Questions to help get to know a potential client and see what the possibilities are for there campaign?

[duncan274]

OK so I am putting together a list of questions to refer potential clients to.

The purpose of these questions is to:

1, Help them understand the difference between "just give us your keywords and we will make you rank" seo  and the full range of options that are advocated here on seo moz.  ....

2, Get them to see that there are different levels of involvement that are available for different aspects of a campaign and give them ideas and options on how much input they want to have as well as make them see that we can help them with even the stuff they are gonna do themselves or do it for them with there input and permission.

Thats where things get a bit confusing I was thinking of having a list of fifty linkbuilding/linkbaiting  techniques and check box options beside each one so that they can read a little bit about the particular technique ie forum participation for example and then see how they felt like that related to there industry , wether they would want there staff to do it with some training from us wther they would want us to help them find the right forums and show them how to link back and to which page, or wether they would just want us to handle everything or simply not feel that that was right for there business ..

then they would move on to the next thing ie   video creation or user generated content

and in the end we would have a big list of things to discuss with them and they would have a better understandiing of how much there is to good seo and what might work for them and also how we could help them and how a relationship/ partnership might look

I would love some feed back on this is it possible will it help us to build trust with potential clients (which is diffucult for a new biz in this industry)  how would you lay it out would it be a usefull resource for other seo companies etc

thanks so much seo mozzers this forum is awsome and i know you will steer me in the right direction

oh ps   this would be something we would keep on our site

[EGOL]

In my opinion the SEO consultant who will bring the most value to a company will be the one who learns the most about that  company's current business, current products, current goals and current capacity... and then identifies ways to match them to opportunities that exist on the web.

This is much more than a bunch of checkboxes that will turn into a "to do list" that you can do or we can do for you.  This is more like a business plan that launches an aggressive venture into new markets - even if they already have a website.

[duncan274]

I completely  agree with you when you say..

"In my opinion the SEO consultant who will bring the most value to a company will be the one who learns the most about that  company's current business, current products, current goals and current capacity... and then identifies ways to match them to opportunities that exist on the web."

And this is exactly the type of business I want us to be, so how would you recommend learning about these above mentioned factors and more.  Apart from researching there site and industry ( which comes later) assuming they are not a client yet.

It seems to me that a well designed in depth questionaire would scale very well and would mean that before you start looking deeply into someones site ( which takes alot of time ) you can use questions carefully constructed to serve lots of purposes.

Then of course come your research more talks with the client and eventually a proposal/ business plan.

but it seems to me that the first step is to make them think  through a set of questions

it shows that they are commited and it should be very usefull for everyone involved