2d • The Weekly Stack
The 𝟮𝟱-𝗠𝗶𝗻𝘂𝘁𝗲 𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗕𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗔𝘂𝗱𝗶𝘁 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗹
Alright, DE fam. Grab your coffee.
This one's long because I want you to run it today on a real business, not nod along and forget it by Wednesday. There's a one-page template at the end. Steal it.
Today's tactic: a 25-minute audit of any local business's Google Business Profile using nothing but public data, that ends in a one-page gap list you can send cold.
Most of you are still opening conversations with "I'd love to chat about your marketing sometime." That's not an offer. That's a request for a favor from a stranger. Let's fix that.
𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁, 𝗟𝗲𝘁'𝘀 𝗞𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗮 𝗕𝗮𝗱 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻
The assumption is that you need access before you can say anything useful.
You don't.
Here's the thing. Every single input that decides whether a plumber shows up in the map pack is public. The business name. The primary category. The hours. The photos. The review count, the review dates, the responses. The posts. The Q&A. The website it points to. All of it is sitting there right now, visible from your kitchen table, because it's visible to his customers. That is the entire purpose of the profile.
You're not hacking anything. You're standing on the sidewalk looking at the storefront.
Now the other bad version of this, and this one's more common in our world. Most "free audits" are an automated PDF with a score out of 100 and a red bar chart. Subject line: "Your business is invisible online!" The owner opens it, sees a 43, and feels insulted by a robot he's never met.
That's not an audit. It's a form letter with his name merged into it, and he can smell it in four seconds.
A gap list is a different animal. Five things, in his language, with what each one is costing him. One page. No score. No logo on every corner.
𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆
Run your own numbers on this one.
Say it takes you 25 minutes per business once you've got the rhythm. Twelve gap lists is five hours of your week. If three of those twelve take the call, and one of the three buys a $500 profile optimization, that five hours paid you about $100 an hour.
Compare that to what most prospecting hours pay. "Just checking in" emails pay zero. Posting in a Facebook group and waiting pays zero. Buying a lead list pays negative.
And the part people miss: the twelve gap lists don't expire. The nine who didn't respond now have your name attached to something specific about their business. When their phone gets quiet in February, you're the one who already told them why.
Read that again. You're not doing free work. You're building a pipeline that has receipts in it.
𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟭: 𝗟𝗼𝗰𝗸 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗣𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗧𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲𝘁 (𝟯 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝘂𝘁𝗲𝘀)
Open an incognito window. Search the money keyword plus the city. "Emergency plumber Salem Indiana." Not the business name. The keyword a customer in pain would type at 9pm.
Write down who's in the map pack, in order. Those three are the scoreboard for everything that follows.
Now pick your target. Two rules:
- Pick somebody ranked 4 through 10, not somebody ranked 1. Number one doesn't feel the problem. Number seven can see the money going to number one every single day.
- Pick a business you can actually help. Right service area, right category, and big enough to write a check.
𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟮: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝗮𝗺𝗲, 𝗖𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗼𝗿𝘆, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗔𝘁𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗖𝗵𝗲𝗰𝗸 (𝟰 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝘂𝘁𝗲𝘀)
Click the profile. Look at four things.
- The business name. Does it match the sign on the building, or is it "Salem Plumbing | Emergency Drain Repair & Water Heaters"? Stuffed names are a suspension risk and a competitor can report it with two clicks.
- The primary category. This is the single heaviest lever on the profile and it's usually wrong. A roofer set to "Construction Company" is competing in the wrong race.
- Secondary categories. Count them. Compare against the three businesses in the pack.
- Attributes. Free estimates, 24-hour service, women-owned, veteran-owned. These are filters customers actually tap.
Use a Chrome extension here to read competitor categories directly off the map instead of guessing. Takes seconds.
𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟯: 𝗡𝗔𝗣 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗛𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗼𝗳𝗳 (𝟰 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝘂𝘁𝗲𝘀)
Name, address, phone. Open the business's website in a second tab and compare all three, character for character. Suite numbers. "St" versus "Street." The tracking number on the profile that goes nowhere.
Then click the website link on the profile and watch where it lands.
- Does it drop on the homepage when the profile is for one specific location?
- Does it load on a phone in under three seconds? Run it through PageSpeed Insights.
- Is it actually https, or is Chrome flagging it?
Half the time the profile is fine and the handoff is broken. That's a gap, and it's one the owner can verify himself in ten seconds while you're on the phone with him.
𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟰: 𝗣𝗵𝗼𝘁𝗼𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗟𝗮𝘀𝘁-𝗧𝗼𝘂𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗱 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗲 (𝟰 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝘂𝘁𝗲𝘀)
Open the photo tab and look at two things: how many, and how recent.
- Logo and cover image present, or default gray?
- Exterior, interior, team, completed work?
- When was the last owner-uploaded photo? If the newest thing on the profile is a customer photo from 2023, the profile is abandoned and Google treats it that way.
You are not counting pixels. You are answering one question: does this look like a business that's still open?
𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟱: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝗵 (𝟰 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝘂𝘁𝗲𝘀)
This is where the gap gets loud, because it's the one number the owner already knows.
- Total review count, target versus each of the top three.
- Velocity. Open the reviews, sort by newest, and count how many landed in the last 90 days. Twelve reviews in three years is a dead system. Twelve in ninety days is a live one.
