Gaining the trust of your clients can be very difficult, especially if the client has worked with an unethical SEO company in the past. I want to share a story on how we got the client approval process down to 5-7 days from 4-8 weeks by having some small wins and building trust with the client.
How do you build that trust and make the relationship with clients stronger?
We work in an industry where we experiment different strategies (onsite and offsite) to continually improve and efficiently drive results. And to achieve those results we need approval on the strategies we provide to our clients and in a quick period of time.
Why is it difficult to build trust?
There are number of issues that may have been the reason for the client to not fully put their trust in you and your company. Below are few of many examples:
- Client may not have been educated in SEO
- You point of contact may be pressured by their bosses
- Regime change
- Lack of communication
- Hidden strategies that can cause disruption in the success of the campaign due to algorithm updates
Why is it important to build that trust?
- Appreciation: They would be more appreciative. Their circle of influence can affect other sources within the company to help you help them create success.
- Accelerate approval times: Onsite & Offsite strategies will start getting approved and implemented quicker to help you create success for them.
- More than just SEO: They started talking about strategies that inform business decisions. You will become more than just an SEO.
- High level decisions: You start getting involved with different departments of the company, such as: IT, Designers, Developers, etc.
- Collaboration: They start to become collaborative. The tone of their questions starts to change, examples:
- ‘What happened to these keywords, why did they drop?’ Changes to ‘We saw a drop in few keywords ranking, can you please take a look at this for us?’
- ‘Can you tell us why you are recommending this link building idea?’ Changes to ‘We understand the value of the strategy but we need some proof so we can help get some budget from our seniors’.
I wanted to share a quick example of a story that helped me gain that trust of the client to help speed up the approval process of the strategies, which led to achieving our initial goal quicker than intended.
What was done to improve the process? We provided an example of a small win that had the ability to create a big story and changed the entire approval process.
We had a really good win for one of the top keywords’ ranking position. We wanted to provide a story beyond just the ranking data. The analysis we provided included rankings plus the impact it had on the revenue.
Below is a graph of the ranking improvement for that keyword from November 2012 to March 2013 and how achieving those rankings also helped improve their revenue.
Let’s take it to the next level. Let’s look at the revenue this one keyword generated since the start of the campaign. 
I would love to hear your examples :).
Conclusion
- Stories, strategies & results helps you become more of a long term partner. They will help you build trust and relationships.
- Personally, this is a path of my journey to become a marketer from an SEO.
Resource I highly recommend and I know Wil does too to read this book -----> Speed of Trust
