Do I need a website if I already have the Google listing?

The listing first, it is free, and it is where they start

If you do not have a Google Business Profile yet, stop reading and open one. It costs nothing, it puts you on the map, and it is where almost everyone who later takes weeks to decide begins.

Anyone charging you to open the listing is charging for something you do in twenty minutes. What takes work is keeping it alive and full of reviews, and with the number of people in your trade around here, reviews are the only thing separating you from the next guy.

Where the listing alone runs out

• The map shows three. Miss those three and the listing brings you nothing that day. Below the map the regular results continue, and only people with a site are in there.
• Ten photos and no order to them. A listing takes loose photos. In your trade the decision gets made seeing the before and after of the same job, and that needs a page where they sit side by side.
• A $8,000 job does not get hired off a map. At that price nobody calls the first name they see: they ask around, look at past work, and want to read terms before writing.
• Google rewards it when it points somewhere. A listing with its own consistent site has more to prove it is real than a listing floating alone.

They look you up months before hiring, and a listing does not reach that far

In catering weeks pass between the first search and the hire. In that time the customer reads, compares and rules people out, and mostly rules out whoever they cannot read.

A listing does not answer what it costs, what is included, or what happens if something falls through. When those answers are missing, the customer finds them on somebody else's page.

One extra call a month covers it: an event for a hundred people runs $2,000 to $8,000, and one of them pays for the whole page. A customer of yours, while they last, is worth around $5,000.

And in season the map turns brutal

In your trade, November through January, plus wedding season. Those months everyone in your area is fighting for the same three spots on the map, and whoever falls out gets nothing.

A page does not depend on that draw. It shows in the regular results, in the long searches, and in what people type once they know what they want, which in season is most of them.

What is almost always wrong once there finally is a page

The most repeated mistake in catering is a menu in a PDF you have to download before you can read it. The listing does not fix it, because a listing does not reach that far: whoever sees it already decided to look at you, and what happens next happens on the page.

Before paying anyone, check that on yours. If it is wrong you will keep losing calls even sitting first on the map, because the menu with a per-person price, which is what they came for is what actually closes the job.

When the listing has you covered

If you only do corporate on annual contracts and never private events, or you already sit in the map three for your area and cannot keep up, stay with the listing and spend nothing.

That is a good problem. When you want people writing already decided instead of answering the same questions by phone, we can talk.