The hair salon her sister-in-law swore by... that I never found

Hello,

Landed back from Greece a few days and of course you know how it goes unpacking and getting settled so its busy. I held the marketing masterclass feedback session on Wednesday as everyone had a to do list and we decided as a group to hold an accountability check in every week for a few weeks. Something that happened to me right at the end of my trip in Greece that I need to share and you will know why I am telling you this very soon.

I mentioned to my sister in law that I wanted to find a Hair Spa salon to have a hair spa wash and treatment and blow wave before I came back to south Africa. This Hair Spa is fascinating me and I am trying to experience as many of them as possible to design the most mind blowing of all experiences. My sister in law told me about a hair spa she and all her mates swears by - a proper blow wave and treatment. "You have to go," she said, and gave me the name.

So I searched for it. Genuinely tried.

The spelling on Google didn't quite match what she'd told me. The address that came up put it a few streets from where she said it was. There was no number I could confidently WhatsApp to double-check I had the right place. After ten minutes of scrolling and second-guessing myself, I gave up and booked somewhere else instead - a salon that came up immediately, in the right place, with hours that matched, that I could message and confirm in about two seconds.

That salon was incredible. The treatment was brilliant and this time they included the face in it which is a first for me. Awesome blow wave. Zero regrets.

But here's what stuck with me: my sister-in-law's salon is, by her account, just as good - maybe better. It didn't lose my booking on quality. It lost my booking because I, a real person holding a personal recommendation from someone I trust, still couldn't confidently confirm I had the right business.

Now think about that same scenario, except it's not me searching. It's AI.

No relationship. No trusted sister-in-law vouching for it. No patience, and no benefit of the doubt. Just whatever it can cross-reference across your listings in half a second. If I very nearly walked away from a business I had a personal referral to, what chance does that same business have with an AI tool that owes it nothing?

That question followed me home, because it's exactly the pattern I've been seeing since wrapping up our five-week Marketing Masterclass.

Over the past week I've been going back through the voice notes, messages and feedback from the group, and there's a common thread running through almost every single conversation. It has nothing to do with which filter to use, what to caption a Reel, or which AI tool is "the best" one this month.

It's foundations.

Because here's the truth I kept coming back to in every session: it doesn't matter how excellent your social media is. It doesn't matter how clever your latest campaign is. If the foundations underneath it aren't in place, none of the rest of it can do its job properly.

There are four foundational elements we worked through in the Masterclass - the things that have to be right before anything else stands a chance of working. I'm only going to share one with you today (the other three genuinely deserve their own room, not a newsletter), but it's the one you can go and check for yourself in the next ten minutes.

Foundation Element 1: How your business is listed - everywhere.

Not just on Google. Everywhere. Google Business Profile, Facebook, Instagram, your website, any directory you're on, even old listings you forgot still exist.

Here's why this matters so much more than it used to: AI doesn't "know" your business the way a regular client does. It cross-checks. It looks at your name, your address, your phone number and your opening hours across every source it can find, and uses that to decide whether it's looking at one trustworthy business or several confusing, unrelated ones.

If your name is written slightly differently on Facebook to how it appears on Google. If an old address is still sitting on a directory somewhere. If your hours on Instagram don't match what's on your website. AI can't safely conclude that's all the same business, so it either leaves you out of the answer altogether, or hands the enquiry straight to the competitor down the road whose information is clean and consistent.

That salon in Greece has no idea she may be losing bookings to a filing problem, not a talent problem.

If you want to go deeper on this, Search Engine Journal published a great piece a few weeks ago on exactly why AI tools sometimes recommend your competitor instead of you. Well worth the read.

So here's my question for you this week:

If you Googled your own business right now or asked ChatGPT to find you - would every version of it match? Same name. Same address. Same hours. Everywhere.

Or would even you get confused?

Go check. It's the fastest ten minutes you'll spend on your marketing all month.

Have a wonderful week.

Lots of love,

Marisa

P.S. That's one of four. If this one alone just sent you off to go check three platforms, imagine what the other three would do for you. Foundations like this are exactly what we rebuild, properly, inside the Masterclass and the Club portal - more on that soon.