The field guide

How a local business actually gets found, and gets booked.

Everything a trade or service business needs to understand, explained from the start and assuming nothing. Written for the person doing the work, not for a marketing department.

Every section is the same shape: what it is, a real example, what it looks like broken against working, and what actually changes. There is an A to Z of every term at the end. Nothing here is a pitch, and it is just as useful if you hire somebody else.

Why any of this changed

The decision moved before the phone call, and most operators never got told.

People check you before they call you

Someone recommends you. Before ringing, that person types your name into Google to see what comes up. What they find decides whether they call at all.

For example

A neighbour tells Maria about a flooring guy. Maria searches his name on her phone that evening. Nothing much comes up: no profile, two old photos on a Facebook page. She searches "wood flooring near me" instead and rings the first one with pictures and reviews. The recommended guy never knew Maria existed.

Broken: Word of mouth arrives, and quietly dies at the search.
Working: Word of mouth arrives, finds something solid, and turns into a call.

What changes: You stop losing referrals you already earned. This is why businesses with great reputations can still be quiet.

You are not competing on quality at that moment, because nobody can see your quality yet. You are competing on whether a stranger can satisfy themselves in about thirty seconds that you are real, still trading, and unlikely to waste their time.

That is a low bar and it is not really marketing. It is being legible.

Do this: Search your own business name on a phone, logged out. What you see is what a referral sees.

For local work it is Google, and barely anything else

Most new customers who did not hear about you from a friend come through Google. Social media is where people check you are still alive, not where they hire you.

For example

A painter spends two hours a week on Instagram and has never filled in his Google profile. He gets likes from other painters and no calls. The competitor with a boring Instagram and a complete Google profile is booked out.

Broken: Effort spread thin across five platforms, none of them working.
Working: One place done properly, the rest tidy and honest.

What changes: Fewer places to maintain, more calls. Being genuinely good in one place beats being present in six.

Every profile you own but do not maintain is a dead shopfront with your name on it. A dead profile is worse than no profile, because it suggests the business might be dead too.

Do this: Ask where your last ten customers came from. Put your effort there.

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Getting found

The map results, and the three things that decide whether you are in them.

Your Google Business Profile

This is the free listing that shows on the right of a Google search and as a pin on the map. It is the highest-return thing you own, and most businesses fill in about a third of it.

For example

A remodeler is listed under the category "General Contractor". He mostly does kitchens. When somebody searches "kitchen remodel Frisco", Google does not show him, because he never told it that is what he does. One dropdown, changed in a minute, changes which searches he appears in.

Broken: Claimed once, a phone number, three photos from 2021, no services listed.
Working: Right primary category, every service listed with a description, service areas set, photos from this month, hours correct.

What changes: You start appearing for searches you were invisible for. Profile edits can show effect within days, unlike ranking, which takes months.

The primary category matters most, because it largely decides WHICH searches you can appear for at all. After that: services listed individually with real descriptions, service areas covering everywhere you will actually travel, recent photos, and correct hours.

One thing nobody can do for you is verification. Google confirms a business is real by posting a card to the address or filming the premises, so that step is always the owner's no matter who you hire. Anyone charging you for it is charging for something they cannot perform.

Do this: Open your profile and check the primary category first. Then services, then areas, then photos.

Reviews do not arrive because the work was good

Happy customers almost never post reviews on their own. Annoyed ones do. That imbalance is the entire problem, and it has nothing to do with the quality of your work.

For example

A lawn crew has done four hundred jobs and has nine reviews averaging 4.1. Two of the nine are complaints from years ago. A newer competitor asks every customer automatically and has a hundred and forty at 4.8. To a stranger choosing between them, the newer one looks like the established business.

Broken: Asking when you remember, which is almost never, because you are working.
Working: Every finished job triggers the ask automatically, the same day.

What changes: Review count climbs steadily and compounds every month it runs. This is usually the cheapest single improvement available.

