So you know investing in SEO is the right move, but you don’t hold the purse strings. You need the green light from the person making the budget decisions to move ahead.
This could be your COO, CEO, CFO, or any other executive manager. But they all have one thing in common: they’re busy and what they care about is results. (Okay, so that’s technically two things.)
They want to know why they need to invest now, what results they’re going to see, and when. They don’t really care about technicalities like organic traffic, conversion rates, or keyword rankings.
That’s why you need a clear-cut business case that clearly demonstrates the ROI of SEO.
In this guide, you’ll read about the benefits of creating a business case, along with five actionable steps to go about it.
Let’s dive in.
The benefits of creating a business case
A business case is what you need to convince your boss, stakeholders, or C-suites that your idea is worth pursuing. It helps you make a compelling argument for initiatives like content marketing or SEO.
A well-written business case also:
- Gives you a structured approach to communicating the project’s value proposition, aligning it with strategic objectives, and gaining stakeholder approval.
- Provides a realistic cost-benefit analysis demonstrating you’ve done your due diligence. You can also use it to compare different scenarios and options and choose the most feasible and profitable one.
- Encourages team members to prioritize and focus on the bigger picture. Like how the project contributes to your company’s long-term success and profitability.
- Keeps you from wasting resources on initiatives that don’t offer a compelling ROI.
- Highlight the risks and mitigations early on so you show your budget manager you have a contingency plan. This reduces any uncertainties and increases their confidence in the initiative.
5 Steps to creating your SEO business case
Every business and situation is unique, so there’s no one size-fits-all solution.
But there are some best practices to keep in mind. Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating an SEO business case that secures buy-in from your decision makers:
- Step 1: Align your goal with those of your organization
- Step 2: Forecast SEO growth
- Step 3: Develop a comprehensive roadmap
- Step 4: Define your strategic narrative
- Step 5: Build your pitch deck
Step 1: Align your goal with those of your organization
Start by understanding what’s most important to your executives. A lot of bigger companies will have a yearly theme, or a tagline reflecting what they’re focused on that year.
This will be their executive OKRs. To secure the attention and budget you’re looking for, tie your goals back to theirs.
Understand what their main goal is for the next quarter, or two quarters of the year and how what you’re building will help them fulfill that. Once you’re clear on that, you can work your way backwards.
For example, if your company’s growth goal is to increase annual revenue by 20%, explain how SEO can help you reach this target without getting too technical. (More on how to actually develop a comprehensive roadmap soon.)
If you’re not accountable for revenue, which happens to a lot of managers who are doing SEO and content, then go for a revenue-adjacent metric. Like demo requests or MQLs.
Prepare all the information you have on those metrics, including historical performance, to understand how you can drive the results most important to leadership.
Next, it’s time to get your hands on some numbers and start forecasting.
Step 2: Forecast SEO growth
Once you’re sure you’re moving in the right direction, you’ll need to understand and predict the impact of SEO on your business. This means demonstrating what your senior stakeholders can expect in return for their digital marketing spend.
There are two models you can use:
- Historical data: This is the best model if you’re not starting from scratch. You need existing web content and historical SEO data to guide you.
- Total Addressable Market (TAM) analysis: This model is for you if you’re planning to use reoptimization of existing content to grow your SEO efforts or don’t have your own historical data. In this case, use a traffic estimation tool like A rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank” hrefs to study your competitor and work out your total TAM.
| Need a step-by-step walkthrough? Check our in-depth guide to forecasting SEO growth here! |
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Once you have your data, you can use tools like our SEO ROI calculator to see how long it will take to break even and see your month-on-month and year-on-year growth.
To feel comfortable enough to invest, “your ROI should be three to five times what they’re spending now,” says Maeva Cifuentes, CEO of Flying Cat Marketing. “But you have to show how you’re going to get there.”
Let’s take a look at that next.
Step 3: Develop a comprehensive roadmap
This step is about making your plans as actionable as possible. Depending on your particular SEO strategy, this involves:
- Competitor analysis: Study your closest competitors and discuss how your strategy positions your company in comparison to them. Benchmark their performance and explain how you’ll surpass them.
- Timeline: Break down your plan into phases and milestones, and assign responsibilities and deadlines to each task. For each milestone, assign an owner, define the priorities, and set a start and end date.
- A strategy breakdown: How are you going to implement SEO on your website? What best practices and the tools will you use? What are the specific actions you’ll take to optimize your content, your design, your technical aspects, and your off-page factors?
- Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Define the metrics you’ll use to measure your milestones’ success. This could be an increase in conversions, traffic, or Click-Through Rate (CTR.)
- Key stakeholders: This includes internal team members like marketing and sales teams, and external partners or agencies. Make sure to outline their respective roles and everyone’s on the same page. Finally, don’t forget to give your executives some options when it comes to agencies, along with why you think they’re suitable.
Next, you’ll need to take your roadmap, and build a story around it. Let’s see why that’s important and how to do it.
Step 4: Define your strategic narrative
A strategic narrative brings your business case to life. It’s a compelling story that helps stakeholders understand the purpose, context, and expected outcomes of your SEO proposal.
It’s also way more memorable than a list of dry facts and figures. When done right, your strategic narrative leaves a lasting impression on your decision-makers and persuades them to invest in your initiative.
In a business case, your narrative “packages your message so it’s a complete storyline,” said Nate Nasralla, Co-Founder of Fluint.
For him, an engaging narrative “walks your [executives] from where they are today, which is where they don’t want to be, to where they want to go tomorrow, some type of future payoff.”
