It’s a well known fact that 90% of businesses fail within 5 years. That’s across all industries so it’s no surprise that 95% of SEO agencies fail in this time.
But why is this the case?
Well it comes down to 2 things in my experience.
I’ll break down individually why I think these issues happen and you can do what you like with that information and try not to fall into the mistakes that I and many others initially fell into when starting a business.
Pretty simply you are not good enough at your craft yet.
A tough thing to hear potentially but something that’s important to understand.
A lot of people who start “seo consultancies” or offer seo services of some sort have never actually ranked a website from start to finish before.
That’s a big problem.
Because despite what you might have heard or learnt, until you have actually ranked a site #1 in Google and made the revenue from ranking this site.
You aren’t anything close to a digital marketer.
As a result
This happens about 90% of the time – Which is ironically what makes SEO so difficult to sell. Which brings us onto the next reason why most seo agencies fail.
Most companies who start selling SEO… Do not know how to sell seo.
As a result they cannot get clients.
Sales is the single biggest technique that I have worked on in the past year and the single reason why my income has increased as a result.
Remember if you have knowledge and the ability to rank websites…
Then by NOT converting clients you are actually doing them a dis-service. Because they will likely go somewhere else, get charged less and get NO results.
Leading to another person saying “SEO DOESN’T WORK!”
Which is a problem.
Because if you had a haircut and it sucked… You wouldn’t say “BARBERS DON’T WORK!”
You would say – That barber was rubbish.
Learning sales is incredibly important for a number of reasons, but most importantly because if you personally can’t close clients then they aren’t going to close themselves.
Also…
You think you don’t proven enough value….
If you can’t convert clients it means you think you don’t provide enough value.
If you thought you did then you would do EVERYTHING in your power to close that lead into a client.
As a result you would… Earn more and have a successful business.
“Work on your business, NOT IN IT!”
A famous principle by someone… No idea who said it but it’s pretty important.
As soon as you start building your business you need to automate or scale the processes inside.
There are a number of methods to do this.
From hiring staff,
hiring VAs,
Systematising processes,
Outsourcing,
Whatever you decide you need to ensure one thing doesn’t change…
THE RESULTS.
If you were getting great results before you need to ensure the business is scalable but with the great results.
If you can master those 3 sets of skills.
Any business, let alone SEO or digital marketing will be easy.
If you have any questions feel free to get in touch with me directly via HQ SEO or tom (at) hqseo.co.uk
Cheers,
Tom.