Count matters more than people expect, because a stranger uses it as the fastest available proxy for whether you are established. Recency matters too: forty reviews from three years ago and none since looks worse than it is.

A poor average is fixed by burying it under recent better reviews, not by arguing with old ones.

Do this: Make asking automatic. Any rule that depends on remembering is not a system.

Ranking in the map takes two to four months

The "map pack" is the three businesses with the little map above the normal Google results. Those three get most of the clicks. Getting into them is slow, and anyone promising it fast is guessing.

For example

A plumber is sold "SEO" for six months. Nothing visible happens for five of them and he cancels, convinced it is a scam. In fact profile work should have shown something in week two, reviews by week six, and the map by month three. Nobody told him what to expect, so he could not tell working from not working.

Broken: "SEO takes six months", with nothing to check along the way.
Working: Known checkpoints: profile in days, reviews in weeks, map in two to four months.

What changes: You can tell whether you are being served or strung along, which is worth more than the ranking.

"Six months" lumps together things that move at completely different speeds, and that is how it hides a lack of work. Profile fields are edits. Review position accumulates. Map ranking depends on volume and consistency building over time.

Below the top three, click volume falls away sharply, which is why the gap between third and fourth matters more than the gap between first and third.

Do this: Ask which parts should move in month one, and what they will show you at the end of it.

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Being believed

What a website is actually for, and why a cheap one usually earns nothing.

The pages are not the product

What makes a website earn money is almost entirely invisible when you look at it. Not the design. What happens after somebody uses it.

For example

A contractor pays $1,200 plus $100 a month for a five page site. It looks fine. Six months later he has had four enquiries and no jobs. The form emails an address nobody checks on weekends, nothing follows up, nothing records where anyone came from, and no customer is ever asked for a review. He was sold pages, not a system.

Broken: A site that looks fine and does nothing when somebody uses it.
Working: Tap the number and it dials. Fill the form and something replies immediately. The enquiry lands where it gets chased. The finished job asks for a review.

What changes: The same traffic starts producing jobs, because nothing falls through between interest and contact.

The other quiet cost of a cheap build is ownership. If the site lives on somebody else's account and the domain is in their name, leaving costs you everything you built.

Do this: Ask what happens when somebody fills in your form at nine at night. The answer tells you what you bought.

You are asking to be let into someone's home

People hiring a trade are deciding whether to trust a stranger in their house. The things that settle that are boring and specific: insurance, licensing, reviews, and photographs of work you actually did.

For example

Two flooring quotes come in at nearly the same price. One is from a company whose site shows twenty finished floors, a licence number and reviews. The other is a PDF from a Gmail address. The homeowner picks the first and does not think about it again.

Broken: Photos sitting on your phone. No licence or insurance mentioned anywhere.
Working: Every finished job photographed and posted. Licence, insurance and reviews visible on the page.

What changes: You win more of the quotes you were already going to give, at the price you already quoted.

Photographs are the most underused asset in every trade. You are already doing the work; capturing it costs nothing and it is the most persuasive thing you will ever show anybody.

Do this: Photograph every finished job, even badly. You cannot use what you did not capture.

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Being reachable

The least glamorous and highest-return part of the whole thing.

Whoever answers first usually wins the job

Not whoever is best. Whoever is first. Someone with a problem contacts businesses until one responds, and stops when one does.

For example

A homeowner fills in three forms at 2pm on a Tuesday. One business replies automatically within a minute and books a visit that evening. The other two reply the next morning and are told it is handled. All three were equally capable.

Broken: You see the enquiry when you come off the roof at six.
Working: Something replies within a minute and holds their attention until you can call.

What changes: You win a bigger share of enquiries you are already paying to attract. This is usually the cheapest revenue in the business.

Trades are structurally bad at this, and not through carelessness. You are up a ladder when the phone rings. That is precisely why it has to be automatic rather than disciplined.

Do this: Look at yesterday's enquiries. How long until somebody replied?

