Your Proof Has a Shelf Life

Hi H Client!

Okay, lets sit with this one for a moment. Picture Mrs. Smith planning her $200K outdoor living project this fall. Where do you think she is starting her planning? If you guessed that she is reaching out to you or your competitiors as one of the first steps, the data says you're not quite right. She isn't starting with a phone call or a forum submission (and she hasn’t in years). She's on her phone at nine at night comparing three landscape companies she's never met, reading the newest reviews, hunting for video of a crew actually building something, looking at completed projects, deciding which one looks capable of the project in her head. By the time she reaches out, she's mostly decided, and that whole evaluation happened without you even knowing!

Two things shape it:

1. Google now weighs how recent your reviews are near the top of what it reads in local search; three years ago that factor sat around ninetieth. Reviews under a month old carry full weight, and past six months they hold a fraction of it. So two hundred excellent reviews from 2023 can quietly lose to forty from this spring. We watched a competitor in one of our client’s markets add eighty to a hundred in a matter of weeks and move accordingly.

2. Roughly two-thirds of homeowners now expect photo or video proof of completed work, and commercial buyers run the same instinct, property managers compare documented results. Professional videography and photography earns its keep here. The gap is usually subject and volume. If you want more large design-build work, the question worth sitting with is how much of your creative, on your website and in social, actually proves you can run a project that size. A gallery of $30K patios makes a $300K conversation harder than it needs to be.

If your review pace has slowed, or the work in your portfolio is smaller than the work you're chasing, that's worth a chat with your Project Manager.

Until Next Friday,

Anna Halstead

Co-Owner & COO, Halstead Media Group