How to Get More Customers for a Local Service Business
I sell websites, so you’d expect me to tell you the answer is a website.
It isn’t, or at least it isn’t first. If you did these in the wrong order you’d waste money, and I’d rather you trust me than buy something you didn’t need yet.
Here’s the actual order.
1 · Ask every customer for a review
Free. Highest return of anything on this list. Almost nobody does it consistently.
Reviews do two jobs at once. They’re how Google decides whether to show you in the map box, and they’re what convinces a stranger to pick you over the next result.
The rule is boring: ask every single customer, the same way, at the same moment, forever. Right when the job’s done and they’re happiest. Give them a one-tap link, don’t make them go find you.
Steady beats big. Four reviews a month every month beats twelve in one week and then eight months of nothing.
Don’t offer anything for a review, don’t screen for happy customers first, and don’t write them yourself. All three can get your reviews wiped and the last one is always obvious.
2 · Fill in your Google Business Profile
Also free. Also an hour of your time.
Every service listed individually. A written description. Every category. Real hours including the holiday you’re closed. Photos, added regularly, not once in 2022.
Set your primary category to the narrowest thing that’s accurately you. “Drain Cleaning Service” instead of “Plumber” will behave differently in search, and that single field is the biggest on-profile lever there is.
Most profiles are about 40% filled in. Yours probably is too.
3 · Make it obvious how to contact you
Look at wherever people currently find you. Your listing, your Facebook page, whatever site you have.
Is the phone number tappable? Is it visible without scrolling? Does the form work? Have you tested it this year?
I’ve found dead contact forms on live sites that had been quietly eating leads for years. The owner just thought business was slow.
4 · Get your name in front of the same people repeatedly
Locally, this beats almost any paid advertising for a service business.
Neighborhood Facebook groups. Nextdoor. The chamber. Sponsoring a kid’s team. Leaving a card with every job. Getting on the referral list of an adjacent trade, so the plumber sends you the drywall work and you send him the leaks.
None of it is clever and all of it compounds.
5 · Now build the website
Once the above is working, the site starts mattering, because now people are finding you and the site’s job is to close them.
What it has to do is narrow: say what you do and where in three seconds, show a price signal, make a specific promise, show proof, and make contacting you one tap. That’s it.
6 · Only then consider paid ads
Ads work. They also stop the moment you stop paying, and they’re the most expensive lever on this list.
Run them when the free stuff is maxed out and you’re trying to buy growth faster than it comes naturally. Not before. Paying to send traffic to a business with four reviews and a broken contact form is setting money on fire.
The one that isn’t on this list
Doing better work. It’s on everybody’s list and it’s real, but it’s a slow lever and you’re probably already good. That’s usually not the problem.
The problem is almost always that people who would happily hire you don’t know you exist, or found you and couldn’t tell in five seconds whether you were right for them.
If you want an honest read
Send me your business name. I’ll tell you where you rank across the city, what’s broken, and which of the six things above I’d do first.
Free, no meeting, no follow-up sequence. Sometimes the answer is “your listing needs an hour of work and you don’t need a website yet.” That’s a real answer and I’ve given it.
