What Does Your Business Really Look Like Online? 8 Things to Check

September 21, 2026


Before someone calls your business, requests a quote, books an appointment or makes a purchase, there’s a good chance they’ve already researched you online.


They may have searched your company on Google. Read your reviews. Visited your website. Checked your social media. Asked ChatGPT about you. Or found a conversation about your company that you didn’t even know existed.


By the time they contact you, they may have already formed an opinion about your business.


The problem is that business owners usually see their online presence very differently from potential customers. You know which information is outdated. You know what your company actually does. You know which social account you stopped using two years ago.


A new customer doesn’t.


Every so often, it’s worth looking at your business online as if you’ve never heard of it before.

Here are eight things to check.


1. Search Your Business on Google


Start with the obvious one: search your company name.


But don’t immediately click your website.


Look at the entire results page and see what a potential customer sees. Is the information accurate? Are your products or services clear? Are old addresses, outdated descriptions or pages you no longer use still appearing?


Look at the images, reviews, social profiles, directory listings and other results surrounding your company.


Your website might be completely up to date while the rest of your search presence tells a very different story.


The question isn’t simply, “Does my website rank?”


It’s: What does Google tell someone about my business before they even visit my website?


2. Ask AI About Your Business


Search is no longer the only place people go when they want information about a company.


Ask ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini what they know about your business.


Then go further and ask the kinds of questions a potential customer might ask.


What does your company specialize in? Who does it serve? What products or services does it offer? Is it a good option for a particular need?


See whether your company appears and, more importantly, whether the information presented is accurate and current.


You can also test broader discovery questions related to your industry or location. If someone doesn't already know your company exists, would an AI assistant ever introduce them to it?


AI is becoming another layer between businesses and potential customers. It’s worth knowing what that layer looks like for yours.


3. Read Your Reviews for Patterns


Most businesses know their average review rating.


That number doesn't tell you nearly as much as the reviews themselves.


Instead, read your most recent 20 or 30 reviews together.


Look for patterns.


What do customers consistently praise? What complaints appear repeatedly? Are people mentioning communication, response times, product quality, shipping, pricing or customer service?


One negative review might be an isolated experience. The same complaint appearing repeatedly is something different.


Do the same with positive feedback. If customers repeatedly praise something you barely mention in your marketing, you may have discovered a selling point worth emphasizing.


Reviews aren't just reputation management. They’re customer research.


4. Find the Conversations You Don’t Control


Not every conversation about your company happens on a page you manage.


Search your business name on Reddit, Facebook groups, industry forums and other online communities relevant to your customers.


You may find recommendations, questions, complaints or discussions you’ve never seen.


These conversations can be particularly valuable because people often speak differently when they’re talking to other customers instead of directly to a business.


You can't control every conversation about your company, and you shouldn't try to.


But you should know what those conversations are saying.


5. Search Like Someone Who Doesn’t Know You


Searching your company name tells you what people find when they already know you exist.


Now test something harder.


Search for the products or services you provide without using your company name.


Think about what a real customer would type when looking for a business like yours.


Do you appear?


Which competitors dominate the results?


What types of pages are Google showing? Local businesses? Directories? Videos? Articles?
Marketplace listings?


There’s a major difference between being easy to find when someone searches for your name and being discoverable when someone is simply looking for what you sell.


The second group represents people who haven't chosen a business yet.


6. Use Your Website Like a Customer


Business owners spend a lot of time looking at their websites.


That doesn’t necessarily mean they use them like customers do.


Open your website on your phone and pretend you know nothing about the company.


Within a few seconds, can you understand what the business does? Can you find the product or service you need? Is the next step obvious?


Then actually use the site.


Submit the contact form. Click the phone number. Request a quote. Add something to the cart. Go through checkout. Check the confirmation email.


You may discover broken links, confusing forms, awkward mobile layouts or unnecessary steps that you've stopped noticing because you're too familiar with the site.


Don't just look at your website.


Experience it.


7. Check Whether Everything Tells the Same Story


Your online presence is bigger than your website.


Compare the information customers find across your website, Google presence, social media profiles, directories, marketplace accounts and other important listings.


Does everything accurately represent who you are and what you do today?


Check your company name, contact information, opening hours, services, descriptions, links and other basic information.


Also look beyond factual accuracy.


Does your LinkedIn page describe the company one way while your website positions it another way? Does an old Facebook page make the business look inactive? Are outdated services still being promoted somewhere?


Individual inconsistencies can seem insignificant.


Together, they can make a business look neglected or create uncertainty about which information a customer should trust.


