the person who saw you once, and how a plumber gets them back.

Most people who find you on Google leave without calling, and the businesses that win are the ones they keep seeing afterwards.

Hi,

Think about the last time you looked for a service. You searched, you opened three results, you looked at one for a bit, and then the kettle boiled or the kid yelled or a text came in. You closed the phone. You meant to come back. Did you?

That is your customer. Most people do not buy the first time they see you. Not because you did anything wrong, but because life happened between seeing you and calling you. They saw you once. Then they saw nothing, and a week later, when the problem came back, they searched again and started from scratch, and this time your competitor was the one they happened to open.

A local business has two jobs in marketing, and only two. Show up when people are looking for what you do. Then keep showing up, from the moment they made it clear there is a need. Almost everyone works on the first one. Almost nobody works on the second, and the second is where the missed customers are.

Keep showing up does not mean calling them or spamming them. It means being visible again, quietly, in the places they already spend time. That is what retargeting is. It shows a small ad only to the people who already visited your website or your profile, on YouTube, on Instagram, on Facebook, over the next few weeks. Not to strangers. Only to the people who already raised a hand.

Here is retargeting for a plumber, in one paragraph. Someone in Newton has a slow drain, searches, and lands on your site at lunch. They do not call, because the drain is slow, not blocked, and lunch is over. A small piece of code on your site notes that a visitor came. That evening, while they are scrolling through Instagram, a short clip of you clearing a drain appears with your name and the town. Two days later, while they are watching something on YouTube, a few seconds of the same. The drain gets worse on Saturday. They do not search again. They already know a plumber. They pick up the phone and call the name they have seen three times this week.

That is the whole thing. No new audience, no big budget, no clever targeting. Just the people who already found you, seeing you again, until the moment they are ready. It works for a plumber and it works for a dentist, a landscaper, a med spa or a car dealer, because the customer forgets in exactly the same way in every trade.

A few notes so you do not waste money on it. It only works after the first job is done: if nobody finds you on Google, there is nobody to retarget. The ad should look like you, a real photo or a real short video, not a stock image. And keep it short and calm, because the person has already met you, they just need reminding.

In my plan this comes after the ranking work, once the site and the profile are pulling people in. How I set it up and where it fits is on my retargeting page. If you read only one thing on it, read the part about who sees the ad, because that is the part everyone gets wrong.

Talk soon,
Brandon

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P.P.S. If you want me to do it for you, the plan is here: the plan.