Your narrative needs to touch on four elements:
- The situation: What’s the current state of your organization and what is it costing you? For example, how is your limited online visibility affecting your revenue? Are you missing out on potential customers who can’t find you through organic search? There’s also a matter of opportunity cost. What are you missing out on by not properly investing?
| “There’s a lot of different ways that [not investing in] SEO could be costing your company. There’s the actual cost and there’s an opportunity cost. So let’s say [as the owner of a small business or agency,] I’m spending 15 hours every month writing content, which would get us 2% month over month growth. But instead I could be managing an agency and focusing on more strategic decisions and we could be getting 20% month over month growth. It’s important to keep the opportunity cost in mind too when you’re building a business case.” –Maeva Cifuentes, CEO of Flying Cat Marketing |
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- The problem: What are the complications you need to overcome to get to where you want to be? For example, maybe you have outdated content on your site but don’t have the resources to optimize them for search engines.
- The solution: Outline the exact steps you need to take to achieve the results you want. For example, partnering with an SEO agency (wink wink) to conduct a thorough content audit and keyword research, followed by a content optimization campaign.
- The questions: Finally address any possible questions your executives might have after hearing the first three elements. “Preparing for potential questions is vital,” says Kevin Indig, Growth Advisor to brands like Bounce and Riverside. Some typical questions include “does the growth of SEO outpace other channels? Or why can’t we get there sooner?”
Remember: Different companies might use different decision-making frameworks. If your company has a set one, adapt this approach.
Step 5: Build your pitch deck
Finally, it’s time to actually write up your business case. Remember to keep it short and sweet, ideally as a one-pager, so your decision makers get to the heart of the problem ASAP.
1. Your headline
Always start with a bold, attention-grabbing headline. This should “compel executive attention because it relates to a priority they’re already sold on,” says Nate.
Here are some elements of a compelling headline:
- Recommended action
- The department or group responsible for taking the recommended action
- Timeline
- Outcome
- Cost of the problem
- The problem
Here’s an example:
| “The marketing team should implement an SEO audit and optimization by Q2 2024. This will result in increased website traffic and lead generation, while avoiding the potential loss of revenue and market share due to outdated marketing strategies. |
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2. Your problem statement
Next, connect your headline to your problem statement. This is a formula that outlines the problem a lack of investment in SEO creates, what it’s costing you, and what will happen if it’s not addressed.
For example:
| “Every month, we receive a thousand visitors to the website, but only 0.2% of them convert when the benchmark is 1%. This is costing us 500 leads a month. If it‘s not addressed by Q2 2024, we risk falling further behind our competitors, missing out on revenue opportunities, and struggling to achieve our growth targets.” |
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3. Your recommended approach
Once you and the decision-makers are on the same page about the problem and its costs, outline your recommended solution. Include any case studies or examples on how it’s a tried and true approach.
“This is where you contrast the problem and the current state, to outcome scenarios,” says Nate. It’s important to present your decision makers with at least three possible outcomes of investing in SEO.
When you’re pitching, wanting to present the best case scenario is normal. But “executives always know that things don’t turn out as the plan looks,” says Nate. “It can go in a couple of different ways.”
By getting ahead of things and showing them the different scenarios, you build trust.
You show that you’ve really done your research and due diligence. So even if you have one idea, you want to show that you’ve explored X different options and you’ve decided that your recommended approach is the best one.
These can include what would happen:
- If you don’t take action
- If you took action to a certain extent
- In best case scenario
Alternatively, what would happen if they invest:
- Conservatively
- Moderately
- Aggressively
Executives appreciate seeing different growth scenarios like that. And most leaders are going to ask you to look for other alternatives anyway. Getting ahead of that question shows you have a business mindset rather than a marketer’s mindset.
4. Your required investment
List the investment you would need to achieve each scenario. This includes financial, resources, and teams. Your executives need an honest description of what they would have to pull off of other projects to accomplish this goal with you.
“It’s a little counter-intuitive,” says Nate, “but the more you say ‘this is going to be hard work,’ the more the scenarios you just laid out become believable.”
Building SEO business cases that secure your budget
When prepared carefully, a concise and well-thought-out business case can be your key to persuading decision-makers to invest in your SEO initiatives. You’ll be able to communicate your project’s value, demonstrate its alignment with strategic goals, and secure the necessary budget with confidence.
To do that, outline how investing in SEO aligns with your organizational KPIs and executive goals, use an SEO ROI calculator to forecast growth, and map out a comprehensive roadmap.
Then, use the information you’ve gathered to build a narrative that will walk your executives through your pitch and leave them with a clear understanding of not just the ‘what’ and ‘how,’ but the ‘why’ of your SEO proposal.
With a compelling narrative and a well-documented business case, you’ll be in a strong position to drive SEO investment and contribute to the sustainable growth and success of your organization.
Frequently asked questions about preparing a business case for SEO
1. What is a business case for SEO?
A business case for SEO is a strategic document that outlines the rationale, benefits, and potential outcomes of investing in search engine optimization initiatives. It presents a compelling argument, supported by data and analysis, to persuade decision-makers to allocate resources and budget to improve a company’s online visibility, organic search performance, and overall digital presence. The goal is to align SEO efforts with the organization’s strategic goals and demonstrate the value and ROI (return on investment) that SEO can bring to your business.
2. Why do I need to create a business case for SEO?
You need a business case for SEO to structure a persuasive argument for securing investment. It also aligns SEO with organizational goals, quantifies the potential benefits, mitigates risks, and provides a clear roadmap for implementation. This ensures that decision-makers understand the value of SEO and are more likely to allocate resources and budget for its success.
3. What are the key components of a compelling SEO business case?
They key components of a compelling SEO business case include:
- A headline summarizing the problem, cost, solution and timeline
- A definitive problem statement to outline the issue and its impact on your organization
- Your recommended approach to address the problem, along with different possible scenarios
- Your required investment including budget, resource allocation, and team members required