There’s a cliché doing rounds in the local media industry, and it goes like this – “Advertising is sold, not bought.” Indeed, local businesses are often bustling running their businesses trying to take up advertising or marketing measures on their own. However, anybody who still has a belief in this adage is preparing his company for failure down the lane. Local businesses are interested in handling all marketing strategies themselves, thanks to the easy-to-use ad products released by Facebook and Google in particular. They don’t want to spend time to learn the best digital marketing tactics and implement them. However, there’s nothing like getting assistance from a professional digital marketing agency in Mumbai, Bangalore or anywhere else. If these local businesses hope to remain competitive in the year 2020 and beyond, they should be wise enough to invest in digital marketing. Now, for the digital marketing professionals out there, we are sure that you have found it very challenging to sell digital marketing services to the local business owners. Their viewpoint is understandable; after all, why would they want to buy services like SEO, web design, social media management or PPC from you when they don’t even know what it is and how it can benefit their business? So, the point here is that it’s an inadequate sales approach or miscommunication that is limiting the number of clients you can get. Before Selling, Listen to Their Marketing Needs Local businesses are regularly targeted by digital marketers who try to sell them services that they may not require through spammy emails and virtual assistants. Don’t be just another marketer who seeks the same attack on business owners. Instead of being another problem, be their solution and help them. Selling your services to local businesses lets you have a face-to-face meet-up with your prospective clients. Speak to them in person and set yourself apart from the conventional marketers. It will be beneficial for you. When you ask your potential clients about their marketing and business requirements and listen to them with patience, they will feel that they have got some real help. Don’t Be a Conventional Salesperson Most digital marketing firms depend on outbound sales to fetch clients. Mass digital spam, desperate sales pitch attempts and cold calling strategies fail to work. Without knowing what the local business wants, don’t try to sell your service packages as such an approach can put off prospective clients and harm your credibility. Set yourself apart from the conventional salespersons. Instead, earn the trust of the potential client, build loyalty and build a relationship that steps ahead of the primary seller-buyer mindset. Ask a Lot of Questions As the local business owners, as many questions as needed to find out what their business and marketing objectives are. Ask questions, find out what struggles they’re having, and ask them what they are doing to solve the issues. Once you listen to and understand these goals, pitch out your solutions. Find out about the marketing strategies they used in the past and how successful they were. If those strategies had failed, what were the reasons for failure? Listen to their answers keenly. Your ultimate aim should be to develop a trustworthy relationship and make them feel involved in the marketing efforts. Sell Your Services to Their Aspirations Though local businesses generate decent profits, the primary motive of these small business owners is to enjoy freedom. They generally don’t care about the fine details like website design standards of SEO standards, which you try to explain to them. Rather than trying to sell numbers, talk to them about their aspirations. Find out what they would like to spend time on – it could be traveling, golfing or even getting adequate sleep on most nights. Once you know this, smartly prove to them how your digital marketing services can help them achieve that. Share results from Your Personal Site And Social Media Attention The basic idea behind this strategy is to go through the process of building traffic first, either for yourself or someone else and then to use that process as an example to show a local company what you can do for them. You have to prove that you can actually help these sort of companies if you want to grab their attention. And the best way to do this is by showing them hard data and statistics from either your own affiliate marketing website, or from another client site that you’ve worked your marketing magic on. Close the Deal with Value Instead of bragging about all the right services that your digital marketing agency in mumbai, Delhi or elsewhere can provide, prove it. Devise your strategies such that you can show them the outcomes before discussing financial commitments. For instance, send over a website audit or a few leads before asking for payment. It’s not that local businesses don’t want to spend money, but they want to be sure that investing in digital marketing is worth its value. There are plenty of great software companies, agencies, even large media resellers out there whose business does still depend on outbound selling to customers. But all too often they go in trying to sell a specific digital marketing package or service without even knowing what the business owner wants help with first. It’s an approach that immediately turns off their would-be customers and loses credibility before they’ve even had a chance to earn it. Setting aside for a moment that the package or service isn’t even delivering what the customer is looking for! Please discuss with your potential clients about increasing their market share, giving them a consistent flow of business or generating leads. Demonstrate to them that your expertise is digital marketing can make things more comfortable in their business life. With these tips, you should find it much easier to sell your digital marketing services to local businesses. Read on to discover a few tips to sell digital marketing services to local businesses.
