How Chris Started at On The Map Marketing

Chris joined On The Map Marketing about 10 years ago as a website project manager. The agency itself was started 15 years ago by founder Rick Hoskins, and here's what makes them unique: they were one of the first agencies that started niching down only in local search, which is where the name comes from.

The whole idea was placing attorneys in the map results, and that was 15 years ago. The search engine result pages looked a lot different back then. Chris told me you would literally just move the pin and the rankings would appear. That was the first product they offered, and they've come a very long way since then.

Chris doesn't know many other agencies that were started 15 years ago with only a specialization in local search, which gives them a pretty unique perspective on how things have evolved.

When Chris started, he brought in his business partner at the time, now their CTO, Casper Milberg. Chris described him as an amazing full stack developer who can handle any engineering or web element you can think of. Together they built out a web development department, and then Chris started dabbling with some other areas which naturally became SEO.

How Local Search Has Changed in the Last Decade

I asked Chris to take me back through the 10 years he's been with On The Map and explain how local search has changed, because he mentioned it's changed dramatically.

At the beginning, there were 11 search results in the map rankings, though Chris didn't even get to experience that. When he started dabbling with SEO, that was the initial point when there were still five search placements in the map results, and then it started going down to three.

The biggest change Chris sees is the decrease of organic rankings. Organic rankings used to play a big factor. Now organic rankings are still valuable, but not nearly as valuable as they used to be.

The other evolutionary aspect is that you can't just focus on SEO anymore. If you want to win in local search marketing, you have to do LSA ads, PPC ads, directories, and that depends heavily also on the vertical you're in.

In those lower search volume verticals where the return on the leads are super high, like personal injury where clicks can be $200 to $300, owning every possible click is crucial because that's going to sum up and generate the business you're waiting for.

Chris said that's probably the biggest thing, not even getting into AI. He thinks that conversation is still a little bit premature because we don't know what's going to happen. The whole AI overview, he hasn't seen too much of it yet in local search. That's probably a conversation to have a year from now, and then we can really look back at it.

But yeah, the decrease of organics and the necessity to focus on a full local search marketing strategy. Now the next element that's coming in is just brand recognition.

Even a year ago, year and a half ago, brand recognition wasn't that big of a factor. Now the brand presence in real life is crucial.

Chris told me, "You're not going to get rankings looking at DRs and comparing that. That's out of the window. That doesn't work anymore. You really need to see, you need to compare brand to brand, and then that's going to give you an assessment of how well you can rank and compete in uber competitive SERPs."

What Ads Every Business Should Be Running

I asked Chris about the different types of ads available now. There are LSAs, there's Google Ads, there's different kinds of Google Ads. What ads does he think every single business should be running?

Chris said it depends. If you can serve LSA ads, totally jump into that. Of course it depends on your intake systems because that plays a heavy factor in servicing those people, answering quickly, sending feedback back to Google.

But overall to Chris, it's a question of budgets. If you have $2,000 that you can play with and that's enough to generate LSA ads, dump it in that. If it's not enough, he would look to directories and figure out which directory is ranking the best for your highest transactional query.

Let's say it's Pest Control Seattle. If Chris sees (now he's thinking pest control directories) possibly Angie's or one of those, each directory provider has its pros and cons. But for instance, Yelp still being in the top result is going to drive traffic back to you and you could be generating leads through that too.

It's not going to be black and white where you just drop some money in that account and you're going to be generating money, but it's a process. All advertising efforts have to be tested and then you refine them, then you optimize them until you figure out that ROI that you can possibly generate from whichever channel you're investing in.

Chris thinks in pest control specifically, pest control clicks are not as expensive as something like personal injury. You just need to be able to test them enough to optimize those campaigns to be profitable for you.

The Multi-Exposure Effect That Drives Conversions

I asked Chris if On The Map uses directory advertising for their clients, and he said yes, for two factors.

High quality directories are great for your SEO too, especially now that Google's looking at those high authority, real, true resources and citations. Where is this business located? So yeah, they play around with directories quite a bit depending on the client, especially in the legal space. Those directories can be pretty crucial to gain some quick exposure for clients.

