Most owners put their marketing effort into whatever is worrying them. A salon on 3.9 stars spends its evenings on blog posts for SEO. A plumber on 4.8 from 200 reviews loses sleep over the one bad one. Both are working hard on the wrong thing.
The fix is not more effort. It is knowing which move actually gets you the call, doing that first, and leaving the rest until it matters. This guide covers how to choose, and how Marketbase puts your list in order for you.
In this article
- 1. Why effort follows worry, and what to follow instead
- 2. How your roadmap picks one to five things, in order
- 3. Working through a priority and ticking it off
- 4. When your numbers move, and when to refresh
Invest in what gets you the call
When someone searches for what you do, they do two things. They pick from the businesses they can see, then they choose the one that looks best. Anything that stops you being seen, or makes you look worse than the place down the road, costs you calls. Everything else is polish.
That means the right first move depends on your market, not on a checklist. A listing with no photos matters a lot when every competitor has 30, and very little when nobody has any. A website speed problem matters less than a rating that sits half a star below everyone around you.
So the question is never "what is wrong with my marketing". It is "which gap between me and the businesses I compete with is costing me the most calls". Answer that one, sort it, then ask again.
Key point
You do not need to do everything. You need to do the next right thing, then the one after it.
One to five things, in order
Your roadmap is the top of Marketbase, and it answers that question for you. It reads every check we run on your business against your market and gives you one to five things to do now, in the order that moves you most.
The basics always come first. If your Google listing is unclaimed or marked closed, your website is down, or you have no website or Facebook page at all, that leads the list, because nothing else counts until a customer can find you and reach you. After that, the order follows the moves that make the biggest difference against your closest competition: the businesses you added as competitors, plus the nearest businesses in your category.
Below the first five sits a short "after these" list, so you know what is coming. Your roadmap also names three strengths you already hold that most of your competition lacks. That is where to stop spending effort for now.
You do not need to do everything. You need to do the next right thing, then the one after it.
Working through a priority
Start with the first priority and leave the others closed. Each one says why it matters for your business, roughly how long it takes ("One evening", say) and gives you a short checklist of tasks. Where a task needs words, like a new description for your Google listing, the text is written for you, ready to paste.
Tick each task as you do it. If you want the full detail, every priority links to its area report and to a detailed report on that one measure. If you would rather not do it yourself, there is a button on every priority to hand it to us.
If you are stuck on a task, or unsure it applies to you, open the detailed report for that priority before you give up on it. It explains the measure in full, with where you sit against your market.
Resist the urge to skip to the quick ones further down. The order is the point. A tidy-up at position four will not get you the calls that the fix at position one will.
Tip
Book the time like a job. Put the first priority in your calendar for a set evening. Owners who schedule it finish it. Owners who fit it in around everything else rarely do.
When your numbers move
A tick records what you did. It does not change your numbers, and that is deliberate. Your Health score out of 10, your Market Rank and your Progress move when we next check your market and see the change on Google, on your website or wherever it happened.
Some changes show up straight away. Others, like a growing review count or a new listing Google is still checking, build over weeks. Measuring the change rather than taking the tick on trust keeps your numbers honest, and it tells you when a fix did not land.
When fresh data has arrived, your roadmap says so. Press Refresh and the new roadmap opens with what changed: the tasks you ticked, where you moved, and anything that slipped back, like hours that reverted or a fix Google did not pick up. Work you have done is not handed to you again. A fix that did not take comes back flagged, so you know to look at it.
As you clear priorities, new ones take their place. An area that was your biggest gap in March can be a strength by winter, and your list rotates with it. Tracking your progress covers how to read that movement over time.
Picture this
An illustrative example: a panel beater in Hamilton has been paying for website updates, thinking that was where the work went. His roadmap's first priority is reviews: the closest shops all have three times as many.
He spends a month asking every customer at pick-up, ticks the task, and pauses the website spend. When he next refreshes, reviews have dropped down his list and something new leads it.
Your priority plan
5 minutes today
- Open your roadmap and read the first priority only
- Note the three strengths it names, and stop worrying about them
This week
- Book a set time and work through the first priority's checklist
- Tick each task as you finish it, or hand the priority to us
Ongoing this month
- Move to the next priority only when the first is done
- When your roadmap says fresh data has arrived, press Refresh and read what changed
Start with the truth
Find your business by name on Marketbase and your free report shows what is working, what could move and where you stand in your market. Open your free 7 days and your roadmap puts it in order, with the how for every step. Sort it yourself, or we'll do it for you.