A missed call is a customer already dialling someone else

Missed-call text-back means: the phone rings, you cannot answer, and the caller instantly gets a text saying you will ring back. It takes about a day to set up.

For example

A junk removal outfit misses eleven calls a week while loading trucks. Nine of them never ring back, because somebody else answered. An automatic text saying "on a job, calling you within the hour" recovers most of those conversations.

Broken: A missed call is a lost customer you never knew about.
Working: A missed call becomes a text conversation you finish later.

What changes: You recover calls you were already paying to receive. Nothing else about the business changes.

One rule almost nobody knows: automatic business texting in the United States runs on a carrier registration system called A2P 10DLC, and carriers only approve numbers belonging to a registered business with an EIN. If it is just you with no LLC, this is not available at any price from anyone, and a supplier who sells it to you anyway is selling something that will get switched off.

Staying unregistered is a perfectly reasonable choice for tax or cost reasons. It only means this particular tool is off the table, and the workaround is email instead of text.

Do this: If you want automatic texting, an LLC and an EIN come first. That is about a week.

Most work is lost in the silence, not on price

A quote goes out, nobody replies, and it gets written off as lost on price. Usually they just got busy and it fell down their inbox.

For example

A remodeler sends fourteen quotes in a month and wins three. Of the eleven he lost, seven were never contacted again. Two of those seven had already booked somebody else, but four were still deciding and one had simply forgotten.

Broken: A quote nobody replied to is gone.
Working: It gets chased automatically at day three, day seven, day fourteen.

What changes: You recover a share of quotes you already did the work to produce. These are the cheapest jobs you will ever win.

People who asked for a quote already raised their hand. Nothing in marketing is cheaper than following up with somebody who already showed interest.

Do this: Count last month's quotes that never got a second contact. The number is usually a shock.

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Running it

Why leads have to land in one place, and what happens when they do not.

Leads in a phone, a notebook and an inbox are leads you cannot see

When enquiries arrive by call, text, form and Facebook message, and each lands somewhere different, some get missed. You never find out which, so it never feels urgent.

For example

An owner is certain he follows up on everything. Putting one month through a single system finds six enquiries nobody had touched, two of them from the same street as a job he was already on.

Broken: Leads across a phone, a notepad, two inboxes and a glovebox.
Working: Everything in one list, with a status against each one.

What changes: You can see what is outstanding, chase it, and count what happens. Everything downstream depends on this.

It is also what makes advertising judgeable. Until every enquiry is tagged with where it came from, any decision about where to spend money is a guess with a confident voice.

Do this: Pick one place. Which system matters far less than being consistent about it.

If it is all in your head, you are the constraint

If quoting, scheduling and knowing how the work gets done all live in your memory, the business cannot run without you and cannot grow past you.

For example

A one-man operation takes his first holiday in four years. Nothing gets quoted for nine days because nobody else knows how he prices. He comes back to eleven cold enquiries.

Broken: Everything in your head. No time off, and no second crew.
Working: The core processes written down somewhere other than your memory.

What changes: You can take a week off, hire somebody who becomes useful in days rather than months, and the business is worth something if you ever sell it.

It does not need to be elaborate. It needs to exist. A page on how you price is worth more than a manual nobody writes.

Do this: Write down one process you currently do from memory. Start with quoting.

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Paying for traffic

Ads make an existing system busier. They do not build one.

Ads come last, not first

Paying for clicks only works if the thing they land on can take a booking, and if something records which click became a job. Otherwise the money vanishes and you cannot tell why.

For example

A detailer spends $3,000 on ads over two months. He gets busier for a fortnight, cannot say which jobs came from it, and stops. He concludes ads do not work. Actually his site had no booking, his form went to an unread inbox, and nothing was tracked. The ads worked; everything after them did not.

Broken: Spending on clicks with no tracking, pointed at a site that cannot take a booking.
Working: Ads pointed at something that converts, with tracking that shows which spend produced work.

