Is Social Media Still Worth It in 2026? How Service Businesses Get Found (and Chosen) Online - EP # 236

In this episode, Maggie answers two questions service-based business owners keep asking online:

• Is social media still worth it in 2026, or are clients searching elsewhere?
• How do I convert website/online traffic into paying clients?

You’ll get a fresh, practical perspective based on current consumer behavior (including Google’s “messy middle” buying journey) and real examples that show why visibility isn’t enough — your Google profile, website copy, and follow-up process are what turn interest into booked clients.

What you’ll learn

• How clients actually choose service providers in 2026 
• Why social media is still worth it — but only if it matches where your ideal clients explore
• The 3 essentials that convert online traffic
• Why “marketing tactics” don’t work well in isolation — and how to build an ecosystem instead

Key takeaways

• Your client’s buying journey is rarely one search → one decision. It’s a “messy middle” of research.
• Social media supports the exploration phase. Google + reviews support the evaluation phase.
• Conversions often break at the follow-up stage: slow replies, unclear next steps, or inconsistent communication.
• The goal is a smooth client journey from discovery → trust → contact → conversion.

Work with Maggie

If you want help looking at your marketing holistically — from your ideal client’s perspective — and turn your online presence into a consistent stream of paying clients, book a complimentary consultation - HERE - https://calendly.com/maggie-s2l/discovery-call-1

Timestamps

• 00:00 Why this episode: answering real questions service business owners ask online
• 02:00 The “messy middle”: why the buyer journey isn’t linear (streaming, scrolling, searching)
• 03:00 Why video content matters more than ever in the exploration phase
• 04:00 Evaluation phase: why clients check Google profiles + reviews before deciding
• 06:00 Where social media fits: it’s part of discovery (and you need to be where your client explores)
• 09:00 The 3-step conversion checklist for turning traffic into paying clients
• 11:00 Real story: searching for kids’ drama classes (what went wrong in the follow-up)
• 18:00 What a smooth conversion journey looks like (examples from Maggie’s client inquiries)
• 23:00 The big mistake: treating marketing in silos vs building a client journey ecosystem

Transcript

Hello. Welcome, diamond Effect listeners to podcast episode 236 on January 16th. So in this podcast, I am trying to give you a fresh perspective and answer a couple of questions that I've seen out there from service-based business owners that are not answered in detail, whether it's Quora, Reddit,

I did some research and looked into what are service based business owners looking. What questions do service business owners have that maybe are not answered to their satisfaction and core Reddits, or there's so much information that they get confused by that? And I decided to try to answer some of them here on this podcast.

And give you a fresh perspective, maybe a different perspective that you've seen that, and I'll explain how and why as we [00:01:00] go through the podcast. So the main two questions that I wanna tackle today because they are related is, is social media still worth it or are my clients searching for services like mine elsewhere?

And then another one is, how do I convert website or online traffic. Into paying clients, in order to do it in a simple way, I will start with telling you a little bit about current consumer client behavior, and that comes from a Google study.

That was done a few years ago, but they keep updating it. That I feel is very accurate. And if you think about Google, they have all the data, right? People go to Google, YouTube, maybe recently into AI looking for answers, looking for, providers, products that they are. So they have really in-depth insights into.[00:02:00] 

How we behave as customers. And then also, I always wanna encourage you look into yourself. How do you behave as a customer and a client? How do you look for services or products, that you offer? Because you're definitely one archetype of those that can give you insights, into your own clients. This is what Google, this is a summary of what Google study sets. The shopping journey of our clients is not linear. It's not like they. Have a trigger to buy something or impulse or whatever, I need to buy something. And they do one search, focus on one thing, and then buy right there is a big, messy middle where they are researching, checking their options, consulting different things before they make a decision.

[00:03:00] So shopping journey is more of fluid and there is a lot of streaming, scrolling, searching, researching in that journey. Definitely video content is. Playing bigger and bigger role in that research. Messy middle. So just FYI. If you're not making any video content yet, whether it's for your website, for your social media presence, or any other online presence you have, that's something you might wanna consider.

So video content is, so video content is big for the clients in discovery. So when they're like discovering their options, they're looking video and visual content is great. Now, once they are. Decided on certain options and now they want to confirm quality of what they're about to purchase or the service providers they're gonna [00:04:00] hire.

