Can I afford to do SEO? Can I afford to not do SEO? Both questions are loaded with a ton of variables on both the objective and subjective side of the ledger.
You can only spend a dollar once so as a small/medium sized business, it is imperative you spend wisely BUT with a focused vision to grow your business in a solid and manageable fashion.
- What is SEO today?
The first step is to truly define what SEO is today. Not what it was in 2005, 2010 or even a year ago – today. SEO changes every day it seems, primarily because Google changes their algorithm 400-600/year. Take the time to get a cursory education in the nuts and bolts of effective SEO. Trust me, it will help in uncovering those companies that claim to do a proper SEO, but in essence, they are doing many, many things that worked 2, 3, 5 years ago yet today either don’t work, or worse yet, will get in trouble with the search engines.
A point that could save you from choosing the wrong SEO company, find out if they build a strategy and a plan specific to you & your market situation, or is it cookie cutter. Of course, the better educated you are on what SEO is today, the easier to come to the right conclusion.
- Define Customer Worth
Don’t allow outsiders to tell you what a customer is worth to you. It may take some time, but you have all data in-house to make this determination. There may be better models to improve the cost of acquisition or the lifetime value of your clientele, but you have accurate numbers as of today right in front of you – or at least in a combination of your desk, filing cabinets, laptop and mail slot!
In its simplest form, what your customers are worth can be determined by asking…
- What is the average net profit from a customer?
- What is the average lifetime revenue/profit from a customer?
- What does it cost to find new customers?
- What does it cost to keep current customers?
- How Many New Customers Do I Need?
Finally, you will need to determine how many new customers you need to increase your sales revenue/profit by X dollars or percentage, to meet your goals (I’m making the assumption that you have already determined/defined your business’ goals – noting that “I want more customers” isn’t a defined goal!) Then determine what your business is capable of and what realistic numbers for adding new customers are. Is adding two extra sales per month realistic for your business? Is 200 extra customers each month a more realistic number? 2000? What is realistic for a pizza shop won’t be the same as for a business that sells pools. In one instance each customer is worth $2-3 bucks while in the other, they are worth $5000-10000.
Once you’re armed with all of this information, you can then start to have the conversation around how affordable SEO is/could be and what SEO should cost your business – but that is a whole other topic for another time.
Happy SEO package hunting!