Convince Your Boss to Invest in AccuRanker – Building a Solid Business Case

Taken a look at AccuRanker and like what you see? Great! However, we know any diligent employee will need to get the approval of their boss before signing on the dotted line.

If you haven’t already, be sure to sign up for our totally free 14-day trial, no credit card details needed.

This article won’t tell you exactly what to include in your business case, but will suggest how to structure it, with examples of how AccuRanker's features can be used to help sell our software to your boss. This guide uses examples that would be more useful to a business but can also be applicable to SEO professionals and agencies.

We have followed the structure listed below, but feel free to experiment with what works for you:

• Strategic benefit
• Consideration of options
• Expected benefits and timescales
• Costs
• Return on investment
• Risks

We’ve even created a handy one-page template that you can download and use when writing a business case for purchasing AccuRanker, and at the end of this article, you’ll find our template with an example business case included.

Remember – the best cases are short and sweet, so try to keep it to a page.

First, though, we want to quickly explain why you should care about keywords, and why a keyword rank tracker should be part of your marketing arsenal.

Already convinced? Skip to ‘strategic benefit’ here.

Why do Keywords Matter?

Keywords are important because they are the link between what people are searching for in Google and the product, service, or content that you are providing to fulfill that need. As a website owner and content creator, you want the keywords on your site to match what people are searching for so they have a better chance of finding your content.

Naturally, your competitors will be targeting similar keywords as you – this is where your keyword research allows you to identify which keywords are most important and competitive, as well as gaps that your competitors may have missed.

This guide from Ahrefs provides a good overview on how to undertake keyword research, but if you want an in-depth walkthrough, check out this series from Backlinko.

So let’s say you’ve done some solid keyword research, and started work on your website and content. But your boss wants to know whether your strategy is working and, most importantly, what’s your return-on-investment (ROI).

How can you show that your content strategy is reaping the ranking rewards in targeted keywords? How are you performing compared to competitors? Is there room for improvement?

This is where a keyword rank-tracker comes in.

Strategic Benefit

Let’s face it, people aren’t exactly excited to hear why they should spend money on software – so you’ll need to explain why you need a rank tracker. Explain what your company is doing, what’s not currently being fulfilled, and how this software solves that.

For example, let’s say your product is a software that’s both superior and more cost-effective than all your competitors, and your keyword research is solid.

But you’re relying on organic traffic to drive conversions – you need a tool that helps you to grow that traffic and get those conversions while centralizing data to make analysis easier for your team.

A keyword rank-tracker like AccuRanker can help you with that: the search volume feature means you can identify target keywords, while the keyword history and notes function allow you to track progress on selected keywords. What’s more, you can see your Share of Voice compared to competitors and quickly download reports for meetings.

Need some more evidence? One of our customers, Kinsta, spotted the potential for organic traffic to turn into paying customers – by using AccuRanker’s various features they were able to grow their organic traffic by 571% in just 13 months. That’s the kind of figure that turns heads.

Consideration of Options

We know that AccuRanker is the only one for you. But your boss may want to see your working and understand why this is the right solution. For example: why couldn’t they just hire a freelancer to go through the data for you? Are there other rank-trackers that should be considered?

First, focus on why a rank-tracker is crucial, and how AccuRanker brings you the best solution compared to the other options out there. A full list of our features is available here.

For example, to grow your traffic dramatically, you’ll need quick insights with fresh keyword data through a tool that also allows multiple users. As an added bonus, AccuRanker also allows you to upload existing data from Google Search Console, send automated reports and integrate with Google Data Studio.

It’s up to you how to prepare this, one approach could be to create a visually appealing table as an appendix with all the features you need indicated by ticks and crosses with a price summary to provide an at-a-glance overview of your research.

If you haven’t already, AccuRanker also offers a 14-day free trial without the need for credit card details, so you can take the initiative and test the tool for yourself.

Expected Benefits and Timescale

This section is split into two parts: tangible benefits and intangible benefits. The tangible benefits refer to things such as budget and return on investment, while intangible benefits refer to employee experience and customer service.

Tangible benefits and timescale

The trick here is appealing to the rational side of the argument. Your boss will want to see some underlying figures that explain why a keyword rank tracker will boost their SEO efforts.

For example, your keyword research has shown that a number of your target keywords have a lucrative cost-per-click (CPC) rate of around $10. The search volume is quite high for most of these keywords and the click-through rate (CTR) suggests a lot of users are clicking on results – so this looks like it’s worth the effort.

The problem is, you’re ranking on the second page of Google and even more frustrating is that your main competitor is ranking in the top five for nearly all these keywords, even though their service costs more and delivers less.

If only you could reach that top spot and start converting those searchers into paying customers. You know that by reaching the top four results for this keyword you’ll drive much more traffic to your site and stand a better chance of converting those searchers. In fact, research by Mediative on organic search results has shown that on desktop, 83% of users will look at a top Google listing, a figure that rises to 99% among mobile users. Furthermore, 60% of clicks on a search page on desktop are on the top four organic results, a figure that rises to 75% on mobile. So you can’t afford to ignore those top spots.

You have an estimate of the approximate time-scale for improving your rankings, however, as your historic keyword data from Google Analytics takes a long time to process and understand, it’s difficult to give a more accurate figure – another benefit of AccuRanker.

