Your SEO company Connecticut’s biggest asset is your client roster. This blog talks about the 6 common reasons why your clients leave and how the retention rate could be improved. Acquiring new clients is not easy. Plenty of time and resources are invested by SEO agencies to sign up for new accounts.
The greatest assets of an agency are the ongoing clients. And while some are successful in retaining their client’s majority, many others tend to struggle for keeping good clients on board.
For your profitability and growth, keeping your current clients happy is essential. While if your agenda is boosing retention then these six common reasons should be considered by you why SEO companies in Connecticut lose their clients and further learn what you should be doing about each of these.
1-Misaligned Expectations
One of the main reasons why clients are lost by SEO agencies is a failure in setting realistic expectations right from the start.
It was explained by Mark Williams-Cook that working with several agencies, he thinks the main cause of most client loss is setting expectations at the start, incorrectly. Usually, this happens for numerous reasons that range from sales teams making different promises on the performance to not challenging unreasonable targets that are set by the clients. This honest conversation meant that you either win or slightly proceed with fewer pitches, but again this is the best long-term strategy in his opinion.
You should now ask yourself if you are underdelivering or overpromising. If it is not a perfect match then it should be the other way round. Also, it is to be seen that numerous times clients will be coming to you without knowing how Top SEO services Connecticut works and also carrying very high expectations. You shouldn’t say yes if you know that you won’t be able to deliver.
2-Failure in Educating the Client
There often exists clients who despite having worked previously with a couple of SEO agencies for a while don’t have any idea how SEO works.
It is often appreciated by people to be informed and they will entrust you more. Building this kind of trust level with the client is important for the health as well as your long-term relationship.
It is to be seen that educating your clients is not considered as a one-and-done, instead, it means that you are communicating with them regularly in such a way that it reflects your expertise and further it adds value to them. It then positions you as their go-to expert for any questions or even concerns that they might have, which is the exact reason where one wants them to be turned.
3-Lack of Value for Money
Clients require and want to see their SEO investment’s value as soon as possible. For SEO professionals it is a perpetual challenge because a good SEO can be time taking. According to Daniel Foley Carter, numerous SEO agencies end up losing their clients primarily because they have a lack of value for money. While many clients will also try to benchmark SEO ROI similarly to Pay Per Click even though SEO generally being a channel takes a longer time in yielding the results.
A way to approach this depends on the business goals of the clients and to agree on long-term goals. Taking an example here, if a publisher is your client then you might be there suggesting a goal that is supposed to be achieving an increase of 50% in traffic in about 2 years.
One thing that we know here for sure is that you might be there hitting a 50% increase in traffic many months or days earlier which then gives your client a measurable, tangible, expectation of value. It is further important to make sure that you are there showing the clients how your SEO efforts are there having a positive impact on the conversions and revenue, and not just rankings and traffic.
4-What You Are Doing Is Unknown To Your Clients
You don’t have to leave your clients to guess the work that is being done by you and what efforts are being put in by you for them. You should just keep them aware of what is there happening now, and also give them an awareness of what are the next steps.
An example of this is creating a monthly email that includes: a performance report, summary of work that is done and deliverables, next steps.
Once a week you may check-in with a quick update on any sort of major initiative or to share a recent win. You need to make sure that they have an understanding of the direct line in between the taken SEO action and any sort of measurable business outcomes.
While you may also require to make a roadmap with the client at the start of the contract and eventually update it every month for showing the progress. Such regular communications can further go a long way for keeping your clients informed regarding what you are doing while it also further reflects the accountability and structure, and clients then appreciate both of these.
5-No Visible Results
So now your clients have stayed with you for the duration of their six months or a year’s contract with you and they are unable to see any results.
It could be assumed here that it is not for a lack of producing anything. But, if it is the case then you have bigger issues that could be catered to in this blog. But, if it is not the case then,
Check Your Internal SEO Processes Set Up
Even the agencies that provide and come up with great work for others might lack internal templates and clear processes of their own.
These then are reasons for failure.
You are required to build your own tested and tried process. This is a part of the value that you offer your clients.
Making Sure You Have a Solid Project Management Tool Setup
It might be very hard to keep organized and execute SEO strategy properly at any sort of scale if you are not using any Solid Project Management Tool Setup.
Regularly, Review Your Process
For example, you hold your team meeting after every quarter year or a half a year for discussing your processes.
When there happens to be a new Google update then you have to work with your team to see how this will be incorporated into the standard processes.
6-For SEO, the Product Just Was Not Ready
For all businesses, is SEO always is a good channel?
SEO is a great channel for generating revenue most of the time, if you are someone who has a good product, there lies an opportunity for the growth of your business with SEO.
But in conditions where your business is not yet ready, no SEO of any amount will be able to help. So the real question that arises is that is your business stage a right one for SEO?
It was said by Sam Wright that for strategic reasons, lots of SEO campaigns fail, it could either be a lack of product-market fit, pricing, or some sort of poor categorization or positioning. Often SMEs don’t put in their time into the business’ this side before making their jump on to the tactical execution or something of the sort of SEO.
This then means that they are on shaky foundations – in these circumstances, it comes to be hard to make a campaign work. While a lot of SEO agencies then plow on ahead regardless either because they cater to the unawareness or lack the experience or skills that are required to change things from top to bottom. Bad results are often followed by the frustration of the clients and the ending of the relationships.
Changing this eventually partly questions the client education and we now have an analysis of the market and categorization/positioning of every project’s first step. This then is something that is being done by the traditional marketing agencies for years, but this still is something unusual for SEO-focused businesses. However, it is also important to show that unless the strategy is right to start with, the tactics don’t work.
With all of this being said, clients are listed by every single SEO strategy. The reason is not the incompetency of the agency but it also is part of the industry.
While the parting thoughts of Jeff Ferguson are as follows, according to him, client loss is considered always as a mixed bag. It comes as to be easier to beat yourself up about losing the client. In his experience, out of ten nine times, the reason is being out of control – there then is a new CMO, a new investment group, or something comes as to be lower, but it of courses didn’t have anything to be done with you and everything to do with a regime change.
The real goal that is catered is to minimize these losses and further improve customer retention by having an understanding of why they are happening, having a recognition about when the relationship is at risk, and acknowledging how to right the ship.
