How to Get More Customers for Your Local Business, in Order

Search for this and you will find the same article nine times: ten ways to get more customers, listed as if each were worth the same. Run a flyer campaign, post on social, go to a networking breakfast, start a newsletter.

Some of that works. But they are not equal, and if you have a few hours a month rather than a marketing department, the order matters more than the list. So here is where customers for a local business actually come from, biggest first, and what each one costs you in time.

The short version

That is not a claim that flyers never work. It is a claim about what to do on Tuesday if you only get one Tuesday.

1. Be on the map when somebody searches

Around 46% of all Google searches are looking for something local, and Google has said that 76% of people who run a "near me" search on a phone visit a business within 24 hours. That is the closest thing to a queue of ready customers that exists, and it forms before anyone has heard of you.

What decides who appears is mostly three things: how close you are to the person searching, whether your listing says you do the thing they asked for, and how well known you are. The first you cannot change. The second you can fix this afternoon.

The afternoon version:

• Set your main category to exactly what you do. Not "contractor" if you are a painter. This one field does more than anything else on the listing, and getting it wrong is the most common reason a business is invisible.
• Fill in every service you offer, in the words a customer would use. "Kitchen remodel", not "interior solutions".
• Check your hours are true, including holidays. Businesses that are open when somebody searches get shown more often than ones that are shut.
• Add photos. Real ones, of the actual place and the actual work.

Then check where you actually stand, because your own phone lies to you: it shows you at the top because you are standing in your own shop. There is a walkthrough of checking properly, and a free rank checker that scans 25 points across your town so you can see the parts of it where you do not appear at all.

2. Get reviews, and keep them recent

Reviews are the second biggest thing, and the part people get wrong is not the number. It is the date.

BrightLocal's 2026 survey found 74% of people only care about reviews from the last three months, and that 68% will only consider a business at four stars or above. A shop with 200 reviews where the newest is from last summer reads worse than one with 30 that arrived this month.

There is also a ranking effect: review signals are roughly a fifth of what decides the local pack, and Sterling Sky's work suggests rankings slip when a business goes about three weeks without a new one.

What actually gets reviews, in order of how well it works:

• Ask in person, at the moment the customer is happiest. As you hand the keys back, as they say the work looks great. Not by email three days later.
• Make it one tap. Google gives every business a direct review link. Put it in a text you send after the job, not a QR code on a card they will lose.
• Ask steadily, not in bursts. Two a week beats thirty in one weekend, which looks bought and does not help for long.
• Reply to all of them. 88% of people say they would use a business that responds to reviews. It also gets read by everyone scrolling past afterwards.

More on both halves: how to get more Google reviews and how to answer a bad one without making it worse.

3. Be easy to contact, and actually answer

This is the one no listicle mentions, and it quietly wastes more customers than any of them.

Somebody finds you, taps the number, and it rings out. Or the form goes to an inbox nobody opens. You paid for that customer with everything in steps one and two, and lost them in the last ten seconds.

• Answer the phone, or call back the same day. Local buying decisions are usually made in one sitting. Whoever answers first often wins, regardless of who was better.
• Put one phone number everywhere. Not a tracking number on one site and your mobile on another, which also confuses search engines. Why that matters: what counts as a mismatch.
• Turn on messaging if you can reply within the hour. If you cannot, leave it off. A message that sits for two days is worse than no button.
• Say what happens next. "We will call you back within two hours" converts better than a form that thanks you and goes quiet.

4. The slow ones that compound

These do not pay this week, which is why they get skipped, and why the businesses that do them pull away after a year.

• Ask for referrals out loud. Most happy customers would recommend you and simply never think to. "If you know anyone else who needs this, send them my way" is the whole technique.
• Partner with the trade next door. Plumbers and electricians, hairdressers and photographers, cafes and the gym on the corner. One conversation can be worth more than a year of posting.
• Be in local lists and local press. The "best X in town" roundups are also increasingly where AI assistants get their answers when somebody asks for a recommendation.
• Keep the list of people who already bought from you. Selling again to somebody who liked you is the cheapest sale there is, and almost nobody does it.

What to skip while you are small

Saying this plainly, because the advice industry will not:

• Posting daily on social media, if your customers find you by searching rather than by browsing. A plumber does not get work from a reel. A bakery might.
• A website rebuild, before the listing is right. Most local customers decide on the search results page and never reach the site.
• Paying for directory submissions in bulk. A handful of real listings matter. A hundred bought ones do not.
• Ads, until you can answer the phone. Paying for calls you do not pick up is the most expensive mistake on this page.

Your first week

If you do nothing else:

• Monday: fix your main category, your services and your hours.
• Tuesday: add ten real photos.
• Wednesday: send your review link to the last ten happy customers, one message each.
• Thursday: reply to every review you have, including the old ones.
• Friday: ring your own number from a different phone and see what happens.

That is a week, it costs nothing, and it beats the ten-item list it replaces. Then keep the reviews coming, and check once a month whether you are actually showing up in the parts of town you want work from.