Marketing consultant in Newcastle, NSW: know what to do next.

It is the person who decides the order of the work that gets a business found. They read what is happening now, find what is holding it back, and put the fixes in the order that moves it fastest.

Search for a service in Newcastle and Google gives back two things. First a map with three businesses under it, and that group of three is called the map pack. Under it sit the ordinary blue links, which is what most people mean by search results.

Getting into either one is a different job. The map pack ranks your Google Business Profile, the free listing carrying your name, hours, photos and reviews. The blue links rank the pages on your website. A consultant says which of the two is worth your money first.

The title is not protected and anybody can use it. So the useful question is never whether somebody calls themselves a consultant. It is what they hand over at the end of the first month, and whether you can check it.

Most of the work is small and repeatable. Knowing which part to do first is the hard bit, and doing the wrong part first costs months. What is being bought is the order.

Plenty of Newcastle businesses run their own search work and do perfectly well at it. Filling in a Google listing properly takes about an hour and costs nothing. Asking every customer for a review takes a text message.

What people get wrong is the order. The website gets rebuilt first, which is the slowest and most expensive part, while the free listing sits half filled in. Six months later nothing has moved and the money is gone.

Why owners bring somebody in

• The order comes before the work.

  Fixing the listing before the website is the difference between seeing movement in weeks and seeing nothing for half a year.

• Nobody in the business has the hours.

  The work is small tasks done every week rather than one big push, and that is the first thing a busy owner drops.

• It is hard to tell good from bad.

  Somebody who has read a few hundred Newcastle listings knows what normal looks like here, and that cannot be learned in an afternoon.

They read your listing, your website and the businesses already ranking above you, then hand over a written order of work. After that they either do the work or hand it on, and check it monthly.

The work happens in an order, and it is the same order every time.

What the job actually contains

• Reading what is already there.

  The listing, the pages, the words people actually type, and the businesses sitting above you. It takes a few days rather than a few minutes.

• Fixing the Google listing first.

  Categories, every service by name, real hours, the service area, the business's own photographs. It is free, fast, and where the early movement comes from.

• Building the pages after that.

  One page for each service sold, written in the words customers use rather than the words the industry uses among itself.

• Keeping the whole thing going.

  Reviews every week, the details matching everywhere, and a few genuine links from other Newcastle websites.

AI consulting sits beside this now, and it is the same job with a different surface. People ask a chat assistant to recommend a local business, and the assistant answers from the same listings, reviews and pages Google reads.

Newcastle is a small centre with a long spread of suburbs, then Lake Macquarie, Maitland, Cessnock and Port Stephens. Each is its own market, so most of the first conversation is deciding which areas you actually want.

Most advice about search is written for cities where everything sits ten minutes apart. The Hunter is spread out. Somebody searching in Maitland sees a different three businesses to somebody in Charlestown, and the City of Newcastle area alone runs from Stockton to Beresfield.

So the first decision is which areas are worth having at all. Covering four is four times the work of covering one, and anybody who does not ask that question is selling a package rather than a plan.

Getting into an area you are not close to takes a page written about that area, jobs genuinely done there, and mentions on websites based there. A page that only swaps the suburb name will not rank, and Google stopped counting those years ago.

For a business that travels to its customers rather than having a shopfront, the listing has to be set up as a service area business with the street address hidden. Getting that setting wrong can remove it from the map entirely.

A first look comes before anything is paid for, then you agree the order of work. Fill in the listing, start the reviews arriving weekly, build the pages, and earn a few local links.

Each step makes the one after it work better, so doing them out of order costs more for the same result.

1. A first look happens before anything is paid

A written read of the listing, the website and the businesses ranking above. It costs nothing here. Where a first look is a slide deck about the consultant, that is the answer.

2. Agree the order of work

A plan worth paying for says what happens in week one, week four and month three. Where nobody will write the order down, there is no plan to buy.

3. Fill in the Google Business Profile

The category matching the main service, every service by name, real hours, the service area, and the business's own photographs. It is the listing Google ranks, and it takes about an hour.

4. Reviews start arriving every week

Google counts how many there are, how recent they are, and whether anybody replies. The request goes out automatically when a job finishes. Google removes bought reviews, and it can take the listing with them.

5. Build a page for every service

Each service gets its own page, in the words customers type, with the city in the heading and the opening lines. The business name stays written the way it appears on the Australian Business Register.

6. Earn a few local links

A club sponsorship, an industry association, a quote in a local story. A few real links from Newcastle websites carry further than bought ones, which can be penalised for years.

The listing moves first, then the pages and the reviews, and the effect spreads suburb by suburb outward from where you are. Anybody naming a date for it is guessing.

The order it happens in

• First the listing is put right.

  Categories, services, hours, area, photographs, and the first service pages planned. This is the quiet part, and the part people give up during.

• Then pages go live and reviews start.

  Review requests go out, the details are put right everywhere else they appear, and people start reading the pages.

• Then the positions spread outward.

  More suburbs, more reviews, and the searches you turn up for widen out from the ones you started with.

The effect stays strongest close to the address and weakest furthest from it. That is distance working normally, and no consultant anywhere can turn it off.

Ask what happens in the first month, what the monthly report shows, who owns the accounts at the end, and how long before a position changes. The answers separate doing the work from describing it.

These are worth asking of any consultant, including this one, so the answers given here are underneath each question.

• What happens in the first month?

  The listing, the service pages and the reviews. Where something else comes first, the reason for that is worth hearing.

• What does the monthly report show me?

  The position suburb by suburb, and where the enquiries came from. A list of completed tasks describes effort rather than result.

• Who owns the accounts at the end?

  You do, in your own name, with logins that work. Agree that in writing before paying a deposit.

• How long before my position changes?

  A few weeks for the listing, and three to six months for the rest. Answers shorter than that are sales talk.

All of this can also be done in house. The first look is worth having either way, because what it produces is the order to work in.

Checking a supplier before ringing them is sensible, and the checks anybody can run on spareday are written out.