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Worldwide, businesses are waking up to the distinctive edge that digital marketing can provide by increasing their sales and boosting their web and social media presence.
According to a study by Bigcommerce, online stores pumped up their sales by 32% by growing their social presence compared to the other stores that neglect it.
However, selling digital marketing services is slightly different from selling other services. This article will discuss a complete sales plan for selling digital marketing services to local businesses and SMEs.
How to Sell Digital Marketing Services to Local Businesses & SMEs?
Based on our expertise, here are the five tips for selling digital marketing services to startups, local businesses, and SMEs with a high success rate.
1. Provide Clarity on Your Offer
Most people confuse SEO services with online marketing. However, that's not the truth. SEO is also a subset of digital marketing. SEO tactics are employed to optimize content to rank higher on search engines and increase your website's visibility.
According to Wrike, online marketing refers to marketing activities targeting consumers using digital channels.
Digital marketing has different streams, some of which are as follows:
- SEO
- Social media marketing
- Pay-per-click marketing
- Email marketing
- Content marketing
- Marketing Analytics
- Mobile Marketing
- In-Game marketing
- Influencer marketing
- Video Marketing
- Affiliate marketing
The greatest benefit of digital marketing is that it easily scales, is engaging, and is cost-effective.
Pro Tip: If you are a young digital marketing agency, you can choose one area of specialization, such as SEO or PPC, and later expand your portfolio or you can outsource your requirements.
2. Know Your Target CustomersĀ
Every industry has a different set of challenges and market trends. They have different needs, so they prefer an agency that understands their pain points, bottlenecks, and requirements. Similarly, an agency should do a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis and choose its niche accordingly.
Image Source: WordStream
Also, when you understand your client's business, you can serve them better and achieve better results using specific tactics.
Pro Tip: As a young agency, focus on just one niche, and specialize in it. For example, you can promote yourself as a digital marketing agency for dentists or educational institutions. When you start getting good results for your clients, you will get numerous client referrals.
Read More: How to Do Niche Marketing For Tiny Audiences
3. Create Customer Avatars and Buyer PersonasĀ
If you are a new digital marketing agency with no experience in selling, you can start by creating your customer avatar or buyer persona, representing your ideal customer.
A customer avatar has distinct personality traits and demographic and psychographic characteristics, so you can easily target them and create a suitable marketing strategy to address their needs.
Image Source: Dubsado
Identify three major types of your potential clients and target markets and do a split test study.
The best analytics tools will reveal which client is best suitable for your agency.
It would help if you also researched their budget and their specific objectives. Most agencies have common goals, such as increased engagement & traffic, more conversions, more sales, and increased brand awareness.
In the meantime, remember that your target audience is not imaginary-they are real people with real needs.
So, gather more information about them. It will help you make better decisions and formulate better strategies.
When clients choose you, they pin their hopes on your agency for their most crucial goals.
So, the more insights you have about them and their business, the better it is for your digital marketing campaigns.
Pro Tip: Get more information about your prospects and insights into their pain points.
Ten years ago, awareness about digital marketing was minimal, but things have drastically changed. According to a study by ZDNet in 2020, 70% percent of businesses underwent a digital transformation.
The trend is continuing, and more and more SMEs and startups are undergoing digital transformation, and it is not happening just in the US but across the world. So, the business prospects are quite bright for digital marketing agencies. The only requirement to succeed is to do some due diligence before approaching their prospects or making sales calls.
4. Go to the Right Places
You should also know how to find your clients in the right places to succeed. For example, suppose you have chosen gaming as your niche, and your audience is millennials; you can find them on social platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. If Instagram is your target, then build a customer base by getting some followers till you build an organic follower count.
If your target audience is the adult population, you can find them on Facebook, local directories, LinkedIn, their website, their social handles, and in-person meetings.
Image Source: BenchmarkONE
If you're selling digital marketing services, ditch old practices such as cold calling and spamming potential customers digitally.
