Getting Started

I am going to take for granted that you already know how to build websites and do the marketing;

This training will cover how to find qualified customers for your local marketing business, how to approach them, and how to convince them they need your services.

A Few Tips To Keep In Mind:

  1. High pressure sales tactics are for Hollywood movies. They have no place in today's business world. Keep in mind, the people you will be dealing with are business owners and they deserve your respect.
  2. Always be professional. Since your clients are business owners and professionals, don't show up in jeans and a tee-shirt to discuss what you can do for them. Business casual is your best bet. You will fit in whether your dealing with a doctor or a local plumbing company.
  3. "A good reputation is worth more than silver and gold," so always be honest with your customers and go the extra mile for them every chance you get. Deliver more than you promise and respond to their questions promptly.
  4. Your local marketing business is about relationships. Take care of your customers - even if they're being difficult. Keep your cool and do your job.


Keeping these basic fundamentals in mind will help your business grow and will bring you new clients. Business owners know other business owners so, if you make Jim happy, he's going to tell Bill, who will tell Jane, who will tell...well you get the idea. Word of mouth is king in face-to-face sales.


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MarciaAff Premium
I see some internet marketers who get a commission of the sales they bring to their client PLUS a monthly fee. How does it work?
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judebanks Premium Plus
I'm not sure if this is what you are asking about, but here goes:

Some people/companies are in the business of helping their clients grow their business online, for example, setting up a marketing strategy for clients. They charge their clients a fee for services and that can be based on % of sales and/or a one-off or an ongoing management fee for implementing marketing campaigns for their clients. ~Jude
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MarciaAff Premium
Thanks Jude. Now, how to charge a company when we help them rank 1st page on Google?
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judebanks Premium Plus
Depends on what payment methods you accept as to how you set it up. You would probably want to have an agreement/contract and/or an invoicing system.

You may need to set yourself up as a sole proprietor or sole trader of your business for tax purposes.

You can accept payment via payment processor, such as PayPal, or credit card, or deposit to your bank account. For example, Paypal has information about how to set up a merchant account. ~Jude
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Davidjardine Premium
Think Jude has the answer to this
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veronica.l Premium
Nice training. Quick question, what is your conversion with the email that you send out?
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DABK Premium
If by conversions you mean what percentage of people I email to contact me, then it's 0-25%.

If you mean what percentage of people I email to contact me and take me up on whatever offer I'm making, 0-6.2%

Depends a lot on list quality, offer, product/service. I get low email response to free consultations/presentation, but once I make them, 3 out of 4 are convinced to try me out.

I have high response to offers to write seo'd articles and get them high in Google for a local keyword (31.57%), and high conversion (1 out of 3 want it).

I get low response to SEO and low conversions too... close to 0%, unless I call SEO something else.

Problem, I don't do enough of them. Further problem, I do small campaigns, don't have thousands of emails sent out, so the results might just be not too reliable.
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Ty Johnson Premium
I don't have a percentage, but don't expect magic, it's a numbers game, your better off attending events, if you put yourself in a position where you can meet people, with out a sales pitch, you are much more likely to make a real connection.
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DABK Premium
I forgot to say, Ty, I like this. I've even put my money where my mouth is and clicked on the Like button.
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DABK Premium
If you have the funds to sponsor a meeting/seminar, etc., do it.

I found out about this in 2005, when I had a real estate appraisal business.
Some guy called me to ask me to sponsor a day-long seminar that would be attended by 100 mortgage brokers and loan officers. Back then, they could hire appraisers.

I did. Cost me $1,200 and, though they promised 100 attendees, there were only 77, I was clueless about marketing, so I had my business card and a list of appraisers working with my company and how long they'd been appraisers, I got close to $40,000 out of that over the following 2 years.

As regards to chamber of commerce meetings, you don't have to join to attend... At least in my neck of the woods. They let you come to a couple of their events to get a feel for them, see if it's something you want to do.

So, join as many as you can afford but also try out others, or, if you can't afford, attend a few meetings anyway.

Don't go with regular business cards. Give out something useful. You know, online, you ask them to download your free report. What's to stop you to give them the same courtesy offline?

Give a couple of points from your free report on the back of your card and invite them to visit your website or email you to get the rest.

Follow up. They're there to make connections, to increase their area of influence, so after a meeting, sort through the cards you get, call the ones that interest you to meet with them for 30 minutes to find out what they do, how they do it and to see if you can refer any business to them.

One of the best questions you can ask them, How do I know if someone I know is a good fit for you?

