Hi Karena,

I noticed a lot of the replies mentioned word of mouth is the best way to get businesses. I wish it were that easy! My company is a Google Preferred Partner so we often do seminars with representatives from Google. (The real ones, not the ones that robo call businesses on the phone and misrepresent themselves as Google, lol) What they have seen through thier analytics is that people aren’t as loyal as they used to be. It used to be that if you needed someone to come check out your furnace you might ask friends or family if they knew anyone, now use Google to find businesses and reviews have replaced referrals. Even if they are looking for someone specifically they can get easily sidetracked by competitors when they go to look up a business, and that business has no idea that they lost a referral because they weren’t easy to find.

What I see the most effective for my clients is getting to the top of the search engines, either through ads or effective websites then retargeting visitors with Facebook ads as a gentle reminder that the business is out there. We are so busy these days that we are often interrupted when we try to complete a task which makes the retargeting really effective. It’s amazing how much Facebook knows about us, which makes thier targeting features so effective even if someone hasn’t visited the website.