It's 9pm on a Tuesday in Bromley and the boiler has packed in.

Three neighbours, same street, same problem.

The first types "emergency plumber Bromley" into Google. She taps one of the three businesses on the map, checks the reviews, and rings the one with a five-star review from last week.

The second opens ChatGPT and asks, "Who's a reliable plumber near Bromley who can come out tonight?" She gets two names and a line on each. She never sees a website.

The third doesn't search at all. He's been watching a local plumber's videos on Instagram for months, the one who explains why radiators go cold at the top. He sends him a message.

Same need. Same street. Three plumbers got a call that night, and each one won through a different door.

In 1964, Marshall McLuhan wrote that "the medium is the message." He meant the channel shapes what gets through as much as the words do. Sixty years later, every local business owner is living his point. What works on Google falls flat on Instagram. What gets you into a ChatGPT answer won't put you on the map.

I run a property services firm in South East London. I also run the agency that helps businesses like it get found. So I see this from both sides of the counter. The owners I watch win aren't doing more marketing. They're putting the right content in the right room.

I call it Content Everywhere Optimisation. A while back I wrote about The CEO Economy. This is the other CEO.

Three rooms, three bouncers

Bill Gates wrote "Content is King" in 1996. I borrowed the line for Context Is King, because for getting good work out of AI, context wins. For getting found, Gates still has a point. He just never said which kingdom.

There are three now. Each one has a bouncer on the door, and each bouncer runs a different door policy.

Room The bouncer asks What gets you in Content that works
Search: Google, Bing Who are you, what do you do, and where? Being clearly understood, and well known locally Written and structured
AI: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity Who'll vouch for you? The same story about you, told in lots of places Reviews, mentions, plain facts
Social: Instagram, TikTok, Facebook Is anyone actually watching? People stop, stay and share Visual, mostly short video

Most owners pick one room and ignore the other two. Usually it's the one they're comfortable in. The roofer who's brilliant on Instagram has a Google profile with four reviews from 2019. The accountant with a lovely website has never once asked ChatGPT who it recommends in her town.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Especially when every basket is an algorithm you don't own. You don't need to be loud in all three rooms at once, but you do need to know what each bouncer wants.

Room one: search wants to understand you

When someone types a trade and a town, Google shows three businesses on a map before it shows a single website. That map is built from your Google Business Profile. Your website is the second click, if they get that far. So for most local businesses, fix the profile before you rebuild the site.

Google is unusually open about how the map works. Its own help page says local results come down to relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance is how well your profile matches the search. Distance is how far you are from where they're searching. Prominence is how well known you are, judged partly from links, articles and directories across the web, plus your review count and rating. Google also says you can't pay for a better local ranking.

You can't move your office. That leaves two dials you can turn: relevance and prominence.

Tips

  • Pick the exact primary category. "Plumber", not "Contractor" or "Business service". It's how Google decides what you are.
  • Write the way customers search. Trade, area, problem. "Boiler repair in Beckenham" beats "comprehensive heating solutions" every time.
  • List every service and every area you really cover, on the profile and on the site. If you don't say Orpington, don't expect to show up for Orpington.
  • Give each main service its own page, and each area you genuinely work in a page with real local detail: jobs done there, the kind of properties, the roads you know. A page that just swaps the town name is the kind Google treats as spam.
  • Keep your name, address and phone number identical everywhere. Same spelling, same format, every listing.
  • Ask for a review after every job, and reply to every one. Google says outright that more reviews and better ratings help.
  • Claim Bing Places too. It takes ten minutes, it can import from your Google profile, and most of your competitors haven't bothered.

Pro tip: stand in the area you want to win, open a private browser window on your phone, and search your trade plus that area. That's exactly what your customer sees. Screenshot it once a month. If you're not in the three on the map, you're not in the room.

Room two: AI wants someone to vouch for you

AI doesn't rank you. It asks around, then repeats the names it hears most. In early 2026, BrightLocal found 45% of consumers use ChatGPT or similar tools for local business recommendations. ChatGPT is fast becoming your next referral source, and most owners have never checked what it says about them.

Here's how it works. When someone asks for a plumber in Bromley, the AI breaks the question into several smaller searches, reads what comes back, and blends an answer. Then it names a handful. ChatGPT averages about four businesses an answer. Google's AI Overviews, closer to two or three.

The surprise is that being on the map doesn't get you into the answer. In BrightLocal's study of 200,000 local AI searches, Google Maps mentioned a tracked business in 66% of searches. The AI tools managed 32 to 38%. They barely agree with each other either: ChatGPT's picks overlapped with Google's AI answers only about a fifth of the time.

The reason is sources. Google's AI leans heavily on your Google Business Profile. ChatGPT hardly uses it, and leans on other places, including Bing. The study was American, so Yelp shows up a lot. In the UK, think Checkatrade, Yell, Trustpilot, Facebook and the trade directories your customers actually use.

One thing held across all of them: your own website still counts. Business websites made up 42% of every source the AIs cited.

