Three businesses get the call. You're probably not one of them.
When a water heater lets go at six at night, nobody scrolls. They tap one of the first three names on the map and they call it. Getting your name into that group is the whole job — $750 to set it up, $300 a month to hold it.
You already know the report I'm about to describe
You've gotten the report. It shows up on the third of the month as a PDF. There's a green arrow, a line going up and to the right, a number like 'impressions up 14 percent,' and a screenshot of a graph you never asked for. Twelve pages. Not one phone number on any of them.
Nobody in that report ever called you. That's the tell. A report that can't name a single job is a report about the agency, not about your business.
What you get from us is a count: how many people tapped the call button on your listing last month. One number, every month. You already know which of those turned into work, because you're the one who wrote it on the calendar. If the count sits flat, fire me — you'll have the number in your hand to do it with.
What we actually touch
Your listing has a field for damn near everything about you — category, every service you sell, hours, service area, photos, the questions customers ask. Odds are most of yours are blank, and Google can only show a customer what's filled in. Here is the work, plainly.
- Your main category and every secondary one. Google matches what he typed against your category. He types plumber; if your listing says contractor, that isn't a match.
- Every service you sell, entered one at a time with its own description, so the water heater job and the sewer job are both findable.
- Hours, holiday hours, service area, and the number that rings your cell, not a dead office line.
- Real photos: your trucks, your crew, before and afters. Not stock.
- Your name, address, and phone matched letter for letter across the directories that carry your listing. 'Ste 4' in one place and 'Suite #4' in another is exactly the kind of thing we straighten out.
- A post every week — a job you finished, a photo, a customer question answered. A listing with nothing new on it makes a man wonder whether you're still in business.
- A text to your customer once the job is closed, with a one-tap link to your review page, so your star count climbs while you work.
Don't take my word for it. Pull out your phone.
Type your trade and your town into Google right now. Look at the three businesses in the little map at the top. Then count how far you have to scroll to find your own name. That is the entire problem, and you just measured it yourself.
Then do it to us. Run the search you'd run to find somebody who does this work in Libertyville, or in Mundelein, and see who comes up. I'm not printing a number here, because a number on a sales page is worth nothing. Go run it. Our own town, Vernon Hills, we're still climbing — I'd rather say that out loud than pretend.
Excellence Pressure Cleaning in Tamarac came to us with no website and nothing on Google at all. One quarter later they were in the top ten locally and taking calls straight off Google.
$750 to set it up, $300 a month to hold it
Setup is one time, $750. That's the first pass: every field on the listing filled in, your name, address and phone straightened out across the directories, and the review text hooked up to go out after a job. Then it's $300 a month for the weekly posts, the photos, the questions answered, and the count of the calls.
Six months minimum, and here's the honest reason. It takes about sixty days to move and another sixty to hold. Charging you for three would be selling you a coin flip. After the six you're month to month, 30 days' notice ends it, no fee, nothing that renews behind your back.
If you want the monthly search work, this map work, and the review system on one bill, that's Total Visibility at $3,000 a month, against $3,249 buying the three on their own. Saves you $249 a month.
When this is the wrong thing to buy
If you're one of six plumbers in a Lake County suburb, there are only so many names competing for that box, and this is the shortest distance between you and it. If you're one of two hundred roofers in a dense Chicago market, six months of listing work by itself will not put you in the three. You'll need pages on your website behind it, and I would rather say that now than in month five.
And if you've never claimed your listing and you've barely got any reviews, start here. Don't let anybody sell you a $2,750-a-month program first. Get your name on the map, then we talk about the rest.
If you'd rather see the whole picture before you commit to anything, the Search Everywhere Audit is $497 — 25-plus checks I run by hand, then 45 minutes on the phone walking you through what I found, credited back in full when you hire us and yours to keep if you don't.
Common questions
How long before my phone actually rings?
About sixty days before the work moves anything, and another sixty before we know it held. That's why the start is six months and not three — three would be selling you a coin flip. Landing in the three on top of that depends on who's sitting there now and how many reviews they've got. I'll tell you what you're up against before you pay me, and the monthly count shows the calls that came off Google either way.
Do I need a website for this to work?
It helps, and in a crowded market you'll need pages behind the listing. But the listing pulls calls on its own — Excellence Pressure Cleaning came to us with no website and nothing on Google, and one quarter later they were in the top ten locally and taking calls. If you want both, we build sites too.
What if I want out after six months?
You're month to month after that: 30 days' notice, no fee, nothing that renews behind your back. What happens next is drift. The guys above you post every week and ask for reviews every week, and reviews go stale on their own — 74 percent of people want to see reviews from the last three months. Somebody has to keep doing that work: us, your office manager, or you at nine at night.
Are you going to write fake reviews for me?
No, and we never have. What we set up is a text that goes to the customer after you close the job, with a one-tap link straight to your review page. Real customers, real words. Fake ones read fake to the next guy scrolling them, and he's the one you were trying to win.
Somebody in your town is getting your calls right now.
He isn't better at the work than you — he's just the name Google shows first, and that part is fixable.