What changes: Spend becomes judgeable, so it can be increased where it works and cut where it does not.

Ad spend goes to Google or Meta directly, out of your account. Anyone marking it up, or refusing to show you the account, is not working for you.

Do this: Before spending, ask what tracking is installed and ask to see a lead that came from an ad.

Services bought one at a time rarely add up

Each service is usually fine on its own. The problem is that pieces bought separately do not connect to each other.

For example

A contractor buys a website. Later he asks about leads and is sold review automation. Later still, ads. Three monthly bills. The review tool has nothing to ask because nothing records that a job finished; the ads point at a site with no booking. Nothing is a scam and nothing works.

Broken: Three separate monthly bills that do not talk to each other.
Working: The same pieces connected: enquiry to follow-up to job to review.

What changes: The same spend produces several times the result, because each piece feeds the next.

This is the most common way money gets wasted in the trades, and it is rarely dishonest. Suppliers sell what they stock, in the order they stock it.

Do this: Before buying the next thing, ask what it does with the thing you already pay for.

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Judging anyone who pitches you

Three questions that catch most bad deals, with no technical knowledge required.

You do not need to understand marketing to spot a bad deal

You need to understand the shape of the offer. Three questions do most of the work.

For example

Two suppliers quote similar money. One has a ninety day build with a defined end and puts everything in the owner's own accounts. The other is open-ended, holds the domain in its own name, and reports through a dashboard only it can read. The prices looked the same. The deals were not.

Broken: Judging on price and on whether you liked the person.
Working: Judging on end date, ownership, and whether the numbers are checkable.

What changes: You avoid the deals that go wrong, without needing to understand the work itself.

Is there an end date, or does it run forever? Open-ended retainers with no defined build are how people pay for years with nothing shipping.

Do you own what gets built? The domain, the site, the profile, the reviews, the customer list, the phone number. If leaving costs you all of it, you are renting your own business.

Can you verify the reporting yourself, like reviews and calls and jobs, or is it a dashboard only they can read? Numbers only the supplier can see are numbers you cannot check.

Do this: Ask all three before signing anything, including with us.

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Looking like a real business

Why a logo that looks fine on a phone can still be unusable, and what a brand actually needs to be for a trade.

Having a logo and having usable logo files are different things

Most people now have a logo. What most people do not have is the files. A logo that exists only as one flat picture looks completely finished on a screen and then fails the first time it has to leave one.

For example

An owner has a logo he generated in an afternoon. It looks good. Then the shirt company asks for vector, the sign shop asks for vector, the vehicle wrapper asks for vector, and he has a square picture with a white background. Every one of them either charges him to redraw it or puts a white box around it.

Broken: One picture file, usually a PNG or a JPEG with a white background behind it.
Working: Vector files that scale to any size, versions with a transparent background, a stacked version and an icon-only version, and the exact color codes written down.

What changes: The same logo goes on a shirt, a truck, a yard sign, an invoice and a website without anybody redrawing it and without a white box appearing around it.

Vector means the file describes shapes rather than pixels, so it is equally sharp on a business card and on the side of a van. SVG for web, and usually a PDF or EPS for anybody printing. A picture file cannot be turned into this automatically: somebody has to redraw it.

Transparent background means the logo sits on any color without a rectangle behind it. It is the single most common thing missing, and it is what makes a logo look stuck on rather than part of the design.

You need three shapes of it, because one never fits everywhere: the full version, a stacked version for narrow spaces, and an icon on its own for profile pictures, favicons and embroidery.

And write the colors down as codes. HEX for screens, RGB for anything on a display, CMYK for anything printed. Without the exact codes, every printer guesses, and your signs, shirts and cards end up three slightly different colors.

Do this: Ask whoever made your logo for the vector files and a transparent version. If there is nobody to ask, that is a half-day job and it blocks everything physical.

A generated logo is a starting point, not a finished one

There is nothing wrong with generating a logo. It is faster and cheaper than it has ever been, and the result is often genuinely fine. The problem is that what you get back is a picture, and a picture is the one thing a brand cannot be.

