
Google starts with the area around your office, so you win there first, then you grow outward toward where your customers actually are.
I'm Jason Torrico. I run a sales agency, not a marketing agency. A marketing agency gets you the lead. A sales agency helps you get the check. So the first thing I look at with every business is simple: where are your customers actually coming from?
Most owners tell me referrals. And a lot of them have already paid a marketing company big fees to get leads, only to watch those leads not turn into customers. For a business that's starting out or still growing, that money is hard to come by.
One business I looked at was the market leader within five miles of its office. The scan showed they owned the map close to home. But their customers were somewhere else, in the busier areas they weren't showing up in at all.
That's when it clicked. Referrals haven't gone away. They've moved to Google, where people now go to check who everyone recommends. Google starts with the area around your office, so you win there first, then you grow outward toward where your customers actually are. And this works whether you have a storefront or you go to your customers.
Getting your Google profile right is one of the simplest ways to get more customers without a big marketing budget. It doesn't take a marketing agency. It takes doing the right things every month.
Paid leads cost money every time, and their quality varies. For about what four or five paid search leads cost (LocaliQ 2026 puts the average at $66.69 per lead), you build something that keeps working: a steady stream of leads that grows over time, without paying per click.