8. Ask Whether You’d Trust This Business


Finally, stop examining individual pages and look at the complete picture.


Imagine you know absolutely nothing about the company.


You search for it. You read the reviews. You visit the website. You look through its social profiles. You see what other people are saying.


Does the business look active?

Does it look professional?

Does the information feel consistent?

Does it seem credible?


Most importantly: Would what you found make you comfortable contacting the company, booking a service or making a purchase?


If the answer is no, you've probably found something worth fixing.


See What Your Customers See


Your online presence isn't just your website.


It's the complete picture customers find across search engines, AI assistants, reviews, social media, directories, online communities and every other place your business appears.


And that picture exists whether you're actively managing it or not.


Every few months, look at your company through the eyes of someone discovering it for the first time.


Search it. Ask AI about it. Read the reviews. Find the conversations. Search for your services.

Use the website. Compare your profiles.


Then ask yourself one simple question:


If I knew nothing about this company, would what I found online make me want to become a customer?


The answer may show you exactly what needs attention next.

Your Next Marketer Might Need to Code

October 26, 2026
Marketing is becoming more technical. As businesses adopt AI tools, automation and increasingly complex software, a new kind of specialist is emerging: the marketing engineer. For years, businesses have built marketing teams around familiar responsibilities: advertising, content creation, search engine optimization, social media and lead generation. Those responsibilities haven't disappeared. But the technology behind them has become increasingly complicated. Businesses now rely on advertising platforms, customer relationship management systems, email automation, website analytics, e-commerce software and AI tools. Making those systems work together is becoming an important part of marketing performance. That's where the marketing engineer comes in. What Is a Marketing Engineer? A marketing engineer combines marketing knowledge with technical skills. Traditional marketing specialists might develop a campaign strategy, create content or manage advertising budgets. A marketing engineer can help build the technical systems that make those activities more effective. That might involve connecting a CRM to advertising platforms, automating reporting, improving conversion tracking, integrating customer data or developing workflows using APIs and AI tools. The role connects marketing strategy with technical execution. Rather than relying entirely on separate developers, analysts and software specialists, businesses can use technical marketing expertise to bridge those functions. The Problem With Disconnected Marketing Systems Many businesses already have the technology they need. The challenge is getting it to work together. A company might use Google Ads to attract customers, Shopify to process orders, Klaviyo for email marketing and a CRM to manage relationships. Each platform collects information, but that doesn't necessarily mean the information is connected. Employees may still need to download reports, transfer leads between systems, update spreadsheets or manually compare campaign results against actual sales. Those disconnected processes can make marketing slower and more difficult to measure. Marketing engineering focuses on improving the connections between systems. When information moves reliably between platforms, businesses can reduce repetitive work and make decisions using more complete data. AI Search Is Changing How Businesses Get Discovered Technical marketing is also becoming more relevant as AI-powered search develops. Traditional search engine optimization focuses on helping websites appear in organic search results. But customers increasingly use AI-powered tools to research products, compare services and find answers. That has brought greater attention to two related concepts. Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) focuses on making information clear, accessible and useful for answer-based discovery. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) focuses on improving how content can be discovered, understood and potentially referenced by generative AI systems. These approaches overlap with established SEO practices, including technically accessible websites, useful content and clear information architecture. They do not guarantee inclusion in AI-generated answers. For businesses, the practical lesson is that website content and technical structure need to support more than traditional search rankings. Automation Can Eliminate Repetitive Marketing Work Another opportunity is workflow automation. Marketing departments often spend considerable time on tasks that don't require much creative judgment. Downloading reports, updating spreadsheets, transferring customer information, preparing campaign summaries and moving data between applications are common examples. Many of these activities can be automated when systems are properly connected. That doesn't eliminate the need for marketers. It can give them more time to focus on strategy, creative development, customer relationships and improving campaign performance. The objective isn't to automate everything. It's to identify which tasks can be handled more reliably and efficiently through technology. Better Data Can Lead to Better Marketing Decisions One of the biggest challenges in marketing is understanding which activities actually contribute to revenue. A campaign might generate thousands of impressions, hundreds of clicks and dozens of leads without producing profitable customers. Marketing engineers can help businesses connect advertising activity with customer and sales information. That includes improving conversion tracking, integrating data sources and identifying where potential customers drop out of the buying process. The goal is to move beyond reporting what happened on an advertising platform and develop a clearer understanding of what happened across the business. Does Your Business Need a Marketing Engineer? Not every company needs to hire a full-time technical marketing specialist. For smaller businesses, the first step is identifying where disconnected systems, manual processes or unreliable data are creating problems. Consider whether your advertising and sales platforms share information, whether campaign performance can be connected to revenue and whether repetitive reporting tasks could be automated. It is also worth reviewing whether your website is technically accessible, well structured and capable of answering the questions potential customers are asking. Depending on the complexity of the business, these improvements might be handled by an internal employee, an outside specialist or a combination of both. The important decision isn't necessarily who to hire. It's determining which capabilities the business actually needs. The Future of Marketing Is More Connected Creative thinking, compelling messaging and customer relationships remain essential to effective marketing. But those strengths increasingly depend on the technology supporting them. Businesses need systems that communicate, data that can be trusted and processes that allow teams to work efficiently. Marketing engineering represents one approach to bringing those capabilities together. The next competitive advantage may not come from producing more content or launching more campaigns. It may come from building a marketing operation where everything works together.

