A sample market read: the answer was yes

You gave us the business name, the towns you drive to, and an email address. This is what we found, and what we would do about it.

The market

You serve a metro of roughly a dozen towns that sits across a county line. Google reads the two counties as two markets. Your office is in the smaller one. Most of the replacement demand is in the larger one, on the far side of the line, where you currently do most of your driving and almost none of your ranking.

Drawing

a grid of points over the service area. Solid near the office, thinning to nothing across the county line.

That is the whole problem in one picture. You are the best-reviewed company in your county and you are invisible in the county where the work is.

The demand

Repair searches spike twice a year and are contested by every company in both counties. Replacement searches run all year, quieter, and are contested by fewer companies because most of them stopped writing about replacement after the first page they built.

Drawing

two lines across a year, one spiking in summer and winter, one flat and steady.

The flat line is where we would start. It is cheaper, it converts at higher ticket, and there is room in it.

The competitors

Three names hold the map across the line. One is a large regional company with a strong listing and a slow site. One is a two-truck operator with more reviews than you in that county because that is where he lives. One is a franchise with the budget to be there every week in paid.

The franchise will outspend you in paid. The regional company will outrank you on brand searches for years. The two-truck operator is beatable on the map inside twelve months, because his listing is his only asset and yours can be made better than his.

What we would do

Paid first, pointed only at replacement and only across the line, with repair left to the season peaks. Service pages for the towns across the line, written for the searches people there actually type. The listing worked hard: categories, photos, posts, reviews from customers on the far side of the line, which you have and have never asked for. Every call tracked to the town it came from, so the grid and the phone can be compared.

The split

Drawing

one bar. The larger share labelled work, the smaller labelled media, with a note that media rises during the two seasonal peaks.

The starting budget carries this. It would not carry a push in both counties on both lines of business at once, and we would not propose one.

The verdict

Yes. The market carries it, the room in it is in replacement across the line, and the competitor holding the map there is the one competitor in the picture you can take. Movement on the grid inside a few months, the phone changing after that, and you will see every point on the grid every month either way.

If that reads right, we talk properly. If it does not, tell us what we got wrong about your area. You know it better than the map does.

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