Now they're gonna go and do a Google search. In the last episode of Diamond Effect Podcast, I talked about, the importance of having a good Google profile that's really optimized, talking to your ideal clients where you have current and good reviews, where you have your website attached to your contact information and all those things.

And that's important because when I look for services or products, especially if those services are local to me and they need to be local to me, I always check. A Google profile of that service provider first before I even go to the website, or if I discover them on social media or any other way through recommendation, maybe through Facebook groups and so on.

I will still go and check their Google profile, especially if the recommendation is not from somewhere I trust, but somewhere I've [00:05:00] seen online.

So here is the steps that your client goes in order to decide. So the first is, of course, a trigger that makes them start searching, and I would say that for service businesses is more of a need and want that was created either by a pain point or by a request through somebody in their family and so on, rather than.

Impulse purchase.

I think impulse purchases are definitely more common in the product type businesses. I'm scrolling online, I'm looking something, it's something great. Or I'm window shopping online and I'm putting them in the court, in services. I'm not saying. It doesn't exist, but I would say it's a less prominent trigger for the customer to start their searching journey and actually hiring, service providers to help them.[00:06:00] 

So there, but there is a trigger, right? Whether it's a pain point, whether it's a desire, whether it's somebody, like my kids often are triggers to my purchases, right? So somebody in their family. They start looking and then there is this messy middle. And the messy middle consists of two parts.

One is exploration, so starting to look at their options and it's more expansive, meaning we usually look of course, at multiple options. We are researching, exploring. We're scrolling, we're streaming, we're reading. Maybe we're asking our friends, things like that. And once we've done that expansion, then we're starting to do evaluation.

And evaluation is more narrowing our choices, right? If I have multiple choices, it's very hard to make a decision. Actually. Studies show that anything [00:07:00] past. Five. I think maximum choices confuses our brain and then the brain, doesn't wanna make a decision. It's just too much information to process.

When we have less choices, it's actually easier, but sometimes, depending on what we're looking, we might, come up with way more than five choices. So then we start narrowing down to come to that one provider that we wanna hire. And with the evaluation, we now, we are more doing.

Googling, right? So exploration is more expensive and it happens more on maybe social media. Facebook, we're asking people, talking to people, reading, whereas in evaluation, we're start doing search for specific providers that we came across an exploration and now we're reading reviews, right? The consumers are reading reviews, checking the website, and determining which one is the best fit for my needs.

So if you think about it as a [00:08:00] service provider, you wanna be present for your client as much as possible in that messy middle journey. So when they're exploring, you want to be. Where they explore and it will be different for different type of clients. And that's why it's so important in knowing your ideal client, right?

Because if I really understand them and know their behavior, then I'll know that maybe they are in Facebook groups asking around on Facebook, and I need to be present. Or maybe there are Instagram people and that's where I need to be. Maybe they're on LinkedIn, maybe they're on TikTok, and that's where you wanna be.

Or maybe they're YouTubers, right? I'm for example, not a big YouTube person in terms of exploring and searching for services, but there are people who just do YouTube and you need to understand your people and then you'll know where to show up. So [00:09:00] here is the answer to the first question.

Is social media worth it? Or My clients search elsewhere? Yes, it is worth it because it is part of their exploration. It's not the only place where they look, but if you are not there when they look, they might miss on discovering you or giving you a chance to get to that evaluation process. So then once they explored, now they're evaluating. So what do you need to do to convert a website or online traffic to your paying clients? And I wanna say there's three critical steps, and I'll list the steps first, and then I'll give you some examples from my recent journey.

So the first step is have your Google profile optimized, active, [00:10:00] with great reviews and so on. Number two is of course your website needs to have a copy. So whatever writing is on it that is very specific. Talking to your ideal client, pain points to their desires, how you help them answering their questions with a clear call to actions is how do you want them to contact you?

Okay. If the website is talking to everybody and nobody, if it doesn't answer some basic questions that they have. They will drop. They might not go and ask you, especially if they have multiple choices through the research. If they have less choices and I was in that situation, they might reach out, but already their experience is not as great as it could be.

And then the third step that I find is probably most missed, and it's critical [00:11:00] in converting your own like traffic to paying clients. Is your process on what happens after your potential clients takes the step you want them to take in your call to action on the website, and how do you respond to it, right?