- Response rate. Is the owner replying at all?
- Negative reviews. Is there a two-star from eight months ago sitting there with no response, as the third thing every new customer reads?
Write the comparison as a sentence, not a chart. "You have 31 reviews. The three above you have 140, 96, and 88. You got 2 in the last 90 days. They averaged 11."
𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟲: 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗤&𝗔 (𝟯 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝘂𝘁𝗲𝘀)
Two quick checks almost nobody runs.
- Posts. Date of the most recent one. "Never" is the most common answer.
- Q&A. Anybody can post a question on a business profile, and anybody can answer it. Including a competitor. Including a crank. Look for unanswered questions and for answers the owner didn't write.
An unanswered question that says "do you charge for estimates" is a customer who left.
𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟳: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗚𝗿𝗶𝗱 𝗖𝗵𝗲𝗰𝗸 (𝟯 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝘂𝘁𝗲𝘀, 𝗼𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹)
Ranking is not one number, it's a map. A business can sit at number two in front of its own building and vanish six blocks away, and the owner has no idea because he only ever searches from his own parking lot.
Run one grid scan on the target's main keyword. When you show an owner a grid of red pins two miles from his shop, the conversation changes tone immediately. That picture does more than any paragraph you'll write.
Skip this step your first few times if the tooling slows you down. Steps 1 through 6 are enough to earn a call.
𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟴: 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗢𝗻𝗲-𝗣𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗚𝗮𝗽 𝗟𝗶𝘀𝘁 (𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝘀𝗸𝗶𝗽𝘀)
Everything above is research. This is the product.
You now have fifteen or twenty findings. Throw out all but five. Then write it like this, one block per gap:
- The gap. Plain English, no jargon. "Your profile is set to Construction Company."
- What it costs. One sentence tying it to money or customers. "You're not eligible to show up for 'roof repair,' which is the search that brings the emergency jobs."
- The fix. One line. Not the whole project. "Change the primary category and add three secondary ones."
Five gaps. One page. His business name at the top, not yours.
Then one closing line, and this is the whole ask: "I found five. There were more, but these are the ones I'd fix first. Want me to walk you through them on a 15-minute call?"
This is the step almost everyone skips, and it's the one that actually makes the system work. Anybody can generate findings. Turning twenty findings into five consequences is the part that gets you the meeting.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗧𝗼𝗼𝗹 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗰𝗸
Free and enough to run all of it:
- Google Search in an incognito window, and Google Maps. Your actual audit tool. Free.
- PageSpeed Insights. Google's own speed check for Step 3. Free.
- A Google Doc template. Five blocks, the three lines above in each. Build it once. Free.
Faster, if you're running volume:
- GMB Everywhere. Chrome extension that shows competitor categories, services, and attributes right on the map, plus basic profile audits. There's a free tier that covers category viewing, with paid plans starting around $30 a month.
- Local Falcon. Grid rank tracking for Step 7. You get 100 free credits when you create an account, pay-as-you-go credits run about $0.05 each, and monthly plans start at $24.99 and go up to $199.99. Check what a scan costs at your grid size before you fire off twenty of them.
- BrightLocal. Citation and listing checks when you want to go wider than the profile. They offer a 14-day trial with no card. They've stopped publishing plan prices publicly, so you have to ask.
- Leadsnap - they have a free trial - check citations, gridmap and more This my tool of choice.
Verify pricing before you buy, this space moves fast. Every number above was accurate the day I wrote this and every one of them is a moving target.
One caution. None of these tools writes the gap list. They hand you findings and a score. The score is worthless to the owner, because a 43 out of 100 doesn't tell him what he lost last month. Translating a finding into a consequence in his language is judgment, and no extension does it for you. That translation is the only part of this that's actually worth money.
𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆 𝗢𝘄𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗦𝗰𝗿𝗲𝘄 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗨𝗽
Mistake 1: Sending the whole audit. You dump twenty findings in a PDF, he says thanks, and now the call has no reason to exist. You traded a meeting for a document.
Mistake 2: Leading with the score. "Your profile scores 43 out of 100." He hears "you're an idiot and you didn't know it." Defensive people don't book calls.
Mistake 3: Auditing businesses you can't help. Wrong service area, wrong niche, or a one-man shop that can't pay you. You just spent 25 minutes buying yourself a polite no.
Mistake 4: Writing gaps as tasks. "Missing secondary categories" is a task. "You're invisible for the three services that make you the most money" is a consequence. Tasks get ignored. Consequences get replies.
𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗔𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗪𝗲𝗲𝗸
Pick one category in one city. Plumbers, dentists, roofers, whatever you already understand.
Pick five businesses ranked 4 through 10.
Run Steps 1 through 6 only. Skip the grid check. Skip the outreach entirely this week. I don't want you sending anything yet.
All I want is five one-page gap lists sitting in a folder by Friday. That's it. The sending part is easy once the artifact exists, and it never gets done when it doesn't.
Drop one of your gap lists in the comments, or just the five gaps from it in plain text. Tell me the category and the city. I'll tell you which gap I'd lead with and which one I'd cut.
That's it for this Tactic Tuesday. Go build something.
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The 𝟮𝟱-𝗠𝗶𝗻𝘂𝘁𝗲 𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗕𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗔𝘂𝗱𝗶𝘁 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗹
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