4. Emphasize the SEO benefits
You are essentially asking your SEO clients to pay more. Naturally, they will want to know what kind of benefits they can expect from their additional investments. It’s good to have a problem-solving approach here. Make sure the additional or improved SEO services you are offering will solve some kind of challenge or pain point in your client’s SEO situation. This will help them clearly see the value of the upsold SEO services.
- Enumerate tangible outcomes. Clearly enumerate the positive results that the client can experience from the upsold SEO services. Can they expect higher search rankings, improved brand visibility, or more user engagement? Of course, you can’t always guarantee extravagant results, but having an end goal or objective will help the client see the value you are trying to provide with your new SEO services.
- Have a problem-solving approach. Show your client how the upsell SEO services will directly address certain issues in their current SEO situation. This highlights the importance of performing an SEO audit and analyzing data before proposing more SEO services to your existing clients.
- Explain the long-term value. SEO is a long-term game. It’s likely that the new SEO services you are offering will have long-term effects on your client’s SEO. By highlighting their long-term value, the new SEO services will become more appealing. They will appear not as short-term quick fixes but as investments.
5. Offer tiered SEO packages
You should have different SEO packages for different kinds of clients whether you are upselling or not. It just makes sense to have different kinds of packages that can cater to different SEO services and budget levels. But this can be particularly important when you are upselling to existing SEO clients. When you have tiered packages, your existing clients will see the flexibility and scalability of your SEO services, making them more likely to bite, even just a little bit at the beginning.
- Have different levels of complexity and scope. You can have basic SEO packages such as content and on-page optimization. And then you can have mid-tier packages that can include content creation and link building. And then you can have advanced packages with comprehensive SEO strategies and executions and ongoing SEO monitoring. Having tiered SEO packages is just important – even if you are not upselling.
- Clearly differentiate your SEO packages. Don’t just offer random packages just because. Make sure your packages have clearly defined inclusions. This helps your clients understand what they are getting at each tier. It’s okay if they start with the lowest tier. With proper upselling techniques, they can move on to higher tiers. Those low tiers are a great entry point, especially when you are a fledgling SEO professional building a client base.
- Include options for add-ons. One great upselling technique in SEO is including options for add-ons. This can make your packages more flexible and open for enhancement. Advanced keyword research, competitor analysis, and premium content creation are some add-ons you can try.
6. Share success stories
Case studies and success stories are a great way to showcase your SEO expertise. A track record of success can show your clients that your SEO strategies and executions work. This can make them pull the trigger when you are upselling SEO services to them. Proof of your success just instills confidence and trust. And it gives the impression that you are not just upselling for the money but also for the results.
- Tell a story. Create a narrative when you are presenting a case study or success story. Describe the challenges you have faced, the strategies and executions you have implemented, and the outcomes you have achieved. Storytelling just engages clients. It helps them connect on a deeper level with the journey of success. They may envision their business being just as successful, convincing them to get more SEO services from you.
- Present a before and after. Show proof of your narrative. The best way to do this is with numbers and visuals. Create a before and after scenario to highlight the positive impact of your SEO strategies and executions. Make sure to include key performance indicators in the scenario as well as charts and graphs to make them easily digestible. This can be very persuasive to existing SEO clients because they will see tangible improvements.
- Gather reviews and testimonials. What if your existing SEO clients think that you are just making these stories up? Prove that they are real by compiling reviews and testimonials from the satisfied clients who have personally experienced these stories. They will add credibility to your claims and further build trust, not just for your existing clients, but also for potentially new ones.
7. Present new opportunities
Clients like it when their SEO agency or contractor proactively looks for untapped areas for improvement. When you present new opportunities that the clients didn’t initially ask for, you position yourself as a partner invested in their success, not just an agency or contractor who is in it for the money. When you present new opportunities, it also tells your SEO clients that you know what you are talking about and that you are recommending actions that can only be beneficial.
- Share industry insights. SEO is a competitive space. If you want to survive in the industry, you have to stay updated when it comes to search engine algorithm updates and emerging SEO strategies. You should take advantage of this knowledge. Share industry insights with your existing SEO clients and propose innovative approaches that align with their initial business and SEO objectives.
- Share competitor analysis insights. When you are doing competitor analysis, you will see areas where their competitors excel and where they fall behind. These are crucial things to know. You can copy where they excel and take advantage of where they don’t to get a competitive advantage. The competitive edge is usually a great selling point if you are trying to upsell SEO services to existing clients.
- Look for technical SEO gaps. Many SEO clients focus on on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and link building. Technical SEO is an aspect that is often overlooked even though it’s just as important. This is a great area to look for gaps in your client’s SEO situation.
8. Communicate with your SEO clients regularly
Effective and regular communication is an important aspect of client relations, regardless of upselling. But it can be crucial too when you are upselling. With effective and regular communication, you are positioning yourself as a reliable SEO source. This will make your SEO clients more receptive to your upsell offers.
- Schedule regular check-ins. Regularly check on your SEO clients. The best way to do this is to establish a schedule for discussions and meetings. During these check-ins, show your SEO efforts, progress, and results. You really have to position yourself as a reliable SEO professional to pull off upselling SEO services.
- Submit regular reports. Reports should be part of your SEO services. They are a great way for your SEO clients to see your efforts, progress, and results. Make sure to include key performance indicators and add insights. These insights can actually be the gateway to upselling SEO services to your existing clients. Use them as opportunities to offer new SEO services.
- Provide educational content. To better position yourself as a reliable SEO professional, you can educate your clients about SEO. You can show them the basics of SEO, the best practices, and the most common strategies. When your clients know SEO, they can make more informed decisions in their SEO journey, and those decisions can involve getting your additional or improved SEO services.
Provide more value to SEO clients by upselling
Upselling SEO services to existing clients is not always about making more money. Sometimes, it’s also about providing more value, especially if you have learned that your clients really need it. Maybe you have found gaps and your other SEO services can really be beneficial to fill them. Maybe you have found new opportunities that can significantly improve your client’s SEO.
Making more money is obviously great. But providing more value to your SEO clients is the greater purpose of upselling SEO services to your existing clients.
