Knowledge base

How business grows online — explained end to end

A short answer to every question, and a full breakdown for those who want the detail. How search, maps, advertising and AI answers work, what it costs, how long it takes to pay back, and where the money usually leaks. No jargon and no promises that cannot be kept.

Where to start

If you are new to promotion, read them in order. These five give the whole picture: where clients come from, what to do in the first months, what it costs and what to expect by when.

1. How business gets customers from the internet There are six channels: search, maps, advertising, AI answers, referrals and direct visits. Search and maps bring the cheapest clients but take three to six months to pay back; advertising brings requests on day two and stops working the day you switch it off. For a local business, maps are almost always the place to start — the cheapest channel and the fastest.
2. Where to start promotion: the first 90 days Month one is measurement and maps: analytics, directory listings, site speed. Month two is queries and service pages, with advertising switched on alongside for the first requests. Month three is content and links. That order matters: first what pays off in weeks, then what accumulates over months.
3. SEO or advertising: what to choose at the start Advertising is for when you need money now: requests start on day two and stop with the budget. SEO is for when you need an asset: silence for the first months, then traffic that arrives without monthly payments. Combining them at the start is sensible — advertising feeds the business while SEO builds up.
4. What a customer costs: how to count and not fool yourself The arithmetic is simple: divide everything you spent on a channel in a month by the number of clients, not requests. The difference is decisive — if one in ten requests buys, a client costs ten times what a request does. Include not just the budget but the contractor's fee and your staff's time handling enquiries.
5. Why a website brings no requests The chain from a person to money has five links, and usually one is broken. Check in order: is there traffic at all, do people leave immediately, do they find prices, does the form get in the way, do requests actually arrive. The most common and most galling cause is that the request never arrived: a broken form or an email in spam.

After that, work through the sections. Inside each one the material is ordered: first what you need to understand, then what gets done in practice.