At one of the recent promotion strategy presentations, we encountered a number of problems that did not allow us to meet the client's expectations. This is a good reason to make adjustments to our business processes and take into account possible misunderstandings in the future.
What were the customer’s expectations and difficult moments?
- The client expected us to recommend the implementation of call tracking or end-to-end analytics.
- The client asked why we didn't offer blogging to create informational content.
- The client expected us to do a competitor analysis that he provided.
- The client expected us to make a lead forecast.
- The client was convinced that links were necessary for promotion in Yandex and Google, although links for Yandex were not needed for his niche.
- We were provided with an incorrect metric counter that did not capture all the required information.
What conclusions have been drawn and what changes will be made to the business process?
Now let's look at what steps we will take to avoid similar situations in the future and improve our processes throughout the customer journey.
At the pre-sale stage:
- Request access to call tracking and end-to-end analytics in advance.
- Request information about the current site conversion. A typical question: how do you currently measure website conversion?
- Clarify with the client what will be most important in the strategy for the receiving specialists on his side.
- When receiving a list of competitors from the client, inform that they will not necessarily be used for analysis. We select for analysis those competitors who have strong positions in search. However, we will use the provided competitors to find ideas for developing the client’s website.
- It is necessary to clarify whether the client necessarily wants to see the competitors specified by him in the strategy when drawing up a report in comparison with competitors.
- It is imperative to conduct a briefing, recording all information received. The manager must make sure that the client has read the brief and has no comments.
At the presale stage, conduct a joint introductory session with the RP:
- Do not skip this stage so that the manager can control the completeness of the collected information about the project.
- Introduce a mandatory contact report on the introductory meeting, which is drawn up by the RP and verified by the manager.
At the input data verification stage:
- Check the correctness of metric counters. Eliminate situations when there are several counters on the site, and one of them transmits incorrect information.
- Check the correctness of the access granted, including call tracking, webmaster and others.
At the strategy preparation stage:
- Collect a draft core and discuss it with the customer to make sure that all necessary requests are taken into account and unnecessary ones are excluded, before the stage of forecast calculations and strategy presentation.
- When presenting the draft core to the client, it is important to convey that it is important for search engines to maximize the number of relevant pages on the site. This helps improve the site's visibility and position, so we select queries that may not seem entirely suitable for the client, but help improve the site's structure in the eyes of search engines.
Meeting potential customer expectations:
- It is necessary to include the client's expectations in the packaging of the commercial proposal and presentation of the strategy.
- We recommend implementing call tracking and end-to-end analytics to track SEO results. This will help us control the quality of traffic that we bring to the site, as well as monitor conversion.
- Add to the strategy a section on information requests and site structure for them. Also offer the client a section with articles or a blog to increase the number of relevant pages.
Difficult moments
During the presentation, the client expressed the opinion that in order to promote on Yandex, it is necessary to purchase links. We were unable to quickly process this objection. In order to avoid similar situations in the future, we decided:
- Declare promotion to both search engines at once - Yandex and Google - for all tariffs.
- Include in your strategy a minimum purchase of links for any type of project.
If you have questions or need additional advice on SEO, you can write to the SEO studio "SEO COMPUTER" on any issue by email info@seo.computer.
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