Choosing the right clients for your SEO agency is crucial for long-term growth. When it comes to determining who to target when pitching a new business, make sure to invoke the same criteria you were using before you grew: this should include a shared mission, values, and mutual respect.
Based on Verticals
Your agency’s positioning will be closely tied to the verticals you serve.
If you’re only focusing on a specific size of business (SMEs or enterprise) or a particular industry (e.g. lawyers, dentists, car dealerships), this variable is already accounted for.
But if a vertical specificity emerges naturally from your client portfolio, you may want to reassess your services. Or perhaps you want to generate new business in line with industry trends, so you only focus on the exploding companies and their offer requests:
- You can assess that, once more, through YoY search trends and evaluate their growth rate
- You can research investment trends, VC funds, and their portfolios, then find useful insights about potential leads
Ensure Your Goals Are Shared
If they feel like true partners, where opportunities are equally beneficial and there’s respect and admiration on both sides, that’s when it starts to feel like a good fit. It doesn’t matter if it’s a sexy brand or a big name account; if those shared goals are not there, it can be an uphill climb and almost not worth starting the relationship in the first place.
Based on Your Agency’s Culture
It is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when talking about qualifying a client, but certainly one of the crucial aspects of keeping the relationship happy and long-term is this: is it a cultural fit between your agency and that lead?
The agency evaluates the communication and growth potential of that relationship:
- Can you work together for many years to come?
- Can you build a relationship with them?
- Do they trust you to experiment and take calculated risks for their projects?
Pick and Pitch
Most agencies focus on pitching a potential client instead of picking potential clients. The idea of picking and pitching is determining the types of clients you are after, (i.e. budget, industry, the scope of work, etc.) then targeting those that fall within your own parameters. Saying no to potential clients that don’t fall within those parameters will help you stay focused on the ones that are the best fit.
Based on Your Agency’s Growth Objectives
One final, major point we’re tackling here is the convergence of your agency’s growth strategy, the lead’s business model, ability to implement the right SEO campaign, and market position.
Is there potential for growing the initial project’s scope and getting more business from that lead in the future? Is there potential to further your agency’s expertise and education through this lead?
You should think about the many avenues you can grow together, whether through innovation or increasing a specific market share.
Another tip for choosing the best SEO agency is aiming for established brands, which implies scaling the agency’s business development or sales team. Go Up is currently in this process, targeting big names to add to their portfolio while also reaffirming their positioning as a leading SEO company.