P&G Rebuilt Its Operations and Saved $600 Million. Here's How.

October 23, 2026
Procter & Gamble didn't simply outsource its support operations. It first rebuilt how they worked, then brought in outside partners. By 2008, its business-services transformation had generated approximately $600 million in cumulative savings. In the late 1990s, Procter & Gamble faced a problem familiar to businesses of almost every size: too many teams performing similar work. Finance, human resources and other support functions were spread across different parts of the company. That meant duplicated activities, inconsistent processes and unnecessary costs. Instead of continuing to expand those departments independently, P&G decided to fundamentally change how its business operated. First, P&G Fixed Its Internal Operations In 1999, P&G began bringing its support functions into a single global organization. Over the following three years, the company consolidated and standardized more than 70 services. It also established shared-service centers to support operations around the world. The goal was to replace fragmented systems with a more consistent and efficient operating structure. Importantly, P&G didn't begin by handing all these functions to outside companies. It first reorganized how the work was performed internally. That foundation would make the next phase possible. Then Came $4.2 Billion in Outsourcing Agreements In 2003, P&G entered into outsourcing partnerships valued at approximately $4.2 billion. Outside specialists took responsibility for selected operations, including IT infrastructure, payroll support, accounts payable and facilities management. Rather than maintaining every capability internally, P&G could rely on partners with specialized expertise, established systems and the scale to manage these activities. But it didn't outsource everything. The company retained control of functions it considered strategically important, including procurement, logistics, IT architecture and technology-driven innovation. This distinction was central to the strategy. P&G wasn't trying to eliminate internal operations. It was deciding which activities made sense to manage itself and which could be handled more effectively by partners. The Benefits Went Beyond Cost Savings One of the clearest examples came during P&G's integration of Gillette. According to P&G's business-services leadership, its established systems and outsourcing partners helped the company mobilize approximately 750 additional people within weeks. The business-services integration was completed in 15 months, a process its leadership believed could otherwise have taken three to four years. That flexibility mattered. P&G could draw on existing capabilities and outside resources without having to build every part of the operation from scratch. By 2008, the company's broader business-services transformation had produced approximately $600 million in cumulative savings. Those savings came from a combination of internal consolidation, standardized processes and selective outsourcing, not outsourcing alone. What Smaller Businesses Can Learn Most businesses aren't managing P&G's scale or negotiating multibillion-dollar agreements. But the underlying decision is surprisingly relevant. As companies grow, they often add employees and departments without reconsidering how work gets done. Over time, the same problems can emerge: duplicated tasks, fragmented responsibilities, rising administrative costs and employees spending too much time on activities outside their core expertise. The first step isn't necessarily outsourcing. It's understanding the operation. Which processes are inefficient? Which functions require direct internal control? Which activities could a specialist handle more effectively? Customer support, bookkeeping, administrative work, creative production and certain technology operations may be candidates for outside support, depending on the business. But outsourcing a poorly defined process can simply transfer the problem to someone else. P&G's experience illustrates a more disciplined approach: improve the system, identify which capabilities are strategically important and use external partners where they offer a genuine advantage. You Don't Have to Build Everything In-House The most important lesson from P&G's transformation isn't that every business should outsource more. It's that growth doesn't require owning and managing every operational function. By combining stronger internal processes with carefully selected partners, businesses can reduce unnecessary complexity and concentrate their resources where they create the most value. Sometimes the smartest way to grow isn't to build another department. It's to rethink how the work gets done. Sources McKinsey & Company, From internal service provider to strategic partner: An interview with the head of Global Business Services at P&G (2008). Procter & Gamble, 2008 Annual Report.