So if you have on the website, call us, fill in this form. Send us an email, whatever that is, what happens after that is critical. Now, all those three steps are critical, but I find that business owner miss or underperform in step three. So let me give you a couple of examples.

I've been looking for some drama classes for my son, so my trigger was my son coming to my husband and I one evening while we're already in bed getting ready, saying I wanna be an actor. I want to [00:12:00] try and act. I thought it was, unexpected request coming from him. But we were excited just because I feel like, acting classes or any stage presence and performance improv classes are great skill builders, whether my son becomes an actor down the line.

Or not. We thought it was a great idea, so we said, no problem. Let's start with some classes. So that was a trigger to my search of local service providers that provide drama classes for kids. And the way I started is in this case, I actually went to a service provider where my son already took some drawing classes from them and were very happy with them.

And looked there because I knew they had some drama classes, but their classes are at the time and date. That's not optimal for us, given that we have another child who is very busy with their activities. So it wasn't [00:13:00] optimal. It was doable but not optimal. And that triggered my wider search to look for other providers and see, okay, can I find something similar but at a better time and date?

So through my search, I explored. Did the research and narrowed down to three options or found out three options. Sometimes with service providers you have more than three, but clearly, drama classes for kids in my area, maybe they don't have enough.

Teachers to do that because they seem to be very popular and they fill up fast. So I was always thinking like, why not create another class, but maybe there aren't enough teachers or maybe there are no, does not matter. I came up with three options and as I started doing my evaluation, one turned out not to be the right fit at all because they just provide programming to schools and other organizations.

The first one I went to the [00:14:00] website, really clearly stipulated what they do when they do it. What is the pricing against one? And for that same thing, Murphy's Law, they run their classes only one time a week for at the time when my son has a basket wall and. I don't want him to drop a basketball because I believe, he needs to have, one physical activity to grow his physical abilities.

So I didn't wanna, so that was out of question for him not to do basketball and just drama classes. And that brought me to the third option adoption, where their website was. Pretty good in explaining what the program was, which made me excited and interested. What they were missing was. Timing of the classes, which you would think is critical for this type of business because it's not like they're available all day long, five or [00:15:00] six days a week, like maybe a spout would be right when it's okay, we're open Monday to Saturday or Tuesday to Sunday.

Here are the hours, book an appointment. Classes are a specific time and date, not every day. Not, all day. So that's a critical information to have on their website, which they didn't also have the pricing, but that's, you can always ask that. So I reached out, I followed their call to action and a sent an email.

'cause the action was either call us, send us an email, I sent an email. There was three days of. No response. Not even an automated response saying, Hey, we received your email. Give us 24 to 48 hours to respond. Nothing. So as a consumer and customer, that does not give me a great feeling, especially if you're not replying within 24 hours, because then I wonder, okay, did my [00:16:00] email.

Get to the right person. Are you still open? Like, why are you not responding? And I my son was so excited to try and figure it out that he was asking me every day mom, did they respond? Did they respond? Do you know? And by day three he was like, oh, maybe they don't want me there.

And that's the last feeling you want. From your potential client oh, they don't want me there, right? So within those three days before they responded, I actually called. So like I waited 48 hours, no answer, no automated email. I picked one of the phone numbers that was on the website, called and left a message, no answer.

Another thing, right? So after four days. I received an email back telling me, okay, here is you can come and see us in this class. That happened to be at the exact same time, like my son's basketball again, Murphy's Law. [00:17:00] So I replied back saying, Hey, do you have any other classes still waiting for response from that email.

They did not call me back. I think they texted me back, but it was so vague and unprofessional that I thought it was his scam, so I didn't reply. So if you are asking your client to call you, if the client leaves you a message, call them back. Don't send them a text, and at least if you want to send them a text, be very specific.

Who is texting, why are you texting? They don't have your phone number and their contacts, and there's so much scam going on in the, email world and text con phone call work that you wanna be beyond suspicion. So if you can see that particular service provider did not really have it tight.

Process for after their website. The website was good. [00:18:00] It converted, meaning I did what it asked me to do. I followed the CTA and I was excited to inquire because the copy was good, but your client want convert. If then the process of them contacting you and you responding and you having that sales conversation, whatever your sales process looks like, is C cumbersome.

