Finding and landing new local SEO clients can be a challenge, as many business owners are still unaware of the profound impact that local SEO can have on their traditional local and AI search visibility and overall success.
Getting leads and pitching local and AI search engine optimization services to them requires a strategic approach and a deep understanding of their unique local search market and the businesses competing in it.
Not only do you need to find businesses that are struggling in local search, but you also have to be able to immediately demonstrate the potential value of your services to them, in order to convert these leads into paying customers.
Local Falcon is an agentic AI search and local SEO platform that tracks and improves brand visibility across generative AI answer engines and local search. The platform can help you overcome some of the common hurdles faced by SEO professionals and agencies in this niche market, optimizing your time and helping you more efficiently discover and secure new clients.
How To Find Local SEO Clients with Local Falcon
Getting new local business clients starts with identifying your target market. Some SEO professionals and agencies provide more general local SEO services for a range of industries and clients, while others may specialize in a certain niche, such as restaurants, dentists, or contractors.
If you haven't already, decide who your target audience is. You'll also need to define the geographic area(s) you want to look for new clients in. Once you've done these two things, you can then use the Local Falcon SEO app to find new clients from your target audience and geographic market.
How To Find Local SEO Clients by Running a Quick Scan
Let's say you want to pitch local SEO services to restaurants (one of the most competitive industries in local search) in Calgary, Alberta.
In order to find potential clients with Local Falcon's agentic AI search and local SEO platform, you could run a Quick Scan for any restaurant somewhere in Calgary. This might be an existing client, a business that's doing well in local search, or simply a restaurant that you like. Running a Quick Scan for any restaurant business will automatically generate a list of competitors in the scanned area, all of which are potential clients for local SEO services.
After you've picked a restaurant to run a scan for, enter the keywords you want to find the competition for and set an appropriate scan radius. Local Falcon will provide suggested keywords based on the business's categories that you can easily select from, but you can add as many more broad or more specific keywords as you like. Don't worry, there's no limit on how many you can scan for!
In terms of the scan radius, a radius of 1 or 2 miles is a good starting point for businesses in urban areas with dense populations of people and businesses. For businesses in more sparsely populated or rural areas, you might set a radius of 5 or 10 miles.
After choosing the scan settings, run the scan and go to your Scan Reports to view your results and find local SEO clients to pitch your services to.
For example, let's say you ran a scan for a popular barbecue joint, for the keyword "barbecue restaurant." Open up the Scan Report and scroll down to the list of competitors at the bottom. Any business on this list is a potential client for local SEO services, and that's just in the one area you scanned!
Finding Local SEO Clients on the Competitor List (Picking the Best Leads)
Depending on the area and keywords you scanned, there could potentially be dozens of competitors to choose from to pitch your services to. However, you can use Local Falcon's Google Business Profile rank tracking metrics to help you choose a few of the most promising ones to get started, increasing your chances of converting leads into clients.
The best way to identify opportunities is to look at the SoLV scores for all the businesses on the competitor list. This metric is a score from 0 to 100, and represents how many times the business shows up in the top 3 results on Google (Google's 3-Pack) for the area scanned. It's a great way to get an overall idea of a business's current success in local search.
By default, the competitor list in a Scan Report is ranked from highest to lowest SoLV score, meaning the businesses at the top of the list appear in Google's 3-pack most often, while those at the bottom typically don't appear at all.
Although any business on this list could potentially improve their ranking with local SEO services, the best leads are likely neither the businesses at the top nor the bottom of this list.
Businesses with SoLV scores of 70+ are already doing very well in local search, while businesses with SoLV scores of 0 are severely underperforming, meaning that it may be very difficult to actually increase their rankings and demonstrate the value of your services within a reasonable amount of time.
For the best balance between opportunity and ease of optimization, you probably want to pick leads from somewhere in the middle of this list to pitch your services to. For example, businesses with SoLV scores in the 10 to 50 range could potentially be excellent new clients, as they already have some presence in local search, but they also have a lot of room for improvement.
Keep in mind that this isn't an exact science. You should get a feel for which leads are the most receptive to your outreach and pitches as you perform this process more over time.
How To Pitch To Clients with Local Falcon
Once you've identified a few promising leads, the process of pitching local SEO services to local businesses typically starts with conducting cold outreach to them.
Traditional cold outreach involves calling or emailing potential clients and pitching your services to them to turn leads into prospects, who you can then continue to nurture and eventually convert into clients.
However, many businesses receive so much cold outreach that they are likely to ignore your first communication unless you tailor your outreach with a high level of personalization that instantly gives leads a sneak peek into how your services can actually help them.
