Promoting a business online looks like it requires a website, a team and a budget. It does not. It requires being in the places where people look for what you sell — and most small businesses are in none of them.
First of all: can you be found?
Do the test now. Search for the name of your business plus your town. Then search for the service you provide plus the town, without naming yourself. If you do not appear in the second search, that is where the money you are not receiving is going.
A fixed place that is yours
A social-media profile is rented: the platform decides who sees what you post, and changes that decision without notice. A website, even a plain one, is an address of your own. If a site feels like too much right now, start with a single page — your name, what you do, where you serve and how to reach you.
Being where the searching happens
People looking for a service rarely start on social media. They start in search. That means three registrations that are worth more than months of posting:
- a Google Business Profile, which puts you on the map;
- directories and search sites in your field;
- any local site — trade association, town guide — that will take your address.
Each of those also leaves a link pointing at you, and links pointing at you are one of the criteria for who shows up first.
Social media, in its proper role
It is for keeping in touch with people who already know you, and for showing finished work. For being discovered by people who do not know you yet, search remains the main route.
The short way
Registering the business place by place takes weeks. Doing it steadily, a few every week, is what separates the businesses that get found from the ones that do not — and it is the only part of this list that nobody can do for you in an afternoon.
