Sensible people don't pitch SEO work.
They pitch inbound marketing, reputation management, etc..
If you send a direct mail out and mention sem/seo/search engine optimisation/any "buzz" phrase like that that the average business owner has heard thousands of times before, they shut off to you.
I even did an experiment. We made 150 calls to companies first pitching seo. The next 150 calls we pitched exactly the same, but swapped seo for the phrase "inbound marketing". Far fewer "fuck off", "fuck you"s etc.
It's all about differentiation. You've got to appear different to the hundreds of calls people get from Indian call centres pitching this shit.
You've also got to get off your ass and actually market yourself/your company. SEO is ironically a poor way to get SEO clients, because the ROI is pretty much the worse of any SEO work you can do. Competing exclusively against other SEO companies in SEO is never going to get you as good of a return as say selling hammers in an online store, because you'll have to spend a shit ton more to rank. Not to mention people that google SEO usually aren't good clients.
We make 100 or so highly targeted calls a week, we get 5-10 meetings and probably close a deal or two between 2 of us. Only been going for a couple months, and most of what we sell is reputation management currently. Great thing is you can build trust by doing what they see as magic. "Holy shit where did all those bad reviews go!? That's amazing!" They then recommend you any time a business owner or friend complains about bad reviews. They then say "well if you can do that.. can you try and get me to rank for 'Supper D00p3r Turbo Hammers' in Google?" = upselling other services.
Then, they approach and say "hey we need a website, do you build websites?" "Nope, we just do inbound marketing consultancy, but we can help out with that in the process of building/designing your website and introduce you to a great web design firm if you like?" = free recommendation of great firm who you know does great work + another upsell as part of them getting their redesign work done you consult with the design company/them about how to build the site from an SEO POV.
The web dev firm we work with doesn't do marketing stuff, so any time a client asks about marketing they send them to us.
It's basically all about hustle. You've just got to get out there and start marketing. Phone people and empathise with them, try to get in their shoes and think "How would I be reacting to someone calling me about this?". You'll get told to fuck off a lot, and you'll get hung up on a lot too - but you'll get better and with time you'll realise that a surprising number of people are willing to give you a few minutes on the phone and meet you if you can convince them they have a problem or that you can make them money.
Rep management for example sells itself. "I google your company name and there's 7 people that have written 1* reviews about your hammers.. This is costing you business. I did a bit of research and over 2000 people a month search for your company name, and it's not uncommon for you to lose 50-80% of the customers who are exposed to bad reviews". *business man in his head is saying wait a minute.. 2000 people... 1000 is 50%.. If they were going to buy my hammers but don't now, that's £10,000 a month I'm potentially losing!!* "We can help you get rid of these reviews, mind if I pop in for 10 minutes to have a chat? I know you must be busy and don't want to waste your time - I think we can really help you here. I'm in the area Tuesday afternoon, does 3pm work for you?"
People that run genuine businesses get angry that people are writing this stuff online too. I've talked to someone who even phoned Trip Advisor in America, and hustled their way into talking to the CEO to try and get reviews taken down to no avail.
Selling SEO, consultancy and other marketing related services isn't hard. You just have to get out there, empathise with people, talk to people and sell, sell, sell. Once you've sold, under promise and over deliver every god damn time.
I appreciate that this is hard for the average WF'er to comprehend doing though, as the entire reason lots of people go into AM is to avoid human contact in the first place, and the idea of phoning or visiting people scares the shit out of them. As a random example of the money involved though, rep management can typically be £3-£10k for 3 months relatively basic work for a good sized £1m+ turnover company. If you do a good job you can then get them on ongoing retainer, and upsell other things (such as SEO, PPC, Email Marketing, Social Media Management, the list goes on..) to them.
The people that make it big have serious drive, and balls too. They won't stop at the small local restaurants or whatever, they'll always be thinking about how they can scale up.
I'd have to peddle a shit ton of links (& do a shit ton more work) in BST to cover even 1 rep management/seo sale.