Pro Tip: Clarity calls or chemistry calls without the right mix of coaching, strategy, and action will also not work.
Have you ever received those dubious tech support calls from scammers that tell you how horrible your antivirus protection is on your PC or laptop? Or how dangerous it can be for your banking and personal information?
Sadly, such intimidating tactics don't work in digital marketing. It would help if you sounded more helpful and empathetic in this field to win your clients. Do your homework proactively and learn about your prospects' pain points.
Image Source: Brian Tracy
Research their business, market trends, target audience, and the best ways to tap the market. Analyze their current marketing strategy and find the cracks in it.
Suggest the best solutions to address those pain points. If possible, make the entire digital marketing roadmap to meet your prospects' goals and present it using PowerPoint and videos.
This way, you will earn their trust and gain credibility.
You also make an impression that you are not after your clients' money and genuinely think about their well-being and success.
You can instantly win the contract if they are happy with your analysis and how you can help them.
If possible, go for in-person meetings. Powerful conversations happen in face-to-face meetings. It allows you to ask questions about their pain points without attempting to promote your agency.
5. Appeal to Your Prospectsā€™ Passions & Emotions
Know their passions, life goals, and things that matter the most to them. Don't try to put them down. Connect to their desires. Engage in meaningful conversations and things that bother your clients the most.
Image Source: Reve Chat
This approach will bring you more business than any other thing on this planet!
Ask about their struggles and aspirations and look at the bigger picture. Recently, PR Newswire conducted an interesting study that revealed that 79% of customers buy from brands that can prove that they care about winning their business.
Customers need to be assured that the agency they hire the services from deeply understands and cares about their needs.
You must convince them that your services will make their life easier and better. This strategy alone will keep you in business and help you attract more and more clients.
6. Offer Additional Value
Competition is heating up in the digital marketing industry. On average, every business receives three to four calls weekly from a digital marketing agency in the US. In such an environment, it becomes important that you use a unique marketing strategy. For example, you can offer something different than what others are. For example, many agencies provide free audits, SEO reports, etc.
DashClicksā€™ CEO, Chad Kodary, takes an entirely different approach. If you sign up for the DashClicks platform, you will get access to a website builder tool, InstaSites which you can use for prospecting.
It allows you to build a niche-specific professional website of 30 to 40 pages for your client. It would be free of cost and content ready. All you need to do is make a cold call to your prospects and ask them to look at the website that you have created for them free of cost.
Here is the YouTube playlist where you can watch Chad Kodary explain the whole strategy -
Also, read this blog for more information on how to sell using DashClicks' proven sales formula.
Blog Link: How to Use InstaSites Software to Super Charge Your Sales
During the call, please don't ask for their credit card number or anything like that. If they like the free website preview, you can seek their permission to activate the website for them.
This can be the starting point of a long-term relationship with your client. Make another courtesy call after a week and ask if they liked the website. If they are happy with the website, you can offer additional services such as SEO or PPC.
Since this approach is based purely on good intentions, you're more likely to win the contract. You can use this strategy to win more and more digital marketing clients every month, and you will never have to look back.
7. Use the Terms That Your Clients Understand
Assess the expertise level of your clients and use the language accordingly. Don't use industry jargon if they are beginners, and be very cautious if they are experts in this area. Don't make any false claims, and keep your conversation logical.
8. Learn More About Selling Digital Marketing Services
You should constantly update yourself and keep abreast of the latest market trends, tools, and technologies. Regularly attend webinars, seminars, and events related to the digital marketing industry and participate in professional sales training workshops.
Final Words
If you follow these tips, you are more likely to win new sales contracts and retain your clients for the long term. The key is to be honest and offer value. Try the DashClicksā€™ proven sales formula. It is a valuable proposition proven by hundreds of agencies worldwide. It minimizes your prospecting efforts and raises your success rate, As the approach differentiates you from others and gives you an edge over your competition.
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