For example

Two businesses have logos that look equally good in a text message. One can put it on a truck this week. The other finds out at the sign shop that it has to be redrawn first, and that the version on their invoices is a slightly different blue from the version on their website.

Broken: A generated image saved to a phone, used by screenshotting it whenever it is needed.
Working: That same design redrawn properly as vector, with the full file set and the color codes.

What changes: You keep the look you already picked and it stops being the thing that blocks the shirts, the signs and the van.

Judge the design on whether you like it, not on how it was made. Then judge the files separately, because they are a separate question and they are the one that costs you later.

The redraw is not expensive and it is not a big job. It is worth doing before you spend anything on printing, because reprinting is what costs money.

Do this: If your logo came out of a generator, get it redrawn as vector before you order a single sign or shirt.

Three versions of you is worse than one plain one

A customer meets you in several places: a truck, a shirt, a quote, an invoice, a website, a Google profile. If those look like different companies, the business reads as a side job no matter how good the work is.

For example

The van says one name, the quote comes from a personal email, the website uses a different blue, and the invoice has no logo at all. Nothing there is bad. Together they suggest an operation that might not be around next year.

Broken: Every surface made separately, whenever it was needed, by whoever was handy.
Working: One set of files and one set of colors, used everywhere without thinking about it.

What changes: You look like the size you actually are, which is usually bigger than people assume from the pieces.

This is why the file set matters more than the design does. Consistency is easy when everything is pulled from the same folder, and almost impossible when every surface starts from scratch.

Do this: Put every brand file in one folder that a printer or a designer can be pointed at without asking you for anything.

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AI, and what it is actually good for

What it genuinely does for a business like yours, what it cannot do, and how to tell the difference when somebody puts the word on an invoice.

“AI” on a quote tells you nothing about what you are buying

It is a description of how something was made, not of what it does for you. A five page site written by a model in an afternoon and a five page site typed by a person are the same site. Both are worth exactly what they do when a customer lands on them, which is usually nothing on their own.

For example

An owner pays twelve hundred up front and a hundred a month for an AI-built site. It looks fine. Eight months later he has had no work from it, asks about leads, and is offered a review tool as the next thing. Nothing was wrong with the site. There was simply nothing behind it, and being AI-built never had any bearing on that either way.

Broken: Hearing “AI-powered” and assuming it means advanced, or means a fair price.
Working: Ignoring how it was built and asking what it does when a stranger arrives at midnight.

What changes: You stop paying a premium for the word and start paying for the thing, which is the only part that ever earned anything.

This cuts both ways and that is the honest version. AI-built is not a red flag either. We use these tools every day and they make some work faster and cheaper, which is good for you. The problem is only ever when the label is doing the selling instead of the result.

The tell is easy. Ask what it does, and see whether the answer is about the customer or about the technology. “It uses AI to generate your content” describes their process. “Somebody who calls at nine at night gets a text back in under a minute” describes your business.

Do this: Next time AI appears on a quote, ask what changes for your customer. If the answer is about the tool, the word is doing the selling.

The four things that genuinely save a trade business time

Almost all of the real value for a business your size is in writing, answering, sorting and summarising. None of it is glamorous and all of it is time you are currently spending.

For example

A flooring contractor dictates four rambling sentences into his phone after a walkthrough and gets back a clean scope of work with the exclusions listed. Ten minutes a quote, five quotes a week, and he was writing them at eleven at night before.

Broken: Writing every quote, follow-up and job description from scratch, usually after hours.
Working: Drafting from your own words in a couple of minutes, then editing rather than starting.

What changes: You get evenings back, and the writing is more consistent than it was, because a tired person at eleven at night is not the better writer.

Writing. Quotes, scopes, follow-up messages, service page text, job descriptions, a reply to a review you are annoyed about. Speak or type the rough version and let it tidy it up. It is far better at editing your words than at inventing content it knows nothing about.

