How Customers Find Businesses Today | 7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success - Episode 3

0:00John Jantsch:You know, most small businesses don't have a marketing problem. They have a strategy problem underneath the marketing. I wrote a new workbook called Seven Steps to Small Business Marketing Success that walks through exactly how to fix it. From getting clear as a founder, all the way to running marketing like an operating system. 20 years of working with small businesses condensed into a framework you can actually use. And right now it's only five bucks. Go grab it at dtm.world slash seven steps. That's DTM.world slash seven steps.

0:44John Jantsch:Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is Jon Jantz and no guest today. Again, some of you that have been following along may recall I am doing the seven steps to small business marketing success. This is actually episode number three, step number three. So you can check out the show notes of the past sessions as well if you're just trying to catch up. But today I want to talk about this new reality. Our businesses have possibly become invisible to AI search. In fact, I want you to do this test. Go to Chatsup PT, Perplexity, Claude, take your pick, right?

1:22John Jantsch:Type in three questions that your best customers look for or ask when they are looking for a business like yours. Not anything about your particular business, but the problems they're trying to solve, the issues that they have. Something that they would ask before hiring somebody. Now, you can stop the episode right now and do that. I'll wait. But describe what you find. Think about what you find. Is it nothing? Is it you? Are you dominating? That would be awesome, of course. That's a new reality. And this isn't a future problem. This isn't coming. This is a current one. Now, a lot of local businesses are still showing up in Google and Google Maps, and that's still important, but it's fading, right?

2:06John Jantsch:People, I don't know if it's right or not, but people go today and when they see those like best remodeling contractor in so-so city and AI tells them three companies, they believe it because they've typically typed in who do kitchens in older homes who blah, blah, blah, blah. So it's a very specific type of search now. And the results that come up there are the ones that are winning. So are you coming up there or are your competitors coming up there? I mean, this is how research is being done today. And I think a lot of small businesses are still optimized for, I don't know, 2019 when all you needed to do, boy, if you showed up on that Google Maps or you showed up in Google search, then that was really all it took.

2:56John Jantsch:I think this is an opportunity. I mean, I think the founders who act now still absolutely have the opportunity. It's kind of like when we first went online, we first started blogging, all those kinds of things. The opportunity now is to actually be first in AI search. So what's changed? For 20 years, as I said, can Google find you? I mean, in a lot of ways, we got lazy because that was the only question you really had to answer. It still applies. It's just not the whole answer anymore. So what we have to do or we have to think in terms of is not just search results, keyword phrases, all the things that were thrown around by SEO folks so much.

3:41John Jantsch:We have to be findable. We have to be credible and we have to be retrievable. Those are three things I really want to talk about. And I'm not here to talk about how to hack SEO or how to hack GEO or whatever new term they're going to come up with for the various engines. It's really just more a matter of how we have to get our story out the same way we always have. It's just sometimes you have to adapt to the new realities of the buyer. I mean, and I think that's something that doesn't get said enough is that we're not reacting to the new realities of AI or of Google. We're reacting to how people choose to buy today.

4:19John Jantsch:And that's really, if you keep that in mind and you keep in mind what they have available to them. That's what we need to really respond to and not just some new platform or some new tool or some new trend or some new hype. All right. So findable. There really is traditional search, social search, and now AI mediated, I don't know what we would call it, search. Those are the three kinds of search that we have to respond to today. And again, most people have really just thought about one of those. So topic authority, think about that. It used to be keywords, right? We wanted to have a page that we optimized for three or four keywords that people would search and that the search engines would actually be keyed on.

5:08John Jantsch:And today it's really more about topic authority, a deep, rich topic that you can actually prove that you are an expert in. Not that you can write about, but that you can actually prove. You have the results, you have the case studies, you have the reviews, you have all the things that real human beings would be saying about your business. This is strategic. It's not technical. And I think a lot of times that's what we've done. We've kind of defaulted to the technical aspects. And frankly, a lot of SEO folks love that because technical is hard. Technical is easy to confuse. Strategic is not so much, frankly.

5:50John Jantsch:And I think that's the part, while it's a mindset shift, I think that's the part that's the real opportunity for folks. So credible is the second part. So findable, topic authority. Credible, does your site confirm that they're in the right place? And a lot of times, again, I can talk till I'm blue in the face about websites.