And the thing is, if I had more than three choices, I would've completely gone somewhere else within 48 hours. Or within three days, I would've gone somewhere else and explored, oh.

And then one last thing was. That I ended up calling the second number that was there and reaching their head office because it's a franchise, so they have multiple locations and then the head office wasn't helpful either. They weren't trying to help me as a customer saying, Hey, yeah, the this [00:19:00] class, if it doesn't work for you, we don't have anything.

But as we're expanding, so the location in my town is very new. As we're expanding, if we have any other classes, let me put you on the waiting list. Let me get you your contact information. We'll reach out to you, right? That's how you get the leads that maybe you cannot serve right now, but retain them at least, and show that you care.

None of it was done. I was more pitched to open another franchiser, find a franchiser for them, which was very weird. Let's just now see how it could work for you. How your social media presence and your website can convert. Just from the examples, how my clients find me that are not warm referrals through my other clients or strategic partners.

One of the very recent clients found my name with some online content and presence collaboration that I've done. Once they found my [00:20:00] name and there was a link to my website, they went and in their exploration, they checked out my podcast. They. Resonated with one specific episode, and from there, because they had contacted my website, my podcast very often has linked to my consultations.

They booked a consultation. When somebody books a consultation from me, they get immediate notification, of course on what it is, what to do, how to show up. They showed up. We had a conversation. Boom. They became my client, right?

Or another way, a client of mine discovered me. Was, I was recommended a few times in particular Facebook groups that I'm part of, and they didn't even ask for the recommendations, but as certain posts were asking for recommendation and my name was mentioned, that whatever drew their [00:21:00] attention in their exploration to me again, they checked my website, they.

Resonated with the content there. They followed the clear step, call to action, contacted me, contacted them right away, booked the consultation. We had a. Call and they convert it, right? So you can see how simple and easy it is for my potential client, to work with me. And even if people, let's say, don't book a consult, which is a streamline process, but they have a question and they send me an email.

My goal is to reply, if not the same day, within 24 hours. And let's say if I couldn't do it because I was getting so many emails that, it would hurt for me either. I would hire somebody to help me, or B, let's say if I am not ready for it yet, one, the easiest way to do it is set up an automatic [00:22:00] notification telling your potential client of the expectations, saying, Hey, Thank you for your request.

We got it. You'll hear back from us for 48 hours and that brings calm to your potential client because they know you care. You got the request, you're looking into it.

So to summarize your, it's worth it for you to be present on social media or. In other content type forums, but only where your client hangs out. And that's why it's important to know your ideal client and it's worth it to create content consistently does not have to be five times a day and on, but consistently enough.

So when your ideal client is in their exploration mode, you show up, they can resonate with you. They can [00:23:00] move in their evaluation, choose you as one of the options and how you convert your website or online traffic to paying clients is by showing them in your copy that you understand and get them having social proof that's current.

Meaning testimonials of the clients, showing that you are a reputable service provider and you help people and they get results, and then having a process that when they do contact you, when they do what you ask them to do, their journey from there on is smooth. They feel like being taken care of, that you care and you're there to help them.

I hope it was helpful and that the one LA Okay. The one last thing that I wanted to say is that what [00:24:00] sometimes stays in the law in what sometimes trips service providers up from that smooth experience is that they look at parts of their marketing in isolation. They silo it, they treat social media as a separate thing from the website, from the Google, or from the conversation with the client.

And that sometimes happens when you start going to. Experts in that one area. Okay. I have somebody helping me with the SEO and then I have somebody else helping me with, social media strategy and so on, and then I have somebody else to help me with sales. Nobody's looking at the holistic picture because when you silo it like that, everything is focused on you, the service provider on the business who wants clients.

But when you start looking holistically from the client perspective. You map out their journey with you, and that's the client should be the [00:25:00] center of your attention. And that's where you bring it together and you create an ecosystem, a journey for your clients that when they go, it's smooth, it's easy, and it's a pleasure for them to go through and you convert more of them that way.

So if you want help to look at your marketing online presence, your website, and how you convert, and how you get paying clients from the holistic perspective, from the perspective of your ideal clients, not in isolation and siloed, I can help. That's what I do. That's how I help my clients grow and scale without overwhelm.

Book a consultation with me and there will be a link of that in the show notes. Have a great week. Talk to you next week.