Some clients just want to maximize their exposure for that one search query. It could be Personal Injury Lawyer Miami. They're going to be in the maps, they're in organics, and they're going to be in a directory. So now when the consumer is trying to make a decision, they're going to be in ads too.

Now you're quadruple serving yourself in a SERP, and the prospect clearly knows, okay, this law firm appears in all these results, they must know what they're doing.

The multi-exposure effect in advertising plays and assists you in those conversions. If you're on a billboard somewhere out there and they heard you on radio, and now they see you in search results, that exposure just completely plays on their brain.

Chris referenced a famous saying: the person who wins in marketing is the one who can spend the most. So if you can optimize your costs and win across all those touch points, you'll come out getting that lead.

I completely believe in that too. Just getting as many touches as possible. Ideally we're on every single platform and showing up in every single way that we can on Google. If we are the top ranking website and then we're the top ranking Google Business Profile and then maybe we're paying for the Yelp placement and then we have a local service ad, the more times people are seeing you, especially in a high conversion state, I've seen that perform incredibly well. People trust it more.

Chris added another layer to that which is not so much the transactional layer as it is the brand exposure layer. Perhaps you're running radio ads or you appear on local radio shows. That adds another multi-touch factor. Oh yeah, this pest control company always is on this funny radio show. People still listen to radio. People still watch TV, even with OTT.

Chris can't speak on that much, but their clients advertise on regular TV ads and on radio and on billboards. That might not drive that immediate transaction, but it does drive up their brand search queries, and then SEO becomes a lot easier when the brand is recognized in real life.

Google's looking more at those signals rather than some shady guest post links that you got from your SEO agency.

That whole mindset is a complete shift that's happening right now, and On The Map is heavily investing in that local outreach, also setting their clients up with local sponsorship opportunities.

The New Link Building Strategy That Actually Works

Chris explained that their clients are not going to go out there trying to find those possible organizations to donate to. I mean, if they have someone in-house, great, but On The Map is shifting their link building efforts to building mega lists of local organizations to invest in.

Now they're not paying some PBN site owner. They're actually paying organizations that can benefit from that money. The clients get exposure, they get kind of good karma in a way, then they get opportunities to participate in local events, and it creates this engine of local outreach engagement in local communities.

That reciprocates with Google's algorithm seeing that you're actually known in real local audiences.

I love this approach because a lot of people are just trying to buy backlinks from high DR sites. Maybe it has trust flow, but I think with local businesses, we want to be building local links. If we can get a link from the local church and then maybe the local baseball team or all these different sponsorships that are local, those are super powerful links.

I was thinking about implementing that in my agency as well, doing the outreach for the clients. Of course I recommend it like you should be sponsoring all the local teams and getting engaged and talking to other local business owners, but I wanted to know what specifically On The Map is doing for clients. How are they doing the outreach? Who are they specifically reaching out to?

Chris told me it's a combination. They just pick a location and look at all possible organizations. It depends on their client type. If it's legal, then they look at whether the attorney focuses more on med mal or car accidents or workers comp, then they start slicing those categories. They use search operators.

Chris was just playing around with searches that day. Chicago car association, and you just go down the rabbit hole. Now the actual cool angle that they want to tie in, and they're running some tests on this, is they're looking for local social media influencers.

Aligning that organization with accounts that have the biggest social exposure and then building collaboration with those type of accounts, getting links from their websites. Interestingly, zoos come up. Different types of zoos. Humane Society, not so much, but like figuring out which organizations have the biggest audience, then engaging with them.

So now SEO becomes not so much just technical SEO as it's content creation, social media engagement, and PR. It's this multifaceted service. But Google's algorithm kind of dictates what they're going to do, how they rank the sites.

Chris told me, "As much as this algorithm has been abused, it makes sense that now Google's just saying you know what, you need to be a real brand to be in the SERPs, and that's how you win."

How to Find Local Influencers in Any Market

I think of myself as the SEO guy, but more and more that I've been diving into SEO, I'm realizing that SEO is everything. SEO is the social media posts that you're doing. SEO is the Google ads that you're running, and then obviously the basic stuff like Google Business Profile and your website. SEO is really a combination of everything, the brand building that Chris is talking about.