There's an old saying: no smoke without fire. AI works the same way. If your website says you cover Bromley, your Google profile says Bromley, Checkatrade says Bromley and three reviews mention a job in Bromley, it's confident. If one says "South London" and your Facebook page stopped in 2021, it hedges, and someone else gets named.

Marketers used to measure share of voice. In AI, it's share of conversation: how often you're named when someone asks about your trade in your area. Answers change every time, and a business named once reappears in roughly half of repeat searches. So think of it as a percentage, not a position.

Tips

  • Tell the same story everywhere. Same name, services, areas and description on your site, Google, Bing, Facebook and every directory you're on.
  • Collect reviews in more than one place. Google first, then one or two platforms people in your trade trust. When you ask, mention it helps if they say what you did and where. Never pay or offer anything for a review.
  • Write sentences an AI can lift. "We're a family-run plumbing firm covering Bromley, Beckenham and Orpington, specialising in boiler repairs." Put a line like that on your homepage and About page. Slogans give it nothing to quote.
  • Answer the questions people ask. What does a boiler swap cost in Croydon? How long does a loft conversion take? AI answers questions. Give it yours.
  • Get mentioned where you're not in charge. Local press, business groups, a supplier's case study, your trade association. Other people vouching for you is the whole game.
  • Don't skip Bing. ChatGPT leans on it, and almost nobody local has filled it in.

Pro tip: once a month, ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity to "recommend a [your trade] in [your area]" three times each, and write down who gets named. Then ask each one, "What do you know about [your business]?" Whatever it gets wrong or leaves out is your to-do list. It's the same test I run on Instagram in Who Gets the Job?

Room three: social wants to watch you

Social is the only room where nobody is looking for you. Search and AI answer a question someone asked. Social interrupts people who weren't asking, so your content has to earn the stop.

The plumber in my opening didn't win because he ranked. He won because for months he'd been the face explaining why radiators go cold at the top. When the boiler died, he was already in the house.

Instagram has been fairly open about what it measures. Its head, Adam Mosseri, has said that sends per reach, how often people share your post by direct message, is one of the most important signals it uses. Alongside sends, he's named watch time and likes per reach as the ones that matter most, and said Instagram will favour raw, real human content over AI-generated material through 2026.

So every piece of social content has one job: make someone stop, watch to the end, and send it to someone they know. A picture paints a thousand words. Forty seconds of a burst pipe being fixed beats a thousand pictures.

Tips

  • Win the first three seconds. Trade, area, tension. "If your boiler broke tonight in Bromley, who actually gets the job?"
  • Show your face and show the work. The problem, the fix, the before and after. People hire people.
  • One idea per video. Got two points? Make two videos.
  • Put captions on screen. Plenty of people scroll with the sound off.
  • Make it sendable. Would a homeowner forward this to their partner? "This is why your radiator's cold" gets sent. "10% off this month" doesn't.
  • Upload clean files to each platform. Instagram has said it shows less of reels that are watermarked or low resolution, so a TikTok with the logo still on is working against you.
  • Go where your customers scroll. Ask every new customer where they found you, and write it down. If they're homeowners in local Facebook groups, that's your room, whatever the gurus say about TikTok.
  • Reply to every comment. Some of them are enquiries in disguise.

Pro tip: make a series, not a stream. Same opening, same format, same day each week. People recognise a format long before they remember your name. Then batch it: one session a fortnight, phone on a stand, eight to twelve videos, change your shirt halfway.

One job, three rooms

You don't need three content teams. You need to get three uses out of every real job you already do. Waste not, want not.

At All Well I do the admin and the sales myself, so anything that eats an evening doesn't survive. This is the version that does.

Say you swap a boiler in Beckenham on Thursday.

  1. Social. Film 30 seconds on site: the old boiler, the problem you found, the new one running. Open with the area and the problem.
  2. Search. Add a short write-up to your Beckenham page and your boiler page: the area, the type of property, what you did, two photos. Post the same photos to your Google profile.
  3. AI. Ask the customer for a review, and mention it helps if they say what you did and where. Google first, then one other platform.

By Friday, the same fact (you fit boilers in Beckenham) lives on your website, your Google profile, a review site and Instagram. That's what corroboration looks like in practice. Three birds, one stone.

The systems bit makes it stick. Record a two-minute voice note in the van on the way home. Let AI turn it into the caption, the page write-up and the review request text. You check it, you post it, you're done before your tea goes cold.

Where to start this week

You won't fix all three rooms by Friday. You can find out which one is costing you the most.

  1. Search, 30 minutes. Check your Google primary category, list every area you cover, and claim Bing Places.
  2. AI, 15 minutes. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity who they'd recommend for your trade in your area. Write down the names. Is yours there?
  3. Social, one video. Film one real job. Trade, area and problem in the first three seconds.

Then pick your weakest room and give it a month before you touch the others.

Three neighbours, one broken boiler, three different doors. You don't get to choose which door your next customer walks through. You only get to choose whether you're standing behind it.

McLuhan was right. The medium is the message. So learn to speak all three.

Sources