Client Expectations. Whether you are a web designer, SEO, or any other person in a service industry, each new client you acquire is going to have their own set of individual expectations. Many of these expectations will be standard, but varied, depending upon your industry. If you are a web designer, well your clients are going to want a great looking site. If you’re an SEO, well your clients are going to want results. If you’re a lawyer, your client wants to win and not end up owing you their left hand and right leg for the trouble.

The point is there is always going to be generic standard expectations that you should come to expect with each new client. However, it’s those other “expectations” and even the potential “demands” that come up that you need to work to mitigate prior to work even beginning.

Here are some examples and how you can avoid running into these scenarios:

The Setting / Expectation:
Currently in home page mockup stage – delivered new mockup for review 10:50am
Client returns with changes at 5:45pm via email
Client repeatedly calls and emails starting at 10am the next day looking for next mockup.

The Solution:
Now if you’re a web designer, with any kind of experience, than you know this scenario like the back of your hand; it’s all too common. This client has VERY unrealistic expectations and demands. You can try to explain to your client that you are working on the file, you can even put it back on them, in a way, and explain that you received the new information after hours (if it was after hours) and that you, or the designer, have just started working on the site itself. This may quell some clients, others not so much. So what can you do to mitigate this from the get go?

Within your contract simply outline time frames for every stage of the design process. For example:

For Revisions (which cover mockups)
“Revisions Received Prior to 12pm on any business day will not be made available prior to such time as 48 business hours from the time that client revisions were received and confirmed in house.”

You just gave yourself 48 hours. Will every client read all of this? No, but this is where your sales team, whether that’s you or someone else, should take the opportunity to go over that section and highlight these terms in a positive way. For example a lot of clients always ask us “How long will the design process take?” and our response is always the same, “However long it takes for you to get revisions back to us” and we kind of say it with a little smile, but honestly that is the scenario nine times out of ten. Clients are busy with their businesses and can take days or even weeks to get back to you. When they finally do, because now the “process” has taken so long they expect you to jump through hoops to get their changes made.

Pointing out time frames of revisions to clients, before you start work, saves you from having to use those terms as almost a defensive weapon such as “well it says in the contract”. Using lines like that is NEVER a good place to be, and should only be used as an absolute last response to an overly abrasive client that just doesn’t get it.

YOU need to set the expectations ahead of time. If you give unrealistic expectations that you can’t deliver on, then you leave only yourself to blame. If you let the client dictate those expectations, again you leave only yourself to blame. However, be conscious of your client and their needs. Two weeks for revisions of 5 changes to a mockup is NOT realistic.

The Setting:
New client comes on board. Client knows enough about SEO to really rank a website, in 1997…
Contract started 1st of the month. Client has a 100 page website, you made client aware that off page optimization (link building) would not start until the onsite optimization was complete. Client also knows to expect 30 days (22 business days) until onsite optimization is complete.

The Expectation / Demand:
Day 31: Client asks why they cannot see more links in Google when they check the link: command. They also want to know why their site isn’t already ranking #1 for all of their keywords.

The Solution:
Ah yes, I think we SEO’s have it worst of all when it comes to dealing with unrealistic expectations. First most clients have NO CLUE as to the value proposition of your services. Sure, you can explain and explain, you can even try to relate your hourly rates to what they charge their own clients, but you will never, or rarely ever, be deemed worthy of that, or almost any, dollar amount to that kind of client.

So what can you do to mitigate this kind of unrealistic expectation?

Education.

As an SEO you should be educating your clients to the generality of what you will be doing, time frames to complete them, and to the simple fact that you do not own the search engines. While you are confident in your long term ability to achieve top search engine ranking (I hope you’re confident in it if you’re charging people for it) time estimates to achieve noticeable positions are just that, estimates. You’re going to run into stubborn keywords. You’re going to get that one keyword that the client really wants that you, no matter what you try, appear destined to forever hold the #11 position. That’s why instilling realistic expectations is critical prior to starting any optimization campaign.

There is also something to be said about how you “choose” your clients. I know it’s hard to imagine, (shock and awe) but you can say no to a perspective client. If you’ve been doing this long enough you’ve experienced exactly what we have found; Clients that push the hardest for a “deal” are often the clients with the most unrealistic expectations. They want Lamborghini performance on a Yugo budget and my apologies to anyone still driving a Yugo, but let’s be realistic here even the Pinto had Mustang parts…

This is also another area to bring your contract and sales people into play. Put in all of the provisos that help to cover you on the SEO end, but make sure your client is fully aware. One of the things that we are constantly running into is business owners who have been burned over and over again by so called “SEO companies” that promise the world, but deliver nothing more than a bill. Most clients appreciate honesty more than you will ever know and when you can deliver honesty, service, and results you can mitigate just about any unrealistic expectations.