I wanted to dive in specifically on what Chris was saying about finding local influencers. Let's say local business owners are watching this or maybe a local marketer that wants to do this for a client. How can you find local influencers? I feel like that would be pretty tough.

Chris said local influencers, not really that tough. It's the same as you would use when you look for any social media influencers. There's a bunch of tools to use.

The tool Chris was using that day is Modash.io. You literally just type in the city, and the key factor he's looking at is he wants to make sure that the audience, their follower audience, is in that location. Because he doesn't really care if he's in Nashville about people in Miami. He just wants to target people in Nashville.

So if he can find a local influencer in Nashville that has a big social media following in Nashville, now if he can build a relationship with them and have exposure of his client there, now he's gaining local searches from local people in Nashville. Then you just keep going. It's not an overnight thing or strategy, but Chris thinks if you invest properly in it over time, over several years, you will build big brand recognition locally.

They have a client in Miami who did that targeting just Spanish audiences, and that was really interesting because they were appearing on a lot of Spanish TV shows, radio shows, ads.

How Custom Is On The Map's Service Model

I asked Chris about how custom their solution is for clients because it seems like On The Map is pretty involved with their clients' businesses. It seems like a pretty custom solution. As an agency owner myself, I'm wondering how custom their solution and service is for clients, because I feel like a lot of agencies just try to do the checklist model. It's like okay, we're going to do this, this, and that for you. But it seems like On The Map is more involved with clients and doing really what's best for them.

Chris explained that they provide SEO obviously, PPC, web development depending on campaign needs and budgets. Then they build out the offering.

For SEO, it's pretty straightforward. It's getting a little bit more segmented now, but internally they use what they call a deliverable calculator, and that's how they also sell their services. You pay $5,000 a month, you'll get either 10 link placements or let's say 20,000 words of content.

So let's say you don't need that much content, then it's 10,000 words of content and five placements. It's a band model. Now what's coming into this band model is social media posts and video production, so now their SEO offering becomes a lot more holistic based on these new factors that are becoming highly important to build brand recognition.

As far as PPC and social media ads, that's pretty standard. Everyone does 10 percent or $1,000 or 10 percent, whichever is greater budget-wise.

An important element to mention is they have a really big and very dedicated account management team. All their clients have an assigned account manager. That account manager then works with an SEO manager, so everyone goes into this hub model where they're pretty much the client's outsourced marketing team.

Really, they try to build this idea for their clients that their assigned account manager is almost like their fractional CMO that understands each marketing channel and they're able to jump in and help them figure out their marketing goals and problems and ideas.

The Most Common Misconception in Local SEO Right Now

I asked Chris what he thinks is the most common misconception in the local SEO and local marketing game right now. What is everyone kind of getting wrong?

Chris said he thinks link building right now is the big one. There are so many people spinning their wheels with link building and it's just not going to work anymore. He's not saying links are not working. He thinks the types of links being built are becoming obsolete.

Even the high quality guest post sites that we all know are not real blogs, we know someone owns them and uses them for this purpose of selling the links. Chris thinks that's becoming obsolete, and they're completely shifting away from that and just doing pure outreach to sites that are going to benefit somehow from their client.

I would say I agree. I think most links people are building are not quality and they're also not real. Maybe you paid for them and it's just a paid link site where Google is really starting to understand all these different aspects of who actually is your website. Oh, it's just people pay to get spots and it just has been high DR because it was built 20 years ago with consistent content, maybe they got a big link.

I completely agree with Chris, and I think we should be making an emphasis on building connections instead of links. Because also it's not just about links, it's about getting mentions too. If people are mentioning your business on social media posts like with the influencer thing, or maybe they're mentioning it in a YouTube video or another channel, those are also super powerful too.

But establishing those clear and real signals to Google versus oh, we just got five new links from DR 50 sites so we're good, I don't think that's the way to do it.

Chris agreed and referenced when we first spoke. He mentioned I made a post about this too, about the knowledge panels. It all goes back to the real sources about you as a brand. People behind the brand, do you guys really exist or is this brand just sort of gaming the system to get the rankings?

Now those sites will start seeing a decrease. Those strategies still work, but what's going to happen is you're going to be now on page two, page three versus being on page one.