6:21John Jantsch:that's what i find is quite often the case we we'll start working for somebody and we'll have lots of suggestions about ways to improve their home page and they actually were like oh i didn't even realize we said that or oh we don't even offer that service anymore so you most founders haven't done it in years and i think that quite often we run across sites that reflect the reality of a business three years ago. I actually ran into somebody who said they haven't updated, they haven't changed one thing on their website since 2019. We're in 2026 today. I don't even want to start with how much has changed since 2019, but clearly that site is not going to perform.

6:57John Jantsch:And the thing is, a lot of people get very focused on design's really not going to solve the problem. Yes, the site has to look like somebody thinks it's going to look or that they're used to how to navigate how it looks. But it's really more about deep proof of real work and a connection so that when the buyer or potential buyer shows up, says, you get me, or I feel heard, or you understand the problems that I'm trying to solve. All right. So then the last one is retrievable. So we've got findable, credible, and retrievable. So this is probably kind of a new one for many people. AI builds its answers from whatever is publicly available on a website, like your website content, structured data, third-party presence, reviews, citations, right?

7:48John Jantsch:And so all of those things have to be there. If your content is very thin, if it is missing structured data, if there's weak external presence, meaning that people aren't linking back to it, people aren't talking about it, AI can either find you or really can't describe you with accuracy. And that's why we really want to start talking about real FAQs. Go read every one of those reviews that you have gotten. Plug them into an AI tool and ask them to analyze and summarize the reviews that you've gotten. many times that will be the absolute goldmine of the problems that you really solve. And then the flip side of that, the fears that a client or your clients, at least, were really worried about in engaging a company like yours or your competitors.

8:39John Jantsch:And I think that's where we have to start thinking about real content that addresses those things, because that's what people are searching. They're going out there and saying, I want to find a contractor that won't destroy my home, that won't let my dog out. I mean, they're asking very specific things like that. And that's what AI is trying to surface. All it does is goes out there and reads a whole bunch of stuff. And in fact, we're seeing that businesses that write that real stuff, the voice of customer, really putting their reviews out there as like, here's the problems we solve, maybe didn't even have a great search presence before because search was dominated by companies that knew how to hack the algorithm.

9:18John Jantsch:But AI doesn't care about what Google used to care about. It really cares about retrieving the data to very specific searches that people are making today. You know, I've spent over 20 years watching good businesses waste money on marketing that doesn't add up. And usually the problem isn't the tactics, it's the missing foundation underneath them all. So I put the whole system in a new workbook called Seven Steps to Small Business Marketing Success. Seven steps, the right order with everything you need to build that actually compounds. You can pick it up right now for five bucks at dtm.world slash seven steps.

10:00John Jantsch:So that's dtm.world slash seven steps. So, all right, here are three things that you need to build. Your website has to be a selling tool, not a brochure. So hub pages, something I've talked about for many years. And the beauty is they become more important than ever. So I'm going to review that. And then the last one is third-party presence. And that's a part that many business owners, I won't say they neglect, but it's just the hard part in a lot of cases. It's the part that you don't control, that you don't own. And so you have to be very intentional about making it happen. All right. So the website, a brochure describes a selling tool converts.

10:43John Jantsch:That's the difference, right? And so there are really four things that I think have to be there. They are a priority. There is an order to them. Your core message above the fold. Here's who we serve. Here's how we solve their problem better than anyone ever thought about. Not here's what we do. Your ideal client needs to be named. It's like we serve and we are the better than anyone at serving XYZ. Very specific. Identify. Segments, whatever it is, identify them. So that when somebody arrives there, they're like, okay, you work with people like me. Hard stop on what's next, right? Not a menu, not contact us.

11:21John Jantsch:One frictionless action for the person who's ready. Schedule a consultation. Download this free assessment. Get a quote. Don't have a dozen ways that people can think about contacting you. Have very active, not passive, very active. Here's why you should contact us. Here's what you'll get when you schedule. Here is the tool that you can use to download to solve your problem. Have a very specific call to action. Probably what I see more than anything is that first one. The core message is either buried, generic, or missing entirely. I can't tell you how many sites I still run across that above the fold, first thing somebody reads is a description of what your profession is, what your industry is.

12:09John Jantsch:We are accountants in XYZ City. And that was an old SEO holdover about what somebody wants to know is who you serve, how you solve their problem, how you solve their problem like nobody else ever dreamed of doing. That's what they need to understand first. All right, hub pages. So this is, I mentioned already, topic authority. This is your topic authority unit is a hub page. And so the idea is if you think about a book, you've got a large body of work that is organized around chapters. And that's really what a hub page is. So if you have a topic, home remodeling kitchens, for example, that's a topic that somebody who wants to remodel a kitchen is going out there and looking for information about.

