By Chris Nastav, KC Web Specialists – A CFA Consulting Member

As an active CFA consultant, we feel an obligation at times to point out the things in our specialty area that might be of importance to you.  

If you are swimming in a sea of work right now and struggling to find employees, you may not care about increasing your current workload.  You might even be turning down work or scheduling stuff so far down the road you might as well not even count it as business. 

But, as a savvy business owner, you should at least have your ear to the ground on a major culture shift that’s running rampant out there. This shift in culture may dramatically impact the long-term viability and fiscal stability of your company.

The shift in behavior is surprisingly simple. “People” who are looking for business services like yours are increasingly looking for service providers using the term “near me”. 

• Contractors Near Me    • Foundation Repair Near Me
• Builders Near Me     • Foundation Specialists Near Me
• Concrete Designer Near Me    • Concrete Specialists Near Me
• Construction Companies Near Me    • Construction Workers Near Me

It is shocking how quickly and how pervasive this behavior has become in a very short period of time. The following numbers come directly from Google: 

• 2 years ago, five percent of searches in Google contained the term “Near Me”.
• 1 year ago, about 20 percent of searches in Google contained the term “Near Me”.
• Today, 30 to 50 percent of searches in Google contain the term “Near Me”.

In 2018, 50,000 Google searches were done across the United States for concrete/construction related terms containing the phrase “near me”.  In 2020, that number was about 500,000.   In just two years we went from 50,000 people to 500,000 looking for concrete related business based on the term “near me”. 

As a savvy business owner these numbers should make you at least pause and take a little bit of time to evaluate how well your business can respond or is responding to this culture shift in searching behavior.

A good starting pointing would be to ask the following question. 

How many business locations do I have?

If your answer is one location, then you definitely have a potential current and future problem responding to how people are looking for business services.

Furthermore, if your answer is, “I don’t really care about this ‘near me’ problem because I don’t get any of my work from Google leads anyway,” please consider this.  Two years ago, five percent of people cared about doing business with a company near them.  Now 30to 50 percent of people are looking for a company that is near them to do business with.  No matter how or where you get your work from, know that “people” have dramatically shifted their thought processes and behavior.  Location has become incredibly important to them.

So, what’s the answer to this “near me” dilemma facing all service businesses?

There are multiple solutions to this problem but, to be honest, they’re complicated and they’re somewhat difficult to implement.

Unfortunately, unless you make some dramatic changes to your business or your business marketing strategy, you are going to see a decreasing share of new business.   Remember, even if your business is not based on leads from Google searches, “People” are still thinking in their heads, “Hey Google, find a concrete specialist near me.”

Here are a variety of different options to get ahead of the “near me” problem. Some are these are definitely easier than others:

• Move your one office location closer to where most of your customer base is concentrated.
• Open a second/third/fourth office in cities where your customer base is concentrated. 
• Increase your Website’s local SEO efforts to be more location specific. 
• Do Google Ads by location.
• Amp up your Google My Business page.
• Add tons of city pages to your website and amp those city pages up with local SEO. 
• Start doing short videos of the work you do in the different cities. Include in those videos talking points where you mention the city in which you are doing the work. Post these on YouTube in your business YouTube channel.

To get ahead of this “near me” culture shift, you must start making noise out there on the internet about how you are the best option for them.  You are the best option, because you are either near them or you’ve done work near them.

There are many things you can do to your website content. Website SEO and the other Google Marketing tools can help your business for all these “Near Me” searches. 

This problem is not going to be easy to solve, and it’s definitely not going away. The numbers over just the last two years suggests it’s going to get even harder and harder for service businesses with just one location. 

Step 1 – If you own a service business with just one location we feel you really have no choice but to take the time and immediately understand the “near me” problem. You have to figure out how this “near me” culture shift will impact your business. This problem isn’t going away and it won’t get better if you ignore it. 

Step 2 – Once you understand the scope of the problem as it relates to your business, you literally have to start now and do whatever it takes to get ahead of the problem.  It is not easy to resolve, and you will continually need to work at it over a long period of time for the foreseeable future. 

About the Author:  Chris Nastav is the owner of KC Web Specialists, an Army Veteran, current CFA consultant in good standing, and Certified Google Partner with over 15 years of business experience helping local companies navigate the Web and SEO.