Keeping It Simple
The fastest, simplest ways to grow your business - no jargon, no fluff. Practical strategies that actually work for SME owners in the USA, New Zealand, and worldwide.
You've spent money on a rebrand, a new website, maybe a social media manager — and the single most important piece of marketing real estate you own gets checked twice a year, if that. It is your Google Business Profile, and for most local and regional SME owners, it now does more to win or lose a customer than the website you paid thousands for. If someone searches "your service + your city" today, your Business Profile is very often the first and only impression they get before they decide whether to call you or the next name on the list.
The Website-First Myth
The conventional wisdom SME owners are sold is that marketing starts with a great website. For a huge share of local searches it doesn't — it starts and often ends on the map pack, the cluster of three business listings Google shows above every organic result for "near me" and local-intent searches. Google's own research into "near me" search behaviour shows a large share of these searches lead to a store visit or contact within a day — a much shorter, higher-intent path than a typical website visit. If your profile is thin, outdated, or missing recent reviews, you are losing that decision before your website is ever opened.
The enemy is not Google's algorithm. It is treating your Business Profile as a one-time setup task from years ago instead of a living asset that needs the same attention as your homepage.
The Local Visibility Stack
This is the three-layer system I take clients through, in order of impact.
1. Complete the profile fully — every category, service, attribute, and photo field Google offers. Incomplete profiles rank behind complete ones for identical searches, regardless of how good the business actually is.
2. Build a review velocity, not a review pile — a steady drip of two or three new reviews a month, asked for at the moment of delivery, outperforms fifty old reviews that stopped eighteen months ago. Recency is a ranking signal.
3. Post and answer weekly — Google Posts and the Q and A section are two of the most under-used features on the platform. A profile that shows recent activity signals an active, trustworthy business to both Google and the customer.
"Kevin D'Ambros-Smith was the first coach that helped us and he was so great. He understood the business straightaway, was able to identify some of the areas where we could grow it, and some of the things to park. I don't think the ROW branding would be nearly as strong without his input. He was just brilliant."
— Sarah McGuinness, Founder and CEO, Revolutionaries of Wellbeing (ROW)
Why This Gets Skipped
Most owners know reviews matter. Very few treat the profile itself as a marketing channel with an owner, a schedule, and a monthly check-in — because it feels like admin, not marketing. It gets handed to whoever has five minutes, which means it gets done once and never again. The businesses that win the local search results are not smarter. They simply treat this as a recurring task on the marketing calendar, not a box ticked once at launch.
This is exactly the kind of unglamorous, high-leverage discipline that a coaching relationship builds — not the idea itself, which most owners already half-know, but the accountability that turns "we should do that" into a standing task that actually happens every week.
Quick Wins This Week
- Check every field in your Google Business Profile is complete — services, attributes, hours, and at least ten recent photos.
- Ask your next three happy customers for a review while the experience is fresh, not weeks later.
- Post one update this week — a new product, a team update, a seasonal offer — and reply to every existing review, good or bad.
Key Takeaways
- Treat your Google Business Profile as a living channel, not a one-time setup task.
- Build review velocity — a steady drip beats a stale pile every time.
- Post weekly to signal an active business to both Google and the customer.
- Assign an owner and a recurring slot on the marketing calendar — discipline beats inspiration here.
If nobody in your business owns your Google Business Profile, that's a marketing gap costing you customers every single week.
Kevin D’Ambros-Smith
Kevin is the founder of Simple-Growth and a business growth coach with experience at DDB, Ogilvy, and Saatchi & Saatchi. He has co-founded 9 companies, coached 200+ business owners one-on-one, and holds a 9.5/10 NPS. Every article on this blog reflects real-world experience - no theory, no fluff.
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