We started with Instagram. We ended at Google reviews.
For a long time we thought local marketing was a top-of-funnel game. Get seen. Post more. Win the feed. So that's where the effort went, the grid, the stories, the reels that took an afternoon to make.
It worked, in a way. People saw the business. But when we looked closely at how local customers actually decide, the pattern was the same, and it wasn't where we'd been spending our time.
They'd discover a place on Instagram, or through a friend, or in a search. Then, before booking, before walking in, before spending a penny, they did one more thing. They opened Google and read the reviews. Every time. Start anywhere. End at Google reviews.
Here's the Google reviews vs social media split in one line: social media gets you discovered, Google reviews get you chosen. Customers find you on Instagram or in search, then open Google and read the reviews before they spend a penny.
The journey is noisy. The decision isn't.
This is the thing that reorganised how we think about local marketing. The top of the funnel is gloriously varied, search, social, word of mouth, a poster in a window. You can win attention in a dozen places.
But the moment of decision funnels down to one place almost every time. The customer wants reassurance from strangers before they commit, and the place they trust for that is Google reviews. Not your Instagram, where you control the message. Somewhere you don't, which is exactly why they trust it.
The data lines up with the instinct. Most people who find a business on their phone act on it fast, a large majority visit or contact a local business within a day of searching. And discovery itself is mostly people searching for a type of business, not your name. Google's own Business Profile reporting even splits searches this way: "direct" searches, where someone looks you up by name, and "discovery" searches, where they search a category, product, or service. For most local businesses, discovery is the bigger bucket. They don't know you yet. They find a category, then they pick, and they pick on the reviews.
Why we'd had it backwards
We'd been pouring effort into the part of the journey that's the most fun to work on and the least decisive. A great Instagram presence gets you into the consideration set. It doesn't close. The reviews close.
And reviews are the one asset that compounds. A reel has a few good days and fades. A steady body of genuine reviews, each one answered, sits there working for you every single time a stranger checks before deciding, for years. It's the least glamorous thing in local marketing and the most durable.
So we flipped it. We kept the top of the funnel, because you still have to be found. But we moved the real attention to the moment of decision: getting more genuine reviews, consistently, and replying to every one like a human.
Building around the decision
That insight is the whole reason RealGoodWords exists. Not "post more." Win the moment customers actually decide.
In practice that's two simple things done relentlessly. Ask happy customers for a review, in their own words, by SMS, email, or QR code, automatically, so it happens every day instead of whenever you remember. And reply to every review within minutes, in your own tone, so the profile a stranger lands on is active, human, and reassuring.
The strange part, which we've written about elsewhere, is that when we later read Google's own published guidance, this was almost exactly what Google says to do. We'd built toward the moment of decision, and the moment of decision is the thing Google has organised its whole local product around.
We still like a good Instagram post. But we no longer confuse being seen with being chosen. Being chosen happens on Google reviews.
If you want to see what a stranger sees when they check you against the businesses nearby, the free Local Standings tool at realgoodwords.app shows you. No signup, no card.