I am a digital marketer. That is the job. Websites, paid ads across every platform, and the search work that now spans SEO, GEO, and AEO. The software I build sits underneath all of that, and most of the people who hire me never think about the software at all. They pay for marketing. The CRM comes with it, at no cost, because the marketing is what creates the reason for the CRM to exist.
I want to lay out how the pieces actually fit, because the way I work is a little different from a normal agency, and the difference is the part that saves you money. Then I am going to give 25 local businesses something I used to charge thousands for.
What do I actually do?
I run marketing for small and local businesses, and I build the software that makes that marketing compound. Marketing is the stabilizer. It is the thing the business does and the thing you pay me for. The software is the multiplier that sits under it. If I did not have the marketing work creating a real use case, I never would have built the software in the first place.
The three layers
It stacks in a specific order, and the order matters.
- Marketing. Websites, paid acquisition on every platform that matters, and search. SEO, GEO, and AEO all still live under the word "SEO" to most people, but they are three different games now, and I play all three.
- The CRM. Tree CRM, which I built myself. It holds the leads the marketing generates, the pipeline, and the sending. My clients get it at no cost.
- The agents. Scout and Command, two agentic tools that run on top of the CRM and do work that used to require headcount.
What is the overlap tax?
The overlap tax is the money you already spend every month on tools, subscriptions, and manual hours that a single operator can collapse into one relationship. It does not show up on one invoice, so you never see the total. That is exactly why it keeps getting paid.
Most local businesses are renting a stack that looks something like this, with each piece billed separately and half of them doing jobs the others already cover.
| Function | Common tool | Ballpark per month | What it overlaps with |
|---|---|---|---|
| CRM and pipeline | HubSpot Starter | $20 per seat and up | Booking, email, lead capture |
| Email marketing | Mailchimp | $13 and up | The CRM you already pay for |
| Landing pages | Leadpages | Around $49 | Your actual website |
| Booking | Calendly | $10 to $16 | The CRM and the website |
| Reviews and reputation | Podium or Birdeye | $250 to $400 | Manual follow-up you could automate |
Add it up and the line items quietly clear several hundred dollars a month before anyone has run a single ad or written a single page. The budget to hire a marketer is not a new expense you have to find. It is already leaving your account.
The budget to hire me already exists. It is sitting inside the overlap tax you pay every month and never see on one invoice.
Why did I build my own CRM?
I built Tree CRM because the marketing gave me the use case, not the other way around. I needed somewhere to put the leads the campaigns were generating, a place to watch a pipeline move, and a way to send from one system instead of five. So I built it. That work pulled me deep into AI, but it started as a marketing problem, not a software ambition.
My clients get Tree CRM at no cost. They pay for marketing services, and the CRM rides along. If a client already runs their business on HubSpot or something like it, and the pain of migrating off it is bigger than the upside, that is completely fine. They keep what they have. I am not in the business of forcing a platform switch on someone. The point is the marketing, and the marketing works either way.
What runs on top of the CRM?
Two agents do work that used to need a team: Scout and Command. This is the martech layer, and it only exists because the CRM underneath it is fully custom, so I can build directly against it instead of fighting somebody else's API.
Scout is a sales agent. It finds businesses that fit, qualifies them, and drafts the outbound, so the top of the funnel keeps moving without a junior salesperson doing it by hand. Command is the agentic layer that operates on the CRM itself, the way you would direct an assistant who actually has their hands on the data. Neither of these is a feature I bolted on for show. They are the reason a one-person operation can carry a client load that used to require several people.
Why can one person ship what used to take a team?
Because the tooling changed underneath the entire industry in the last two years. I can ship in a day what used to take a team weeks, and that is not a slogan. It is the daily reality of building with AI in the loop. A landing page, a tracking setup, a CRM automation, an outreach sequence: the cycle time on all of it collapsed.