In Closing
In closing if you set the expectations through verbal and written communication and make sure that the client, at each step where it is critical, knows ETA’s and what to expect, you can keep the client, and just as importantly, YOU, happy.

Defining how you, as a marketing specialist, survives this recession is key to your ability to help your clients do the same through this rough economic time.

White Hat SEO’s Turning To Spam For Clients
This brings me to something I’ve been noticing a LOT of recently. On just about all of my sites, even ones I would consider “Hub” sites that rank very well, I have been receiving a daily barrage of new Spam. However this time its from SEO companies, some that are known and even pretty active in the “SEO” community. I am use to being blasted by the rogue SEO “companies” (that term used VERY loosely) based in India and abroad, but this new slew of US based companies made me really start to think about the future of the SEO world as a whole. How will the down turn the past couple of years in the amount of consumers seeking search engine marketing interact with the recent economic position?

Google Trends

The House Cleaning of the Search Engine Optimization Industry
Our industry as a whole is starting to go through a bit of a “House Cleaning” similar to what the real estate industry has experienced the past few years. Four years ago just about everyone went into real estate as an agent or a loan officer. The market was red hot and people could literally jump right in and start making money. Well, with the housing market taking it’s beating (read: complete obliteration) recently those thousands of real estate agents and loan officers are now out of business and making up a large percentage of the jobless Americans. (Though those with high ranking websites appear to be stemming the tide a bit better just from the shear amount of traffic they receive). The same thing is coming down the line for SEO companies.

Cut Rate May Be Cutting Out

The biggest “cleaning” I feel will be in the cut rate, primarily spam oriented, “Guaranteed Google rankings for $29 a month” type of companies. If you sell search engine optimization or search engine marketing services than you are well aware of these firms. You may even have had to try to “defend” your pricing structure against these kinds of sites. It’s frustrating, especially when the buying public as a whole does not understand the industry and what it entails (read: time and money) to achieve ranking. This really becomes evident in heavily optimized industries such as real estate. It amazes me personally when I see companies offering those kinds of pricing and services since I know there is no benefit to their service. But how do you get that across to potential clients?

Information and Education. Simply put the SEO companies that are going to survive the down turn are going to be the ones that not only can give their clients information and an education of sorts on the world of search engine optimization, but also those companies constantly working to stay a step ahead, working on new content, seeing trends before they happen and constantly working to gain more and more knowledge. The cutting edge can only be the cutting edge when the edge is kept sharp.

Recently some family of mine received a letter in the mail from their local chamber of commerce asking them to “Buy in Garden Grove!” The letter explained that 25% of the cities revenues come from the local small businesses. The direct mail piece is asking residents to try to keep all of their money within the city. Buying cars, groceries, etc… Makes sense. I mean everyone is hurting and I can’t even begin to tell you how many shops are empty and how many “for lease” signs are now up when I drive through the city.

However they made one really large mistake that is actually quite prevalent by many small businesses today. In their direct mail piece they are asking residents to go to their website (ci.garden-grove.ca.us) and click on the link “Buy In Garden Grove” so that the residents of the city can see all of the participating businesses and the deals that they are offering. The problem? There IS NO LINK, anywhere on their site that says anything about their recent promotion or “Buy In Garden Grove”. In fact the word “Buy” doesn’t even exist (except as part of the word “buyer”) on their home page at all.

This doesn’t surprise me from a government agency per se. I am assuming that they will put it up sometime this week as the mail piece did get delivered today. However the execution of this plan is very flawed. The “Buy in Garden Grove” should be up PRIOR to sending out any advertisements especially very expensive ones like direct mail. It should be up as it is a way to help out the local businesses. However this isn’t just a government problem. I have noticed more and more small businesses using direct mail in this very same fashion. Many small businesses are using the more expensive direct mail to send visitors to their website and than offering no follow through with information about the direct mail on their website.

What’s worse is that direct mail has a cost per conversion that is generally 9+ times HIGHER than the cost of search engine marketing. Now in terms of the city of Garden Grove they had to do the direct mail, really not much better way to make notice of their services to the people because of the government agency and Im sure being a government agency they get some kind of a deal when it comes to bulk mail.

However what small businesses need to take from this is to be diligent when it comes to the execution of your marketing program. If you are going to use offline marketing to advertise web specific ads make sure that your site is updated and ready to go before the first piece of mail or offline marketing even goes out.