For large SEO marketing agencies and solopreneurs, being able to get new clients on a consistent basis is one of the most essential skills to have.
But even with a dedicated sales team, increasing conversion rates to sign up new SEO clients can sometimes feel like a crapshoot.
Through over 15 years of experience and lots of trial and error, I’ve developed an outreach method that has given me extremely high conversion rates. It combines a simple social media script, Xagio’s AI-generated website audit reports, and an offer that is simply too good to turn down.
The best part is that you can replicate this method with less than 5 minutes of your time using Xagio’s website Audit reports that practically autogenerate.
Let’s dive right in.
The Magnus Outreach Method - MOM
My team came up with the term Magnus Outreach Method (MOM) after a recent webinar where I went through the process live and caught two new clients while I was still recording.
And if you invest just a few more minutes to read this guide, I’m certain you could have more SEO clients in no time with very little up-front effort.
1. Find Local Facebook Groups
Most people these days try to focus their social media marketing efforts on fancy advertising with dozens of different targeting methods to split test the best results.
In my experience, it’s an awful lot of effort to get SEO leads that you can achieve with far less effort.
What I recommend you do is join as many local Facebook groups for communities and businesses as you can find in your area.
The example I used on a live webinar is a group called “Beaumont Talks”. It’s an active community group where I live and I know that many business owners hang out there too.
Simply search for different groups within 50-100 miles of your home, which is where you’ll find it easiest to land local SEO clients.
2. Post An Offer For A Free SEO Report
Once you’ve joined a few groups, post some general comments and answers on other people’s posts and introduce yourself so that you don’t come across as a spammer.
Maybe even say hi to people and business owners you know in the group to give you some more trustworthiness.
Then, all you have to do is create a post in each of those groups with a simple and difficult-to-ignore offer like this one:
All I did was create some trust as a fellow local and add an instant hook for a completely free report.
You can modify the above script for your local area and then wait for the first responses to come in.
In my case, the requests for free SEO audits came in while I was still doing the webinar, and they kept coming in for days after I created the post.
3. Create A Xagio Audit Report For Respondents
Now, you might think that I’m overpromising by saying that I can have a tailored SEO audit for a client’s website done within seconds.
But that’s exactly what you can do with Xagio’s Audit and Wizard features.
As soon as I got some responses to my Facebook post, I went into Xagio’s cloud app and created a website Audit that pulled in all the existing pages, ranking keywords, competition data, and current SERP positions for all the website’s pages.
The next thing I did was run a second Audit on one of the competitor’s sites at the top of the SERPs to get the same level of information.
In less than 20 seconds, you get the most important information to provide to a potential client about how they are currently ranking and where they need to focus on to catch up with competitors.
The best thing is that you can combine multiple Audits into one report that you can then share with potential SEO clients. You can even White Label them for a professional SEO agency appearance and achieve even more trust and authority.
4. Share The Xagio Report
Once you’re happy the report contains enough valuable information to give away for free, all you need to do is DM the person who responded with a link to the shared report.
<screenshot of the Xagio report from the webinar>
I also suggest you offer a quick phone call or video chat to discuss and explain the report.
The first goal of this interaction should be to offer maximum value and explain where they have room for improvement and what you suggest they do.
You can then also offer SEO services to fix all those immediate problems you encountered.
5. Negotiate For SEO Services
When it comes to this first interaction with SEO leads, you can take multiple different approaches.
My experience has shown that jumping straight into a monthly contract for SEO services can turn a lot of local businesses off. Instead, I often find myself in two situations.
The first one happened live on a webinar where two potential clients offered massage therapy and house cleaning in return for technical SEO services.
Yes, I managed to negotiate massages and cleaning in return for fixing SEO issues identified in the Audit reports.
The second option is to offer potential SEO clients an upfront once-off fee to make fixes from the initial Audit report.
Here’s what that would involve.
6. Deliver Massive Value From Day 1
You can charge a client $2,000 to fill all the gaps identified in the Xagio Audit reports and do so with minimum effort.
This will involve on-page optimizations (done in seconds with Xagio AI), keyword optimizations on existing pages, and additional content marketing to create pages for keywords they aren’t ranking for.
You can have all of this done within a week, and your client will start seeing results within 30 days.
That puts you in a position where you can offer a monthly SEO service where you keep improving the site for more keywords that you can get from auditing other competitors and doing recursive keyword research (more on that here).
At this stage, it will be a lot easier for this client to see and understand the value of an SEO company like yours, making it easy to negotiate a monthly service fee.
How Does It Compare To Other Methods
I’ve worked with many digital marketing agencies over the years and discussed different outreach methods with dozens of experts at SEO marketing conferences.
And one thing I’ve learned is that copying the process of an SEO agency requires lots of tools, manual work, and time.
Here’s what’s typically involved to get more SEO clients.
Tools Needed
All of what I mentioned above is possible with tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush that allow you to spy on competitors and create long lists of ranking keywords.
But here’s what they don’t do.
None of those SEO tools will use AI to cluster keywords into groups and silos and present all the information in a simple report that you white-label and share with clients.
They also won’t directly integrate with a WordPress dashboard to make updates and improvements, meaning that you’re paying $100 to $200 per month just for the data you then have to manually analyze.
Which leads me to the next issue.
Time Investment
SEO agencies and solopreneurs have to invest days and even weeks into analyzing keyword reports from SEO tools.
Even a limited free report could take a day to become meaningful and well-presented.
With Xagio, you can have a report ready in less than 30 seconds and branded in another 15 seconds.
That puts you in a powerful position to get SEO clients by reaching out to dozens of businesses daily without needing a large team to support generating the reports.
Success Rate
I have tested all types of paid advertising, cold emailing, cold calling, and inbound marketing techniques over the years.
The reason I keep going back to this method is that I consistently get SEO clients with minimum effort.
If I get 10 responses to a post, I can have the reports set up in less than 10 minutes with massive amounts of value. It’s free to the potential client and costs me hardly any time.
In the webinar I mentioned above, I had two offers for service exchanges within an hour, and I received more requests in the following days, which resulted in one paying new client.
If you’ve tried other methods to find SEO clients, I bet you’ll instantly improve your conversion rates with this new approach.
Take The First Step To Land Your Next Client
Now that you have the blueprint for how to get SEO clients to sign up more consistently, it’s time to take immediate action.
If you don’t have a Xagio account yet, then sign up and take advantage of fast and professional-looking SEO reports. Just one converted client could pay for more than a full year’s membership.
Then, join a few Facebook groups in your local area and use the simple script above to make an offer.
You’ll be amazed how insanely fast you’ll get responses.
And don’t forget to post your results in the Xagio Facebook group with #MagnusOutreachMethod.
What a great article and super unique method!