Importantly, the implementation of this software is less problematic – AccuRanker is cloud-based meaning there’s no need to download the software.

Intangible benefits

So the rational side of things adds up, why focus on intangible benefits? This allows you to appeal to the emotional side of the argument, making the case that this software will help you and your team save time in understanding keyword data and focus on more important tasks.

For example, with Google Analytics you have a ton of historic keyword data, but organizing and understanding it takes time. The tedious and non-urgent nature of the task means it’s regularly put off by team members, compounding the issue further. Meanwhile, you’ve made some progress in your rankings for certain keywords, but nobody on the team can recall exactly what changes you made to your content to see this improvement in ranking.

AccuRanker’s API allows you to easily organize your data, and instantly access historical keyword data at speed. What’s more, the notes feature means that your team can go back and see the changes they made on a certain keyword that rocketed to the top of Google in the space of just a few months. The reports feature also allows you to keep team members up to date on progress. These are all points you can make to explain the emotional benefit of this tool.

Our customer kids-world.dk perfectly highlights the intangible benefits of AccuRanker, saying that: “normally you could spend hours going through reports and looking for the different changes in rank – now it’s done in five minutes.”

Costs

Motivation is great, but it’s time to consider the cost of AccuRanker. Again, we’re back to appealing to the rational side of the argument.

All subscriptions in AccuRanker include all features and benefits, so you only pay for the amount of keywords you need. The starter subscription is $109 per month for 1,000 keywords (yearly subscription costs $99 per month).

However, we like to reward ambition – the more keywords you track, the lower the overall cost per keyword.

Visit our pricing page and easily toggle the options to choose the right plan for you.

Return on Investment

It’s time to get down to brass tacks. We can’t tell you exactly how to calculate a Return on Investment, but one simple metric is the net profit divided by the cost of investment, multiplied by 100.

But bearing in mind the information above about how much traffic you can drive to your site by ranking higher in Google, and the added potential for conversions, it might be possible to estimate a return on investment by approximating the amount of revenue you could achieve based on your current conversion rate, but in-line with dramatically increased traffic and then following the metric above.

If you’re focusing on content marketing then AccuRanker can help you monitor your ROI, something that’s regularly treated as an after-thought. Check out our guide to maximizing your content’s ROI which was written in collaboration with HubSpot.

Risks

Risks? What risks!? No business case is complete without a thorough analysis of the potential risks of purchasing and using a software. However, at AccuRanker we like to think of ourselves as a pretty safe bet.

First, you can sign up for a free 14-day trial, no credit card details needed meaning you don’t need to remember to cancel payments should you decide not to proceed after your free trial.

We also offer a comprehensive help guide library, as well as the opportunity to have a Best Practice Session with one of our customer success managers.

If you decide that you’re on the wrong plan, you can upgrade your plan instantly, to downgrade you’ll keep your old subscription until the end of the plan.

Finally, we pride ourselves on being feedback-led software. If you find a problem or have a suggestion to make our platform even better then simply get in touch and we’ll do our best to meet your requirements.

Anything Else?

Before you run through your office screaming “EUREKA”, we’d recommend checking out some of our cases for more inspiration. Finally, we’ve included a draft business case proposal below, and make sure to download our template if you haven’t already.

If you have any questions about AccuRanker’s software then drop us a message at [email protected] or on social media.

Example Business Case

PROJECT NAME:

ORGANIC GROWTH WITH KEYWORD RANK TRACKING

Department/Project Manager:

Digital Marketing – Joe Bloggs

Contribution to Business Strategy:

Our marketing strategy seeks to convert potential customers through organic traffic to our site. A keyword rank tracker (e.g. AccuRanker) will allow us to better understand how accurate our keyword analysis is, and improve our rankings for target keywords while also saving time.

Options considered:

– Hiring a data analyst (permanent or freelance)

– A keyword rank tracker (selected)

Benefits:

– Increased traffic: the CPC rate for our main target keyword is lucrative (around $10), however we only rank on the second page of Google (top 4 results get 75% of clicks on mobile and 60% on desktop)

– Increased sales: The CTR for our keywords is strong, meaning that customers are likely to click on our site. Our bounce rate is low, meaning our customers tend to stay on the site, and conversion rate is also high.

– Improved productivity: Currently our team spends at least two hours a week sorting data. The tedious nature of the task can mean that delays grow as the task is considered non-urgent.

Timescale:

The AccuRanker software is cloud-based meaning sign-up is quick and doesn’t require external proxies.

Costs:

– 2,000 keywords is $209 a month ($199 a month with yearly billing). This can be upgraded and downgraded as necessary.

Expected Return on Investment (ROI):

Based on our current conversion rate (3.5%) buying our main software tool (cost $250 a year), and a traffic increase of approximately 10,000 extra visitors to our website year-on-year would yield an ROI of:

Year 1 = $5,652

Year 2 = $11,304

Year 3 = $16,957

Risks:

This project seems straightforward, but there’s always a risk with software that it won’t match our needs. However, with a free trial, and the team have thoroughly tested the product, and it’s possible to cancel or amend our subscription as necessary.