When dealing with the modern world we can often times mistake non-reality for reality. I have been struggling with so much Google nonsense with my business website that I am starting to believe that is the reality of the business.
From the disappearing reviews to the issues with LCP to trying to fix SEO it feels like I work for Google. That I am trying to cram my reality into Google’s worldview and that my business is one of many that are slaves to the Google hierarchy.
The reality is none of that matters. If I wear to delete my website tomorrow and delist everything from Google I would still have a business. We would have a phone number, a scheduling system, payment methods, everything but web presence would be active.
While deleting the website and removing all web presence is a very bad idea it might not be such a bad idea to act as if that is the case. I keep working with Google ads and LSA has delivered some top tier clients our way this year. It has been slow for the past couple weeks but it moves in fits and starts anyway. The rest of Google ads remain a mystery to me. It is too automated and requires monitoring to get it to be effective, and with all that automation I’m not sure what exactly is happening all the time.
The question is a healthy one. If Google didn’t exist how would I advertise? If I wanted to reach real people in the real world where would I go and what would I do? The first answer is something I am already doing. Client interaction. Word of mouth is and will always be the best way to get new clients. Referrals, referrals, referrals. That is the name of the game.
The next method would be to sponsor local events. I don’t really do that one, but things like sand soccer, local fishing tournaments, ECSC, and other events put on for locals. With the final method being to look at where we are currently servicing clients and send direct mail to our most dense neighborhoods. Try and get new clients where we already have clients. If I pulled the $400-600 we are spending a month for Google advertising and focused on offline methods I wonder what the impact would be.
The rise of AI and trying to please our future bot overloads with GEO or whatever they call it is only going to become another form of madness, but businesses can and will win by ignoring all of it. My psychosis is too deep and I have worked too hard to please our Google overlord to pull my ads and refocus elsewhere. Even if I think it makes logical sense and that a large segment of the population is more than ready to completely drop off the internet.
David Huzzard Writes 