What is a White Label solution? This is a term that many may not be familiar with. It’s easier to explain by example. Say you own a website design and creation company. You made this client a beautiful looking and functioning website. They then ask if you can help them get visitors to the site using Google.
You have heard of marketing strategies such as SEO and PPC. SEO being the organic display of someone’s site when a user inputs a query. PPC being the paid advertisement of a site to a user’s query. Say you are wanting a new ceiling fan for your living room. You don’t want to spend time-fighting traffic and going from store to store looking at them, and potentially not even getting someone to help and assist in answering any questions. You decide to turn to use the internet to view ceiling fans. You go to Google (or another search engine) and type in the search bar “ceiling fans”. It then produces results based on the term you put into the search bar. At the top, you will notice answers to the query that says ‘ad’ in front of them. Those are the paid ads that businesses pay Google to display based on keyword search terms, like ‘ceiling fans’. Below those paid ads are organic results to the query. It is what Google’s algorithms deem worthy to show as the most relevant and the authority on the query you put in the search bar, like ‘ceiling fans’. Both SEO and PPC will send people looking for queries to sites related to the search terms but under many different circumstances. If you have a well-established website that has great content, is search engine friendly, and is basically an authority on the subject; then you will have better rankings organically for the queries. This usually takes time, work, and effort to do. An easier way to get visitors without spending too much time to use the PPC route and spend a little money to gain those specific visits to your site. This is typically what newer companies and/or start-ups do. However, be warned that if your PPC campaign is not set up correctly you could be spending way more money than necessary to capture not just visitors but qualified visitors to your site.
So, when your website client that you just made a great site for asks you about marketing the site, you do have some options. You can tell them ‘No’ and wish them the best. This will most likely mean you have lost the client and any future business they may need to do. You can say ‘Yes’ and keep that client for marketing and any future opportunities like landing pages and such. Now, if you don’t have the talent to offer those services yourself, you still have options available to you. You can hire a trained professional that has the knowledge and experience to handle the client successfully. However, then you have payroll, taxes, the hassle of trying to find the right person within your budget, etc. If you already have an established business with multiple personnel and enough revenue coming in that would appear to be a good choice. However, another choice that a lot of companies and small businesses turn to is White Label Business Solutions.
White Label Businesses Solutions is an ingenious concept where a digital marketing company can offer their services through another company. Your website company can partner with a digital agency to fulfill the needs of a client. The client is under the impression that the services are being performed by your website company, which they kind of areas you have partnered with a firm that does the work on your behalf. As a result, your website company keeps the client and shares the profits with another firm to do the marketing work for the client. make sense?
Now comes the tricky part – Finding the right White Label Company that offers the most value without robbing you of all the profits; or even worse, costing you more money than you’re earning by trying to keep your client! Some White Label Solutions will do all the marketing work for the client and that is the extent of what they do. This may be fine with you, but there is only so many of those clients you could handle. These clients are going to want regular updates, meetings, and reports. They are going to have technical questions that would require a technical answer. One person can only handle so many of those clients. Even if they can handle one, who can answer coding questions, tracking questions, analytics questions, bid management questions, etc.? Such a person would have to have the knowledge to talk with the client intelligently about their marketing strategy. If only that digital marketing firm could send the reports, answer the tough questions and conduct the necessary meetings…
Some White Label Companies charge monthly fees to be their partner. Let me say that again, some White Label Companies charge monthly fees to be their partner. I still don’t understand this. Do you charge your friends fees to be your friend? Essentially, these White Label Companies want to charge you to bring them business. If only you could find a White Label Company that doesn’t charge monthly fees…
Some White Label Solutions charge huge start-up fees. I can understand this to a certain extent. There are two different types of start-up fees, the ones to the white label and the ones to the client. Start-up fees can help weed out some good apples from some of the rotting apples, or the serious clients and the not so serious clients. The amount of the start-up fees I see from some of these White Label Companies make it hard to figure out how the partner is making any profit from sending the White Label Company their customers. Keep in mind, it is a partnership. Neither company succeeds without the other. The success of a White Label Company shouldn’t be based around fees. I feel they should earn their revenue through their works rather than upfront fees. If only you could find a White Label Company that believes in that philosophy…
Well, I am pretty sure you understand where I am going with this. There are White Label Companies out there that still have morals and values, yet they are so hard to find in today’s business world. You just need to find the right one for you and your business model. If the model I spelled out for you is not what you are looking for, then I am sure you will still find one that will work. There is no shortage of companies out there attempting to be a successful digital marketing company by using some fee-based strategy to gain revenue; or ones that can provide more value for their potential partners that would allow them to be successful. Let’s face the facts, in any partnership in order for one partner to truly be successful, the other partner needs to be successful. After all, it is a partnership.
If after looking around you still cannot find the right solution for you, give us a call. If you don’t want to waste your time looking in all the wrong places, give us a call. If you don’t have your phone on you, just send us an email.
