How to get SEO clients without cold calling

The owner of a repair business or a clinic is on a job or with a patient when you call. An email waits until they have a minute, and they answer on their own time, in their own words.

The replies bear it out. In one US agency's file of 85 replies to our outreach, only 8 ask for a call or a meeting, while 33 ask about price, a quote or a budget. Far more people ask you to send something than ask you to call. One appliance repair owner in Sherman Oaks put it plainly: “Email only, calls don't work for me.”

A short first email does the opener's job. Name the business, name the search it's missing from in its own town, and offer to send a short breakdown of why. Then ask one question: “Can I send it over?”

• No pitch, no price and no links in the first email.
• A subject line a colleague might send: short, lower-case and about their business.
• One problem the owner can check in ten seconds, not a list of everything wrong.

Our guide to getting SEO clients shows how to build the list and what the replies look like.

When they say yes, the breakdown is your sales call, in writing. Make it about their search in their town, and put the price in the same email, because that's what owners ask for:

1. The search you checked, and who shows up above them.
2. Two or three reasons they're missing, in plain words.
3. What you'd change first, and roughly how long it takes to show.
4. The price: what's included, the monthly cost, any setup fee and the contract length.

• Put the whole offer in one email they can forward to a partner or read again later.
• End with one next step they can take by replying, like “Reply yes and I'll send the agreement.”
• Answer every follow-up question in the same thread, the same day.
• If they want to talk, talk. Moving to a call is their choice, not a condition you set.

That's the order the replies suggest: email first, then a call once they're interested. When a reply asks you to call, call that day.

• Referrals from clients: ask every happy client who they know, in writing, with a line they can forward.
• Partners: web designers and developers who don't sell SEO meet business owners who need it.
• Content that ranks: a guide that answers what owners search for works while you sleep, and shows the work you'd do for them.

All three take longer to start than email outreach does. Run them alongside it, not instead of it.

Give every email a way to opt out, and keep anyone who says no on a do-not-contact list for good. The rules differ by country: CAN-SPAM in the US, PECR in the UK, CASL in Canada and the Spam Act 2003 in Australia.

Writing to the right businesses every week and sorting the answers takes hours. If you'd rather start at the reply, we run the outreach and deliver the business owners who wrote back, exclusive to you, at a price per lead. See how our SEO leads work.