Lack of personnel, lack of resources, lack of expertise – these are often the challenges that agencies face at one point in their business. When you’re unable to overcome these challenges, you’ll find your agency in the same place three or five years ago. That’s a situation you wouldn’t want to be in, right?
But, how do you avoid the trap of stagnation and keep your agency on the right path to scaling? That’s where you go with white label SEO services.
Isn’t White Label SEO the Same as SEO Outsourcing?
You’ve probably been wondering the same thing. White label SEO and SEO outsourcing can appear similar, but there are still a few things that distinguish one from the other.
When you hire SEO outsourcing, you get the services of an outsource company without rebranding their products as your own or adding these to your current offerings. In some cases, agencies that outsource their SEO are often upfront about this when they talk to their clients, as opposed to when you go for the white label track.
Hiring a white label SEO provider, on the other hand, means getting their service and rebranding it under your own brand. Unlike in SEO outsourcing, you don’t disclose to clients that you’re working with a white label provider. You can go with this option if you don’t have the resources or staff to work on an SEO project, but still want to offer this service as part of your agency’s solutions. The best part is you can access materials or tools that your white label provider made. With a white label SEO company, you can hire people to work on your clients’ projects and learn more about the industry, while growing your agency’s revenue.
How to Be Successful with White Label SEO
Here’s the bigger question – how do you make white label SEO work for your agency? After all, you want to make sure that you’re getting a service that delivers results. Otherwise, there won’t be any difference from what you’re doing.
To make the most of white label SEO solutions for your agency, follow these tips:
Learn the Art of Complementing Services
The entire point of getting white label is to provide clients with new products, expand your current solutions, and open a new revenue stream for your agency. As an agency, you need to find ways that will help you leverage this additional service for your business.
An effective way to increase returns and maximize the value of your white label SEO service is by complementing it with another solution. Create a bundle for the digital marketing services you currently have in your offerings, and include SEO. For instance, add SEO service to your one-off website design projects, so you can still have monthly recurring revenue. You can continue SEO for the next month, and—if your clients are happy with the results—start more campaigns in the future.
Not Too High, Not Too Low – Pricing
There’s a right formula to pricing your SEO services, and you need to master this if you want to make the most of your white label SEO solutions. I always recommend our digital marketing agency partners to mark up their services by three times. This allows them to have enough margin for profit. How do you determine the right pricing? Follow these tips:
- Choose a pricing model – You can present different models for your SEO services, and these usually need to match your pricing. For instance, you can bill hourly rates to clients who only have one-off projects. A retainer model will be best for long-term SEO projects, while services with specific inclusions can have their own custom packages to provide clients with different options.
- Don’t be greedy – In other words, go for a reasonable mark-up price. You don’t want to drive away clients who are genuinely interested in getting your services with a mark-up that’s too high. At the same time, your mark-up shouldn’t undervalue the time and effort you put into the white label service.
Join an Affiliate Program
You have an extensive network, and some of the people there might just be your next clients. Don’t let your connections just be that – connections.
One of the ways to leverage your connections is by joining an affiliate program. Some white label SEO companies offer affiliate programs to help their agency partners earn more based on commissions. Depending on their affiliate model, you can earn up to 30% commission.
Here’s how an affiliate program works:
You get 6% commission from a web design consultant who has your affiliate link. When the web design consultant purchases $5000 every month, you’ll be earning $300 commission from these purchases. The great thing about this is you can still resell SEO services to potential clients, which means you’re making the most of both your white label SEO and affiliate programs.
There’s a trick to affiliate programs, though. If you want to be successful, you need to increase your number of affiliates. This is when you have to be extra diligent in expanding your network and finding consultants who might be willing to become your affiliate.
The Most Important of All – Leverage Value
What is the first thing that clients often ask when you pitch to them? It’s about how you’re going to deliver results and how your service will affect their business. In short, they’re looking for value. If you can’t offer them any value, they’ll likely shut you down and move on to the next SEO agency.
Your most important hook when selling SEO is the value that you can put to the table – what makes you different from the other providers out there?
One way to show value is through an SEO audit. Use this audit to show what their website needs and how your agency can solve their issues. You can even throw in a white paper or a case study to educate clients and show them how your agency can deliver results. Once you get them to understand the value of your service and answer the never-ending question of “What do I get out of this?” you’ll have clients coming back to your agency for more.
White Label Your Way to Success
Your success as a digital marketing agency comes in two forms – making clients happy with the results you deliver, and focusing on growing your business. Achieving both becomes easier with white label SEO services.
