Anyone check on the ‘ start marketing agency because they have ChatGPT subscription’ bros lately?

Every SEO agency says you can't guarantee results. I guarantee them on every deal, and it's the reason my sales calls got easier. You've probably said that line yourself this month, right after the owner asked what happens if he pays you for six months and nothing changes. I get why you say it because I said it for years. Google controls the rankings, an update can hit any week, and if you promise something you can't control you're the one eating it when it goes wrong. That part is real, and nobody can promise a plumber position one. But he never asked for position one. What he's really asking is whether he's about to waste his money again like he did with the last guy, and as far as he's concerned "nobody can guarantee SEO" answers that question with a yes. So I guarantee a noticeable improvement, and once he hears that he stops worrying about getting burned and starts asking about the plan, so the price isn't the whole conversation anymore. Most agencies are scared to guarantee anything because they sell rankings, and rankings are the one thing they can't control. When you sell leads the way I do with the Lead-Proof Retainer, priced off what one job is worth to him and tracked every month in calls and forms, you know exactly what you're delivering and you can stand behind it. An auto glass shop here in Fresno, 22 keywords we track for them, and their performance score is up 627%.

Your clients don’t care if it’s SEO, AEO, GEO or whatever we’re calling it next month They care about what’s left in the bank account at the end of it The acronym is how you got the work done The money is why they keep paying you Learn to show them that number and you can charge what you’re actually worth

There's a verse in Proverbs I come back to a lot: "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he." I didn't connect it to my business until a client fired me. I was on vacation with my wife and I spent a whole afternoon in a café building him new pages because he had questions about his rankings report. I wanted him happy, and two weeks later he was gone. I was mad at the moment, but what I realized is that people will only value you as much as you value yourself. No client is ever going to look at you and say "no, you're worth more than $500." You have to be the one who says it. If you've tried raising your prices for years and it never sticks, I don't think you're bad at this. I think the number in your head never moved, so it came out shaky on the call, and the client heard it before you finished the sentence. The number you believe you're worth ends up on your invoice. What's the number in your head right now?

A remodeling company here in Fresno was showing up in 1% of local searches for "kitchen remodel fresno" in April. By the end of July they were showing up in 44% of them. They're one of our clients at the agency. I'm posting it because of what I would have done with that result a few years ago, back when I sold SEO the way most agency owners still sell it. I would have sent the owner a rankings report with a bunch of green arrows next to keywords he never searches himself, and then I would have waited for the text asking what exactly he's paying for. A lot of agency owners I talk to think SEO is just hard to prove. I thought the same thing for years, and that's exactly why I kept my prices low enough that nobody would question them. What changed for me is I stopped reporting on rankings and started showing the owner what he actually cares about: how many people called or filled out a form asking about a kitchen remodel. For this client that meant showing him his call volume up 47% and his quote and contact form submissions up 217%. Once an owner can see numbers like that every month, the conversation about price gets a lot easier. That's the Lead-Proof Retainer. You price the retainer off what one job is worth to your client, you sell it as lead generation instead of SEO, and you prove it every month with tracked calls and forms. A remodeler doesn't need you to explain local search to him when the calls and forms are sitting right there on the report. What we actually changed in those few months, and how the report is built so the owner understands it in two minutes, is what I go through with agency owners one on one.

this got a lot of comments, most agree w/ me some say 'take high road' times have changed, you don't have to "take it on the chin" and there is zero virtue in doing so did it for many years when I first started out someone out there will take his disrespect and his money I'm saving us both a headache

A business owner doesn’t care how Google works. He cares whether his phone rings, yet almost every SEO sales call I hear starts with someone explaining Google. If you run an agency and you’ve been telling yourself you’re just bad at sales, look at what you were taught to say before you blame yourself. Everyone in this industry learned to explain backlinks, promise positions and then answer “how long until I see results?” on the back foot, and that call goes badly for almost anyone who runs it. I ran that same call for years at $300 to $500 a month and figured that was what the market paid. Today we sell websites and local SEO at up to $10,000 a month. What changed was the call: I stopped talking about how SEO works and started talking about his business and what one new customer is worth to him. That’s the selling side of the Lead-Proof Retainer. How much of your last sales call was you explaining SEO? DM me MRR and I’ll tell you what I ask instead.

Most business owners sit down in January and decide what they’re spending on marketing for the year, and whoever is in front of them with a clear offer when that happens gets the budget. That’s where a lot of agency owners lose next year before it starts. October and November get busy, the holidays come, and the plan is to fix pricing in the new year. That means pitching a new offer in February to clients whose budgets are already set, so you end up with whatever is left over, usually the same $1,500 a month you’re getting now. I get why it gets pushed, Q4 is busy for everybody. We sold a $20,000 website in the last few months, paid in full, and that happened because our offer was ready when the owner was ready to spend. If your offer still says “SEO package” instead of being priced off what one job is worth to your client, that’s the thing to fix before then. You have about ten weeks before those budgets get written.

What do you notice about this home services lead channel breakdown? Hint: organic/ai wins on quality.

Run this math on your agency tonight. Say you have 10 clients at $1,200 a month. You raise every one of them by $1,000, and 3 of them leave. Before: 10 clients, $12,000 a month After: 7 clients, $15,400 a month That’s $3,400 more every month with 30% fewer clients to manage. Over a year it’s $40,800, with fewer support tickets and fewer texts while you’re on vacation. And the 3 who left are usually the ones who complained the most. What happens to your year if you have this conversation in November instead of next summer?

AI is going to replace a lot of SEO agencies, starting with the cheap ones. If you’re selling blog posts, pages and keyword reports for $500 to $1,000 a month, your client knows ChatGPT can do most of that now. He just hasn’t told you yet. An agency that shows a solar installer his cost per lead dropping from $353 to $70 doesn’t get replaced by a chatbot. Nobody cancels the guy who’s making their phone ring. I use AI in my agency every day and it makes my team faster. My clients still pay me for the leads. Every month you sell tasks instead of leads puts you one month closer to the email that says “we’re going to handle this in house."

There is a company in the same town as you Charging 5x what you charge They don’t know what they’re doing They’re just good at sales and packaging You on the other hand are really good at what you do But you think SEO is only worth $1500 a month Maybe 1000 to get them to close the deal Guess who wins?

I used to charge $300/month for Local SEO. Now I charge 10-20x that.

SEO is changing rapidly, and if you are selling "SEO" and specific deliverables, NGMI

Cool win from a client who is starting to crush it on AI. The best part? Higher % qualified leads. Traditional SEO is keyword driven. You have to map intent based on wording. but it's not foolproof. With the new way of search that continues to grow, you can create content for different customer stages and answer questions as they ask them, and be a part of their decision.

Office in Eastern Europe is looking good! Some of the most talented and hard working folks out there.