That collapse is the whole reason the offer below is even possible. When the cost of doing the work drops far enough, you can give away things that used to carry a real price tag, and it still makes sense, because the relationship is what matters and the work is what proves it.
What am I giving 25 local businesses, and why?
I am giving 25 local service businesses a one-time Google Business Profile optimization at no cost: a full audit plus the actual implementation, not a PDF of recommendations you have to go execute yourself. This is work I have charged thousands for. The profile is the single highest-leverage piece of local marketing most owners are sitting on and ignoring, so it is where I want to start.
Why I would start with your profile
Google ranks local results on three things, and your profile touches all of them.
| Pillar | What Google means | What you can actually move | Where most profiles fail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Relevance | How well you match the search | Primary category, services, description | Wrong or vague primary category |
| Distance | How close you are to the searcher | Service area and address accuracy | Missing or unconfirmed service area |
| Prominence | How known and active you are | Reviews, posts, photos, engagement | No activity for 30-plus days |
The primary category is the number one ranking factor in the local pack, and most owners pick it once and never look again. Profiles that are 100 percent complete rank roughly 50 percent higher than half-finished competitors. And there is a decay clock now: a profile that has not posted an update or photo in over 30 days starts losing impressions, while active profiles land in the top three local results about 1.4 times more often than dormant ones with the exact same star rating.
Two things also changed recently that catch people off guard. Google shut down its no-cost Business Profile website builder, so any business that leaned on a .business.site page lost it. And profile editing moved directly into Search and Maps. There is no separate dashboard anymore. On desktop you search "my business" and select Edit profile. On mobile you open the Maps app, tap Business, then Edit profile. Name and category changes still go through a 24 to 72 hour review.
What the optimization includes
- A full audit of categories, services, description, hours, service area, and photos against what your top local competitors are doing.
- The primary and secondary categories rewritten for relevance, not guesswork.
- A complete profile, because the gap between 90 percent and 100 percent is where the ranking lift hides.
LocalBusinessstructured data on your site so AI search can read and cite you, not just Google's local pack.- The actual implementation. I make the changes with you, I do not hand you a list.
That last point about structured data matters more every month. AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity now answer "best [service] near me" questions by pulling from structured, local signals. A clean profile plus schema like this is what makes you quotable to a machine, not just rankable on a page.
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "LocalBusiness",
"name": "Your Business",
"address": {
"@type": "PostalAddress",
"addressLocality": "Your City",
"addressRegion": "PA"
},
"areaServed": "Your Service Area",
"telephone": "+1-000-000-0000"
}Who qualifies
This is for local service businesses only, and I am excluding automotive for this round. Beyond that, the bar is simple: you serve a local area, you have a Google Business Profile worth improving, and you want the work done, not just diagnosed.
- Submit your details using the form below this post or book the audit call.
- I review your current profile and your local competitors before we talk.
- We spend a short call confirming categories, service area, and goals.
- I implement the optimization with you and set the profile up to stay active.
There are roughly 25 spots. When they are gone, they are gone, and this goes back to being paid work. If you have read this far, you already understand how I think about the stack. The profile is where I would put your first dollar of attention, so let me put mine there first.
Common questions
Do I have to use Tree CRM to work with you?
No. Tree CRM comes at no cost with marketing services, but if you already run on HubSpot or another CRM and the migration is not worth the pain, you keep what you have. You are paying for the marketing, not the software.
Is the Google Business Profile optimization actually at no cost?
Yes, for 25 local service businesses, one time. It includes the audit and the implementation. After the 25 spots are filled it returns to being paid work that has run into the thousands.
What counts as a local service business?
A business that serves customers in a defined local area, such as home services, wellness, trades, hospitality, or professional services. Automotive is excluded for this round.
What is the difference between SEO, GEO, and AEO?
SEO optimizes for Google's traditional ranked results. GEO optimizes so generative engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity cite you. AEO optimizes for direct-answer formats and snippets. They overlap, and a complete profile plus structured data moves all three at once.
