Nobody’s Checking Your Events Page
A business owner asked me the other day if I was coming to her event.
I didn’t know there was one.
“I put it in the events section on my website last week,” she said.
I adore her. But honey, why would I be on your events page? I did not wake up Tuesday and think, let me go check that one corner of that one website. If I wanted something to do Saturday, I’d pick up my phone and type “things to do in Ridgefield this weekend.”
Her event wasn’t there.
Try this. Think about the last time you needed a plumber, a birthday gift, a place for brunch. Did you open the free local magazine stuffed with ads? Unfold a newspaper? Or did you grab your phone and search?
Yeah. Me too.
So why, for the love of God, is your marketing budget sitting in that magazine?
I’m a real bitch about print. I know it’s how it used to work. But I can’t tell you the return on that half-page ad, and neither can you, because there’s no way to track it. You paid for a feeling.
People only go straight to your website when they already want you. Everyone else, the customers you don’t have yet, finds you through search. And more and more through AI. Someone asks their phone for the best brunch nearby, and it hands them three names. Are you one of them?
Most owners aren’t, and it’s not laziness. SEO sounds confusing, so they ignore it. AI sounds scary, so they ignore it. Then they wonder where everybody went.
They went to their phones. You just didn’t follow.
And this shit kills me, because learning how to get found online isn’t magic. It’s a few unglamorous habits:
- Update your Google Business Profile a couple of times a week. Posts, photos, events, answers to questions.
- Put useful content on your website, written the way people actually search.
- Keep a newsletter, so the people who already love you hear about the event before it happens.
That event should have been a Google post, a page written for “things to do in Ridgefield,” and a newsletter. Same event. Three front doors instead of one closet.
Your dare: this week, search for what you sell the way a stranger would. Not your name. The thing. “Best ___ near me.” Then ask an AI the same question.
If you’re not there, you’re not there for them either.