Answering. A first reply to an enquiry, at two in the morning, that is polite and asks the right question. Not closing the job, just holding it until you are awake, which is most of the battle.

Sorting. Pulling addresses, job types and phone numbers out of a pile of messages into a list you can actually work through.

Summarising. What did this customer and I agree, across eleven texts over three weeks. That is a genuinely hard thing to do at speed and it is very good at it.

Do this: Pick the writing task you hate most this week and do it by dictating the rough version first. Just once, to see the difference.

The limits, in the places they will cost you money

It does not know your prices, your area, your suppliers or your licence requirements, and it will state something wrong with exactly as much confidence as something right. That is the whole risk, and it is entirely manageable once you expect it.

For example

An owner asks for a materials estimate on a job. The number comes back clean, specific, and roughly thirty per cent under what his supplier actually charges, because it was never told what his supplier charges. It looked like a calculation. It was a guess that reads like a calculation.

Broken: Treating the answer as a fact because it is fluent and arrives fast.
Working: Treating it as a confident first draft from somebody who has never seen your business.

What changes: You get the speed without the exposure, because you only ever trust it where being wrong is cheap.

Never let it near a number that goes to a customer without you checking it. Prices, measurements, timelines, anything on an invoice. It has no way to know if it is right.

It cannot do the things that need a person or a premises. It cannot verify your Google profile, hold your licence, be insured, or turn up. Anyone selling AI that does those is selling something else.

It does not know anything that happened recently unless you tell it, and it does not know anything private about your business at all unless you paste it in. Which means the quality of what you get back is mostly decided by how much context you gave it, not by which tool you picked.

Do this: Before trusting an answer, ask yourself whether you gave it enough to actually know. Usually you did not, and that is the fix.

Three questions for anybody selling you an AI anything

The same test as the rest of this guide, because it is the same problem wearing a newer word. What does it do, what does it replace, and what happens when it gets something wrong.

For example

Two suppliers offer an AI receptionist. One will not say what happens when it cannot answer. The other says it takes a name, a number and a job type, texts you immediately, and tells the caller a human will ring back within the hour. The second one knows what it built.

Broken: Buying the demo, which is always impressive, because demos are chosen.
Working: Buying the failure case, which is where the thing either works or embarrasses you.

What changes: You end up with tools that hold up on a Saturday, rather than ones that impressed you on a Tuesday.

What does it do for my customer, in a sentence with no jargon in it? If they cannot, they are selling the label.

What is it replacing, and what does that save me? An AI tool that adds a monthly fee and saves nothing is a subscription, not an improvement.

What happens when it gets it wrong, and who finds out first, me or my customer? This is the one that separates the real products from the wrappers, and almost nobody asks it.

Do this: Ask the third question first. It is the one they have least often prepared for.

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A to Z

Every word anyone will use at you

If somebody uses a term you do not know, it is here. If it is not here and they cannot explain it plainly, that is worth noticing.