12:55John Jantsch:So if you had the page that says everything you need to know about remodeling, but again, that's going to be broken up into getting ready to remodel. Should you remodel? Design considerations, appliances, construction, after, finishes. I mean, a whole category of subtopics. And so the idea behind a hub page is somebody arrives at that page. Maybe they just want to know about wallpaper today, but they are remodeling a kitchen. So they find that page and then there's a subtopic on wall finishes. And so they jump over to that, but then they jump back to the hub page. So if when they want to talk about appliances or a kitchen countertops, for example, and so this is like the entire guide, the ultimate guide to remodeling your kitchen has all these subtopics that are essentially blog posts that you link out to.

13:49John Jantsch:But this page becomes the collection or the structure of all of that topic. And so what that certainly tells the AI, tells the search engines has for years, that this is an authoritative page on this topic that then has, it might have 10, 20, 30 ,000 words ultimately collected in a number of blog posts that are on subtopics. So it's probably more about, it's not the content. Well, the content's important, but a huge part of it is the structure of the content. This is like a jumping off point for anybody who wants to know about that topic. And the AI tools, as well as the search engines, absolutely love that.

14:30John Jantsch:And the beauty from a practical small business owner standpoint is that's something you can structure, plan, take a year to build. It's like writing a book, as I said. It just has all of the topics organized on this one page. And you can start having case studies. You can start having, look through all of your reviews. And somebody said about how clean you are. Somebody said about your pricing. Somebody said about your design. So you all of a sudden can start organizing your reviews even around some of these topics. And that's what the AI tools want to see. That's what they want to see, topic authority, topic expertise with real proof, not just 700 words that AI spun up, real proof that only you, you're the only ones who can actually talk about what that client got as a result.

15:19John Jantsch:And so hub pages are, to me, really your secret weapon to dominate. We've done them for many clients. And they have always ranked in SEO and they are always ranking now in AI searches because of the nature, the real focused nature on a core topic. Third party. So AI doesn't just use your website. I mean, really, the search engines never did too. That's why you hear people talk about backlinks and reviews and getting other people in social media to talk about your products and services. That's always been important. So things like your Google business profile, industry directories, reviews, mentions, citations across the web.

16:02John Jantsch:Those are all things that you do actually have a way to actively participate in. You don't control them necessarily. People write what they want to write or are going to write, say, in reviews and mentions. But you do have the ability to optimize, to make sure that your information is correct in those directories. If you do searches in AI, you'll see there are certain directories and certain websites like Reddit and things that some of the AI tools actually rely on pretty heavily. And those will change, evolve. They constantly are. But you get a sense of some places maybe that you're not mentioned.

16:41Say house, again, going back to our remodeling contractor, is a source that a lot of the AI tools depend on.

16:49John Jantsch:It's an authoritative source. Are you playing there? That just gives you some ideas on some third-party places. in a lot of ways. Think about it as, I think we've always thought about it as housekeeping to be in those directories, to make sure that they were correct, that you didn't have the wrong phone number. A lot of people look at that as housekeeping. And I think today, in today's environment, it's more infrastructure. It's something that you actually have to build. It's behind the scenes. It's not going to pay off today. It's the thing that you need to build as part of the infrastructure of your business.

17:22So if you didn't run that test,

17:25John Jantsch:pause now, run that test, screenshot the baseline. Are your competitors showing up when you do a search that your customers are likely asking? Are you showing up? It just kind of gives you the picture of, if you've ignored this, it gives you the picture of what you have to do. So that's really it today. I will tell you that if some of the things I talked about today, again, go get the free ebook. It's dtm.world-7steps. I misspoke. I think we're charging$4.99 for a tremendous amount of value. It's more of a workbook than an ebook. It'll give you lots of things to think about, lots of things to work on as well.

18:01John Jantsch:So it's dtm.world-7steps. And if you just want to skip all of that and find out how working with us and having us install strategy first in your business and then build a marketing operating system with to you that you own that can address each of these seven steps, that is just ducttapemarketing.com slash consultation. So thanks for tuning in. Next episode, step number five of seven is coming up. So thanks for tuning in. Hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.