Why is Chris saying that? Because he's seen it with some of their legacy clients that had a lot of those links. They were like whoa, what happened? Well, they have to shift their strategy. They have to be present in local communities. They need to get high-level media publication news site mentions about them to build that trust factor.

Oh, this plumber doesn't have social media presence? Well, that's a surprise. So now they need to shift into different activities that are being looked at.

Again, this is not kind of speculative. They're just looking at their competitors and they see them being active on social media and they're the only ones who are not. They also know what kind of link building tactics they're doing and it's like all right, the writing's on the wall. You've got to evolve your SEO strategies to match what Google is now looking for to rank you.

Which is social activity, brand recognition (which is brand search queries), and holistic link building, which is local sponsorships, doubling down on all possible citations, and then getting in some of those bigger publications. A few of those will go a long way.

What the Future of Local Search Looks Like

Before we ended, I wanted to make sure I asked Chris what he thinks is the future of local search in the next year or so. I know he was talking about the AI overview a little bit. It hasn't totally taken over local, but what does he think the next year is going to look like?

Chris said it's a tough question. He's curious how they're going to switch up the map results because right now, even the few examples that have surfaced, one AI overview was with like double map results where the map was included. Remember when they rolled out the first AI results, the generative AI results, then the map was in the generative, then the map was under?

Chris is curious what's going to happen with those. He's seen some new ad formats where it's just thumbnail ads. That might become a new format of integration in AI overview. Hard to say.

Google still will try to maximize their profits, so it might be integration with LSA ads and maps. Who knows?

But what Chris can say, and it's been a big conversational topic that day, is the brand building factor will not go away. It will just become even more necessary and crucial.

Social media feeds might get pulled in as Google's already showing your social media followers in Google Business Profiles. So that's starting to get integrated a lot more.

Really, this idea of thinking about link building more as your brand search query building, that's going to be the real game. How can I build my brand recognition and then Google's going to be rewarding you? How are they going to display you? Chris doesn't know. There are a lot of people smarter than him that do a lot of speculation on that and they follow the SERPs. He's not one of them.

But what he does see is the ranking factors will be heavily focused on just strong brands that are well known and that are, at least in local space, known in the local communities.

I agree 100 percent. Socials is definitely huge. That's something I've been doing the past few months for clients now. We are posting across every single social channel and most importantly YouTube, because on almost any single Google search you'll see YouTube on there.

If we can even just be publishing a weekly video for a client that is one to two minutes long, that's still incredibly powerful if no one else has made a video on that topic.

I really like making geo-modified videos where it's not just how much does pest control cost (I'm sure there's a video with 100,000 views), but now we can dominate the one where it's how much does pest control cost in Hillsboro, and then we can completely dominate that one.

I think that's kind of where search is going. Google doesn't want the 10 blue links anymore where you get to choose. They want to provide the best answer possible, and that's usually one answer. So if we can dominate those tiny individual searches and keywords, I think that is where we can really take over.

Chris said I'm absolutely right. The SERPs become multi-dimensional. There's FAQs, there's suggested questions, and what's happening with the AI overviews is people are saying it's more a conversational search engine rather than just a search query and a result.

Now it's a conversation. Oh, you looked for this question, how much it costs in Hillsboro, well here's a video. And then what does the installation look like? So it becomes this whole dialogue almost with the AI, and then you come to the search result you're looking for.

Chris told me I'm totally right that video is huge. Shorts, TikTok, full videos, and then doing long form content and tying those videos in. Now you're hitting it in all these dimensions, and that's what Google wants you to provide, the best possible information for that search query.

And make money in between.

Just to be clear, these are not AI videos. I know there's some people that are AI enthusiasts and everything's AI, AI blogs and AI socials. No AI videos. Do real videos, whether it's a podcast like this or maybe it's a video in the field or whatever might be your specialty. But make real videos and make real content.

How to Actually Get on the Map

Last thing I asked Chris before we ran out of time: On The Map, that's literally their business name. How can a local business get on the map and get customers from Google Business Profile?

Chris said a couple things. Make sure your profile is optimized correctly. Well, start with the fact that you need to have a profile, but he thinks my listeners are past that.

Definitely set up your right categories. That's a big one. Reviews, real reviews, volume, consistency. It doesn't just help getting reviews one week and then they disappear. Engage with the reviews.