As regards emails, my best subject line was
Looking for jeweler in (name of suburb or neighborhood)

I got 72% open rate and 25% contacted me.

It doesn't work with a lot of things, works with SEO. Because though you can increase a lot of people's internet presence, you can't rank more than 1 at #1 per keyword.

Be prepared to meet a lot of people who're going to tell you, I tried internet marketing and it doesn't work. Or, I tried SEO and it doesn't work.

Speaking of SEO, it's Chinese to most people (if you're in China, it's Romanian to most people) you're going to meet.

When Ty says don't sell, listen to him. If you go in there with the notion that you're there to find out what the business does and how it's working for them so as to see if you have any tools you can use to get them the results they're after, you're ahead.

1st job I ever got, I talked about how they could increase their internet presence for free. I talked to them about blogger.com. Had the owner sign up right then and there. Told her how easy it would be for her to post things about her company... (Disclosure, this was my insurance agent and she used to be friends with my wife... But the 2nd job I've done, I did the same, except I met the guy at a chamber of commerce event... and then another, and then another... After the 6th one he asked to meet with me.)

The next time I met her, I asked her if she'd blogged. She had not, did not have the time. I told her about facebook... every 4th or 5th post could be about her business. Gave her an example about her husband's business... independent insurance agent who'd just signed up with Traveler's insurance.

He'd just say, Hey, I just signed up with Traveler's Insurance. I'm excited because they have a great program for x type of people.

Next I know, her husband wants to give me $2,777 to get him some clients off the internet.

I took the money and... regretted it... He's still a paying client, but he's cheap as hell, so every meeting he complains about prices and asks for mutually exclusive things: like tons of leads that don't require him or anyone in his office to talk to them... He just hasn't got the time to convert them.

Since then, I've put in place screening criteria.

Sorry for the long reply. I think I could have said it, don't go to meeting looking to take, go to meetings and give something.
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Ty Johnson Premium
You bring up some great points here, I like this replay, don't be sorry for the length, it's a very helpful reply.

It's a lot easier to get clients than people think, the hardest part is just showing up to meetings, or contacting people, you really have to be self motivated for this type of business

I have just downloaded that seo suit, I am going to give it a try, and see how I like it, it will have to wait till tomorrow tho, getting late here, but it is at the top of my list for tomorrow

OH thank you for liking it =)
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tommo1968 Premium Plus
Good training Ty, just a quick question. When searching keywords for local business is there any software, websites you use to see what keywords the company is ranked for or are you just putting in keywords in Google and seeing where they sit?
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Ty Johnson Premium
I start with finding great keywords, by just doing a normal keyword search, from the keywords I find, I see who is ranking for them, and that's where I find who to approach, if you watch closely you will start to see the same companies ranking for similar keywords, on various pages, of course.

If anyone knows of software, that you can plug in a URL and see where they rank for different KWs I would love to hear about it, that would be a really handy tool to have, priceless even.

I hope that made sense, if not just let me know, I will try to explain it further

Thank you for the complement btw =)
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tommo1968 Premium Plus
I see, if you find a low QSR keyword you already know you can push it to 1 without much hassle. So you target other companies on page 2 and below to see if they are interested. They then look at you as a SEO guru and pass on the word. Excellent.

Have already found a few good keywords locally just need to hone my skills on pushing pages to 1 still on the leaning curve on that one.
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Ty Johnson Premium
Have you watched Jay's WAbiner "Hello Local.. Local Marketing as a Business"...he goes into a bit more detail on the marketing end of things.
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tommo1968 Premium Plus
No I haven't, thanks will do.
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Ty Johnson Premium
Keep me posted, on how it's going, I can use your questions for the basis for some new training, and feel free to ask me further questions, I am happy to help.
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DABK Premium
http://www.link-assistant.com/rank-tracker/check-rankings.html
This is the link to download SEO power suite. It's free. One of the things that comes with it is Rank Tracker. You put in a URL, add the keywords you want to see if it ranks for, select search engine, hit enter, and a few minutes later you have the results.

It only checks the top 10 pages.

Google is not fond of it, thinks you're trying to spam it. It lets you do some 50 keywords at a time.

After you use it, if you use it for more than 5 or so keywords, Google will ask you to decipher a capcha.

If you check all 3 main search engines and have more than a dozen keywords, it takes forever (at least 4 minutes).

You can do only one domain name at a time... It doesn't show you which page on the domain is showing up in the search engines.
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klrrider Premium
good info... thanx... will use for a reference in the future... being the slow learner I am.
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Ty Johnson Premium
I would love to hear back on how effective my tips are for you, keep me posted.
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