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Individual SEO Clients of Corporate SEO Clients. Which do you prefer?



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Individual SEO Clients of Corporate SEO Clients. Which do you prefer?

I've worked with plenty of website owners over the years, most are individuals but there have also been a decent amount of corporate clients.

I'll give a brief example of what these clients are like.

Individual Clients:
These clients are people starting up a business or want to get into making money online and found you because you can do something they need. These clients tend to have a lower budget because they're either starting up or don't have a lot of revenue coming in.

Corporate Clients:
These clients are the corporations themselves. Usually you have a contact or two at the company and they are the ones you relay all the reports and updates to. Rarely do you work directly with the CEO or President unless it's a smaller corporation and they want to be hands on.


The main difference between an Individual client and a Corporate client is the amount they are willing to put into their SEO and Marketing campaigns without question. The individual clients will have a tighter budget so it makes sense that they won't be able to invest as much as a million dollar corporation. Corporate clients tend to be all business, usually, because they are looking at the campaigns as a branding play that will pay off in the long run. The Individual client is more personable because they usually talk to you like they've known you for years.

Both types of clients want to make more money, but the Individual client tends to want to see a quicker ROI than the Corporate clients. This is mainly due to the Individual risking more money than they can afford to. They hear that they can get rich if they're ranked #1 in the search engines but they don't know the work involved and the timeline behind it. The corporate client usually knows the basics because they've done some research on what will happen after they sign the contract.

Personally I would choose to work with 10 large corporations than 100 individual clients. I would get a lot more references and positive reviews working with 100 individuals, but the amount of concerns from the individuals that I would have to calm would be a huge headache. I can give a corporation a timeline of what's going to happen and if I don't provide results at the end, they will start to get angry. The individual gets angry after the first 2 weeks when they're not making more money.


Which do you prefer? Individual clients or Corporate clients?

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RaduV
I have started with individuals at the beginning. I usually develop a good professional relationship with them and most of the time they remain regulars. As you said, working with individuals it's a bit tricky because they put their money and they are expecting the results faster but if you establish some achievable goals in a certain time table from the beginning, you should not have any problem with them.

Anyhow, situations may arise but usually are minor thing which can be solved in a matter of minutes. They read articles written by certain seo guru's and they find themselves mislead.

I would definitely try corporate seo but I didn't had the chance yet.



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Lynne
I believe that you need both and should market towards both. Yes the corporate clients have more money and are willing to wait longer to see results with their marketing campaigns but I would think that getting lots of corporate clients is not always easy.

I also think that while individuals may not always have a lot of money to spend they can always grow into a larger customer can't they? I also think that perhaps where the individual or owner of a small business is dealing with you, you are getting loyalty from the right person right?

If you are dealing with a marketing division of a company you don't have the person with the control of the money on your side do you? What if the marketing manager leaves the company and the next manager has a favourite SEO expert they like to use?



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