Great photos. Think about your Google Business Profile as your business card. When people land on it, showcase. In pest control's case, showcase your van, showcase your staff, showcase your location. Build that trust with people because when you're ranking in Google map results, people don't even go to your website 50 to 70 percent of the time. They just call you right away. They read your reviews, they look at you, okay, this brand looks legitimate, and they hire you.

Then if you want to get a little bit tricky, do some creative DBAs (doing business as). Not crazy creative, maybe it's Dan Leibrandt Seattle Pest Control, something like that. Those go a long way.

Chris thinks there are a lot of studies showing that including keywords, your top keywords in your brand name, does help. You just have to do it the right way. You can't just change your brand name and all of it. It has to show in all your citations, all those factors.

And yeah, then last point would be just make sure you're in all top citations. So when Google runs their index on you, they know you really exist and you are in all proper business directories and your relevant vertical directories. Your brand again, the brand exists, you have good reviews, profile's legitimate, and if you want to get a little creative, do the DBA. But that depends also on how competitive the market is.

Any local business owner, make sure you are doing all of those things. I know there are a lot of kind of extra one percent things like maybe doing the FAQs or the services, but make sure you have all the basics down like actually getting real reviews, maybe putting a keyword in your business name, make sure you have the right category, all those great things.

Chris added the extra one would be prominence. Prominence is one of the signals, and that's going to come from social media presence.

There's a personal injury attorney in Miami that's going on the streets and just interviewing people and asking them what do you think this accident settlement would be. He's built like 15,000 followers and now he's ranking in maps. Chris and his team are like, this guy's website sucks, he has no DR, but he has a lot of reviews and Google knows he exists because he has brand search queries and they reward him.

Same thing they saw with their client that targets a lot of the Spanish speaking community. But that's a longer, longer, longer type of play.

My Main Takeaway

1. The biggest thing I learned from Chris is that traditional link building is dead and most agencies are spinning their wheels on links that don't work anymore. The types of links being built are becoming obsolete, even high quality guest post sites. On The Map is completely shifting away from that and building mega lists of local organizations to invest in through sponsorships. Now they're not paying some PBN site owner, they're actually paying organizations that can benefit from that money, creating an engine of local outreach engagement in local communities. The shift is from buying links to building connections, and from link building to brand search query building.

2. The second takeaway is that organic rankings matter less than they used to and you can't just focus on SEO anymore. If you want to win in local search marketing, you have to do LSA ads, PPC ads, and directories depending on your vertical. The multi-exposure effect in advertising is what drives conversions now. If you're in the maps, in organics, in a directory, and in ads, you're quadruple serving yourself in a SERP and the prospect clearly knows this business must know what they're doing.

3. The third insight is that brand recognition is now the most crucial ranking factor, and looking at DR to predict rankings doesn't work anymore. You really need to compare brand to brand. Even a year or year and a half ago, brand recognition wasn't that big of a factor. Now the brand presence in real life is crucial. Google's looking more at signals like radio ads, TV appearances, billboards, local event sponsorships, and social media presence rather than shady guest post links.

4. The fourth major takeaway is how to actually find and work with local social media influencers to build brand recognition in your market. Chris uses a tool called Modash.io where you literally just type in the city, and the key factor is making sure the influencer's follower audience is in that location. If you can find a local influencer with a big social media following in your target city and build a relationship with them, you're gaining local searches from local people. It's not an overnight strategy, but if you invest properly in it over time, you will build big brand recognition locally.

5. The fifth and final insight is about the future of local search and why the brand building factor will only become more crucial. The brand building factor will not go away, it will just become even more necessary going forward. The ranking factors will be heavily focused on just strong brands that are well known and that are, at least in local space, known in the local communities. The SERPs are becoming multi-dimensional with FAQs, suggested questions, and AI overviews. Video is huge in this, and you need to be hitting it in all these dimensions to provide the best possible information for search queries in multiple formats across multiple channels.

Chris is pretty active on LinkedIn, so you can find him by searching for Chris Brencans. You can also check out On The Map Marketing's website at OnTheMap.com. On The Map Marketing specializes in local search and has been at it for 15 years, pioneering the focus on getting local businesses ranked in map results.