Personalizing Cold Outreach with Local Falcon
Using Local Falcon's agentic AI search and local SEO platform can greatly enhance the effectiveness of your cold outreach by allowing you to tailor your communication to each potential client's specific situation. When reaching out, you can mention particular competitors and highlight opportunities to outrank them for specific keywords in specific geographic areas, demonstrating your understanding of the client's competitive landscape at a hyper-local level.
For instance, after running a scan and identifying a restaurant with a SoLV score of 20 as a potential client, you can craft your outreach message to emphasize how your services can help them improve their rankings for high-value keywords. You might say something like, "I noticed that your competitors X and Y are ranking higher for 'best barbecue in Calgary.' Our SEO services can help you outrank them and attract more local customers."
Falcon AI, Local Falcon's built-in AI "brain," even provides high-level performance summaries and actionable optimization recommendations, as well as highlights specific opportunities to outrank vulnerable competitors, right in your Scan Reports, which you can use to save a ton of time and manual work when personalizing cold outreach.
This level of personalization shows potential clients that you have already done the research and have a clear plan to improve their local search performance. It also helps you stand out from generic cold outreach attempts, increasing the likelihood of engagement and conversion.
By identifying specific gaps and opportunities in a client's local search presence, you can present a compelling case for your services and make it easier for business owners to see the immediate value of investing in local SEO. This approach not only builds trust, but also positions you as a knowledgeable and proactive partner dedicated to their success.
Using Local Falcon To Convert Prospects to Clients
When your cold outreach goes well, some of those leads will turn into prospects, or people who are actively considering your services.
When trying to convert these prospects to clients, you can use Local Falcon's data-driven insights to highlight specific keywords and areas where the potential client is underperforming compared to their competitors and offer targeted solutions to boost their search visibility.
Another strategy is to showcase quick wins by identifying low-hanging fruit, like keywords or areas where the client is close to ranking in the top three but needs a little push. This can be particularly compelling for business owners who want to see tangible results quickly.
For example, if a restaurant is ranking fourth or fifth for a popular search term, you can outline how a focused local SEO campaign could boost them up into the coveted 3-Pack, quickly leading to increased traffic and sales potential.
In your pitches, you can also mention any recent trends or changes in local search that might impact the client's rankings. This demonstrates your up-to-date knowledge and reinforces your role as an expert in the field who can navigate the complexities of local SEO to their advantage.
Pitching AI Visibility Services With Local Falcon
If your agency is offering AI visibility optimization services (and given where search is heading, it should), Local Falcon gives you a powerful way to demonstrate the opportunity to prospects before you've even gotten them on a call. You can run AI visibility scans for prospects as well to strengthen your pitches.
Most local business owners have no idea how they appear (or don't appear) in AI-generated search results. That blind spot is your opening.
Running an AI Visibility Scan for a Prospect
Just as you can run a Quick Scan for Google Business Profile rankings to assess a prospect's traditional local search performance, you can run an AI visibility scan to see how they're showing up across generative AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Gemini.
Instead of looking at SoLV, the key metric here is Share of AI Voice (SAIV), which measures how often a business is mentioned or recommended in AI-generated responses for a given keyword and location. Like SoLV, it's scored from 0 to 100. Good local business prospects you scan will likely have an SAIV of zero or close to it, providing you with another way to pitch the value you can provide as an agency partner.
When a prospect sees that their competitors are being cited by AI search engines and they aren't, the value of your services becomes immediately concrete. You're not asking them to take your word for it. You're showing them the gap in real data.
Using AI Visibility Data in Your Pitch
Local Falcon's AI visibility reports also track AI brand sentiment, giving you insight into how generative answer engines are actually describing a business when they do mention it. A business might be getting cited, but if the sentiment attached to those mentions is neutral or negative, that's a problem, and another angle for your pitch.
When cold outreach leads to a discovery call or pitch meeting, you can walk prospects through:
- Their current SAIV score vs. competitors in the same area
- Which AI engines are and aren't surfacing them
- How their brand is being described when it does appear
- Specific opportunities to improve their AI search presence
This positions you as someone who's ahead of where most agencies are, and gives prospects a reason to move quickly rather than sitting on the decision.
Conclusion
Whether you're an independent SEO professional looking to find freelance SEO clients, or working in an agency and are struggling to land new clients, Local Falcon can help you streamline the process of finding and selling to new clients.
By utilizing Local Falcon's agentic AI search and local SEO platform, you can efficiently identify and target potential clients, craft personalized outreach strategies, and demonstrate the tangible value of your services. This strategic approach not only helps you stand out in a competitive market, but also helps build strong, trust-based agency-client relationships with new clients.
