YARP!
Hello everyone!
Recently a group of us launched an agency aimed at SEO / Paid / Email - we just expanded our services to Video / Web Dev and Social Media. (nothing black hat - although one person fucked up and is getting us back links from dev sites)
Now - I know what you guys are going to say "Nostradamus you picked the worst time to start this" - yes, yes we did.
Unfortunately I've been pushing this project for 2 years and then it just got green lit in January - SO! I have to make due with what I have and keep pushing forward because I'm a stubborn son of a bitch.
I'm hoping one of you WF masters can smack us across the face with a dildo and suggest some areas where to find clients or on which one to keep pushing.
This is a list of all the avenues that have been attempted - some with success others with limited to no success
1. Referral (Friend of a friend)
pro: We closed 1 of 1
con: We cannot survive off of this
2. AdWords (search & display)
pro: Reaches people instantly - had two leads come in at $150 which we didn't close.
con: We can't keep spending without establishing some sort of "organic / direct" source medium to bring in clients on the side.
3. Craigslist (posts)
pro: Free
con: We had over 30 posts that were 2 weeks old from different accounts flagged and removed in one day which wiped out all the work from those 2 weeks.
4. Google Partner Program
pro: Makes us look legitimate
con: They changed the requirements a month from getting our premier badge
5. Cold Calling Wasteful AdWords Companies
pro: Easy to do - search for keywords on which companies shouldn't be advertising on
con: Very long funnel and no success
6. Cold Calling weak SEO businesses and enticing them with higher rankings
pro: We can definitely achieve this - we actually got in touch with decision makers at a hotel chain with this (although I did kind of push my way to them)
con: Very long funnel and no results of client capture so far
7. Organic / SEO - this is a long term goal, we picked a niche in marketing to expand off of.
pro: Not much competition in part of the niche
con: A shit ton of competition regionally, nationally and internationally - also the whole industry gets a crappy quality score from the get go - so the pace at which the site gets search traffic is quite slow - also had some SEO blunders which have put us back -_-
8. Searching all craigslist posts and sending out e-mails - the new age cold calling.
pro: it boosts organic/direct
con: didn't pan out worth shit
9. Social media (G+, Twitter, FB)
pro: easy to do
con: hasn't panned out worth shit and our linkedin account got shut down for no reason - barely spend 20 minutes on it per day
Other avenues not yet explored
Press Releases - we have a crap ton to publish through PRWeb, however we haven't pushed yet because our site needs work and I'm waiting for the developer to get his shit together.
Partnerships - we created a partnership with a decent company from Europe to handle our web dev and design for clients. This move wasn't made as a direct client capture venture but more of a way to be able to provide the client with full service capabilities.
Word of mouth - this one can only happen when we grow the portfolio
We have a nice office - we have a 'meh' website - we have actual clients that pay us (although most were legacy and 1 was new in the last 6 months) the name of the company is a bit wacky (if you put web and croppers together you get the name of the company - I don't want to link as it will dominate the search engine results and then it exposes us to anyone with a slightly above average IQ from seeing this thread - that's how thin the back linking is) but I truly believe in the work we do - so here I am, in the depths of WF asking for help.
YARP!
:love-smiley-083:
Hello everyone!
Recently a group of us launched an agency aimed at SEO / Paid / Email - we just expanded our services to Video / Web Dev and Social Media. (nothing black hat - although one person fucked up and is getting us back links from dev sites)
Now - I know what you guys are going to say "Nostradamus you picked the worst time to start this" - yes, yes we did.
Unfortunately I've been pushing this project for 2 years and then it just got green lit in January - SO! I have to make due with what I have and keep pushing forward because I'm a stubborn son of a bitch.
I'm hoping one of you WF masters can smack us across the face with a dildo and suggest some areas where to find clients or on which one to keep pushing.
This is a list of all the avenues that have been attempted - some with success others with limited to no success
1. Referral (Friend of a friend)
pro: We closed 1 of 1
con: We cannot survive off of this
2. AdWords (search & display)
pro: Reaches people instantly - had two leads come in at $150 which we didn't close.
con: We can't keep spending without establishing some sort of "organic / direct" source medium to bring in clients on the side.
3. Craigslist (posts)
pro: Free
con: We had over 30 posts that were 2 weeks old from different accounts flagged and removed in one day which wiped out all the work from those 2 weeks.
4. Google Partner Program
pro: Makes us look legitimate
con: They changed the requirements a month from getting our premier badge
5. Cold Calling Wasteful AdWords Companies
pro: Easy to do - search for keywords on which companies shouldn't be advertising on
con: Very long funnel and no success
6. Cold Calling weak SEO businesses and enticing them with higher rankings
pro: We can definitely achieve this - we actually got in touch with decision makers at a hotel chain with this (although I did kind of push my way to them)
con: Very long funnel and no results of client capture so far
7. Organic / SEO - this is a long term goal, we picked a niche in marketing to expand off of.
pro: Not much competition in part of the niche
con: A shit ton of competition regionally, nationally and internationally - also the whole industry gets a crappy quality score from the get go - so the pace at which the site gets search traffic is quite slow - also had some SEO blunders which have put us back -_-
8. Searching all craigslist posts and sending out e-mails - the new age cold calling.
pro: it boosts organic/direct
con: didn't pan out worth shit
9. Social media (G+, Twitter, FB)
pro: easy to do
con: hasn't panned out worth shit and our linkedin account got shut down for no reason - barely spend 20 minutes on it per day
Other avenues not yet explored
Press Releases - we have a crap ton to publish through PRWeb, however we haven't pushed yet because our site needs work and I'm waiting for the developer to get his shit together.
Partnerships - we created a partnership with a decent company from Europe to handle our web dev and design for clients. This move wasn't made as a direct client capture venture but more of a way to be able to provide the client with full service capabilities.
Word of mouth - this one can only happen when we grow the portfolio
We have a nice office - we have a 'meh' website - we have actual clients that pay us (although most were legacy and 1 was new in the last 6 months) the name of the company is a bit wacky (if you put web and croppers together you get the name of the company - I don't want to link as it will dominate the search engine results and then it exposes us to anyone with a slightly above average IQ from seeing this thread - that's how thin the back linking is) but I truly believe in the work we do - so here I am, in the depths of WF asking for help.
YARP!
:love-smiley-083:
