Hi,
It's Albert.
Had a lead come in a couple of weeks ago. He filled out the form on our site, said he was interested in our local SEO services, and asked us to take a look at his business.
He runs one of the biggest limousine companies in the UK. Big name across the country. So we were happy to dig in.
We did the free analysis, found a bunch of gaps, and got on a call to walk him through it. Showed him the missing spots from our video review, told him exactly how we'd help him rank, and then...
He denied it all. Went on and on about how none of this would work because he had tried it already.
Ok, fair enough. Maybe I missed something. So I asked what he was thinking, we went back and forth, and I told him I'd run a second analysis and bring him more solutions for every problem he just told me about.
Did the second one and guess what... WE FOUND MOOOOORE STUFF WRONG.
We get on another call after I send the second analysis, and just like the first one, he said none of that would work either.
Third analysis. Third call. Same result.
By that point I had given him pretty much every solution I had. The whole playbook. I told him what he was missing, what his competitors were doing right, what they were doing wrong, and how we could beat them.
His competition was honestly a mess too. One of them was running their Google Business Profile off a post office address, which is against Google's rules here in the UK. So this competitor was basically a ghost. Fake setup, ranking anyway. I told him how easy it would be to outrank them once we reported it and got his own profile sorted properly.
He didn't want to touch the competitor situation. He didn't want to set up a fresh Google Business Profile either, because the ones he already had weren't bringing him calls, so why would another one.
I proposed Google Ads. He said he tried ads before and they don't work for him. I proposed Meta Ads and a landing page built by us to go with them, and he doubted that as well. So I asked him what he actually wants from us. And ladies and gents, you won't believe what he said.
He wanted us to work for free, FOR 90 DAYS, to prove ourselves. Rank him at the top, build the landing page, and run the Meta ads. All for free. That was the craziest proposal I have ever heard, and this is coming from a 6+ figure business owner.
Anywaaay, I decided to build him a quick demo of a landing page to show him what we can do, and here's what we did for him:
This is the landing page we built for the ads
This is his landing page. Perhaps the one where the ads didn't work
The guy liked it a lot, but didn't want to proceed with it unless we finished it at no cost.
By the end of all this I had done three or four free analyses, half a landing page, and around two hours of free consulting on calls.
Then he tells me, "bro Albert, currently you are just listing problems. I want solutions."
I had given him a solution on every single call. He had said no to every single one of them.
So I was honest with him. I told him I can't keep working for free. He wanted us to do all the work first and prove it would rank, as a kind of test. That's not how this works for anyone. I gave him the whole game already. He chose not to use it.
And the funny thing is, he is still not ranking today.
So here is the lesson from this whole experience, and it's something you can apply to your own business too.
If you have never properly tried something in your business, you don't really know if it works. Maybe you heard it didn't work for the guy down the road, or that one time you spent a hundred pounds on Facebook Ads five years ago and gave up after a week.
Saying ads don't work after one bad try is like telling an electrician the light bulb won't turn on because you wired a plug yourself once and it didn't go well.
Same thing goes for ranking at the top of Google. Saying it won't bring you clients, while your competition is at the top getting clients like crazy every single week, is not the move that will grow your business.
Doubt is healthy when it pushes you to ask better questions or run a small test. Doubt becomes a problem when it keeps you parked for two years while someone with a fake address eats your market.
When someone shows you the gaps, gives you a real plan, and even builds you a sample so you can see what it could look like, the worst thing you can do is sit on your hands and keep guessing.
Take action. You can always correct course once you're moving. You can't correct anything from a parked car.
Don't be like this guy. He runs one of the biggest limo brands in the country and he is still nowhere in the top 3 on Google.
Talk soon,
Albert
P.S. If you want a real look at your local SEO and a plan you can actually use, get in touch. We'll look at your business, your competitors, and tell you straight what we would do. The only thing we ask is that if it makes sense, you actually do it.