A2P 10DLC: The registration system US phone carriers use before they will let a business send automatic texts. It needs a registered company and an EIN.; Why it matters: No registration, no automatic texting, from anyone, at any price.
AI: Software that produces language, images or code by pattern, rather than by following rules somebody wrote. On a quote it describes how a thing was made, not what it does.; Why it matters: It is being used as a price justification for work whose value has nothing to do with how it was built.
Asset files: The set of logo files a business needs: vector for scaling, transparent for placing on any color, plus a stacked version and an icon on its own.; Why it matters: Without them, every shirt, sign and vehicle either gets a white box or a redraw bill.
Attribution: Knowing which advert, search or referral produced a particular job.; Why it matters: Without it, every decision about where to spend is a guess.
Bounce rate: The share of visitors who arrive on your site and leave without doing anything.; Why it matters: A high one usually means the page is slow or does not say what you do.
Citation: Any listing of your business name, address and phone number on another website, like Yelp or a trade directory.; Why it matters: Google uses agreement between listings as evidence you are a real business.
Conversion: A visitor doing the thing you wanted: calling, filling the form, booking.; Why it matters: Traffic without conversions is people looking at you and leaving.
CRM: Customer relationship management. A single list of every lead and customer with what stage each one is at.; Why it matters: It is the difference between chasing everyone and chasing whoever you remember.
CTA: Call to action. The thing you are asking a visitor to do next, like a Call Now button.; Why it matters: A page without one leaves people with nothing obvious to do.
EIN: Employer Identification Number. A federal tax number for a business, free to get.; Why it matters: Needed for business texting, and usually for business banking.
GBP: Google Business Profile. The free listing that shows on the right of a search and on the map. Used to be called Google My Business.; Why it matters: For local trades it is the single highest-return thing you own.
Hallucination: When an AI tool states something false with complete confidence, usually because it was never given the facts and filled the gap instead.; Why it matters: It is why no AI-produced number should reach a customer without you checking it.
Impressions: How many times you appeared in front of somebody, whether or not they clicked.; Why it matters: Useful for spotting whether you have a visibility problem or a persuasion problem.
Landing page: A page built for one specific purpose, usually where an advert sends people.; Why it matters: Ads pointed at a homepage convert far worse than ads pointed at the exact service.
Lead: Somebody who has got in touch and might become a customer.; Why it matters: Leads are what you are actually buying when you spend on marketing.
LSA: Local Services Ads. Google ads for trades that sit above everything else and charge per lead, not per click. They need a background check.; Why it matters: Often the cheapest paid leads in a trade, and frequently overlooked.
Map pack: The three businesses shown with a map above the normal Google results.; Why it matters: Those three take most of the local clicks. Fourth place is a long way down.
Missed-call text-back: An automatic text to anyone whose call you could not answer.; Why it matters: Recovers calls that would otherwise go straight to a competitor.
NAP: Name, address, phone. The three details that must match everywhere you are listed.; Why it matters: Inconsistency makes Google less confident you are one real business.
Organic: Anything you did not pay for directly: normal search results, the map, word of mouth.; Why it matters: Slower to build than ads, and it does not stop when you stop paying.
PPC: Pay per click. Advertising where you are charged each time somebody clicks.; Why it matters: Costs money every single time, so it only works if what happens next works.
Prompt: What you type or say to an AI tool. Its quality decides the answer far more than which tool you chose.; Why it matters: Most bad results are a prompt that left out everything the tool would have needed to know.
Raster: An image made of pixels, like a PNG or JPEG. Fixed size: blow it up and it goes soft.; Why it matters: A logo that is only raster cannot go on a vehicle or a yard sign without being redrawn.
ROI: Return on investment. What you got back against what you put in.; Why it matters: The only number that decides whether any of this was worth doing.
Schema: Hidden code on a website that tells search engines what your business is, in a format they read directly.; Why it matters: Without it, Google is guessing what you do and where.
SEO: Search engine optimisation. Work done to appear higher in search results without paying for ads.; Why it matters: Legitimate, slow, and the most commonly oversold thing in this industry.
Service area: The towns and areas you will travel to, set on your Google profile.; Why it matters: Set it wrong and you are invisible in places you happily work.
Speed to lead: How long between somebody contacting you and somebody replying.; Why it matters: The business that answers first usually wins the job.
SVG: A vector image file, used on the web. Sharp at any size because it stores shapes rather than pixels.; Why it matters: It is what you ask for when somebody says they need your logo in vector.
Vector: A file that describes a design as shapes rather than pixels, so it is equally sharp on a card and on the side of a van.; Why it matters: Sign shops, embroiderers and wrappers all ask for it, and a picture cannot be converted into one automatically.

Where you stand

Want to know which of these you are actually missing?

The grade checks what is publicly visible about your business, asks about the rest, and gives you the plan, the order and the range. It takes about five minutes and you keep the plan either way.

Get your grade and your plan

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