Understanding your business's online presence

If you've been running a business, you've probably felt that you should be more intentional about your online presence. Perhaps you've noticed competitors appearing online, had customers look for you on the internet, or simply sensed that your business is missing opportunities because people can't easily find or understand it there.

But that feeling leaves out a more fundamental question:

What does your business actually need the internet to do?

The answer isn't necessarily the same for every business.

As we started talking to business owners, we understood this even more clearly.

Ethan had just started out, knew that the internet was important, and already had a presence on social media. He wanted to develop further digital assets, but wasn't sure why or how each one could help, or whether his business needed them right now.

Michael, on the other hand, already has an established catering business based almost entirely on referrals. When we suggested a website to him, his reaction was: “Yeah, I know I should probably do it, but the business is already doing well.” He was not sure what an online asset could add to his business.

Henry runs a car detailing studio and has spent a year consistently posting videos of his work on Instagram. He gained followers and built an audience, but that attention didn't translate into the local customer acquisition he was looking for; much of his audience was global rather than local. Later, we got his business onto Google Maps and began showcasing some of his work there. He then started getting a new customer every other day through Google.

An example from our own business: Ad-Ascent began as a Google Ads management agency. As we spoke with business owners, we encountered a deeper problem: people might reply or enquire, yet still hesitate to trust us. We realised that trust was part of the customer's decision. So we asked what information, evidence, experience, and environment people needed in order to evaluate us. That was when we began focusing on developing the appropriate online assets.

All four are dealing with the internet, but they're not dealing with the same problem.

That's important because it shows that there isn't a standard set of online assets that every business should build.

To understand what might make sense for your business, we first need to understand what it means for a business to have an online presence in the first place.

The internet is a medium through which people can discover businesses, exchange information with them, evaluate them, communicate with them, transact with them, and continue relationships with them.

A business's online presence isn't simply a website, a Facebook account, or a Google listing. It is the way the business exists and can be encountered on the internet through the information and representations associated with it. Some of it is created and managed by the business, and some of it isn't.

A business might have a website that it controls, a Google Business Profile that it manages, reviews written by customers, and articles or directory listings created by other people.

All of these can affect how someone encounters and understands the business online.

This means something slightly counterintuitive:

A business doesn't decide whether it has an online presence.

It decides how deliberately it participates in and manages that presence.

And once you take all of that into account, it's clear that an online presence isn't itself a problem to solve, but rather a situation to understand.

A business can have very little online presence and be doing perfectly well. It can have a large and active online presence and still struggle to find the right customers, explain what it does, earn trust, or turn attention into business.

The useful work begins when we ask what is actually happening between the business and the people it wants to serve.

To answer that, we first need to look at how people encounter businesses online.

People don't experience the internet as one place

When we say that someone can encounter your business on the internet, that can mean many different things.

They might search for a service on Google. They might look for a business nearby on Maps. They might see one of your videos while browsing Instagram or YouTube. They might come across your business through a directory, a review, a recommendation, a marketplace, an article written by someone else, or while chatting with an AI assistant.

They are all encountering the same business, but not necessarily in the same context.

This is an important distinction because different parts of the internet make different kinds of encounters possible.

A search engine can help someone find information when they are actively looking for it. A map can help someone discover businesses in a particular place. A social platform can put a business in front of someone who wasn't necessarily looking for it at that moment. A website can give someone a place to learn about the business in more depth. An AI assistant can give someone another way to explore information, compare options, ask questions, and discover businesses.

These aren't simply different places for the same information.

They are different environments, with different ways of discovering, consuming, evaluating, and acting on information.

And that means the question is:

“What kinds of encounters are possible in different online environments, and what role could they play in the relationship between a business and its customers?”

Once we start thinking this way, online assets become easier to understand.

A website, Google Business Profile, Instagram account, YouTube channel, marketplace listing, or other online asset doesn't have much meaning on its own. Its value depends on the role it can play in the relationship between your business and its customers.

That relationship can begin in very different ways.

Someone may already know they need what you offer and simply be trying to find a provider. Someone else may know they have a problem but not yet know what solution exists. Someone may already be considering your business and need enough information to decide whether to trust you. And someone else may not be looking for anything at all, but could become interested after encountering something you share.

And to understand which encounters matter, we first need to look more closely at what is actually happening between the business and its customers.

Relationship between the business and its customers

When someone encounters or interacts with a business online, there is usually something they are trying to accomplish.

They might be trying to understand a problem, find a solution, compare their options, decide whether a business is right for them, contact someone, make a purchase, or learn what a business is about or simply locate it.

And the business has things it wants to accomplish too.

It may want to become known to people who could benefit from its services. It may want to explain what it does, demonstrate the quality of its work, answer questions, make it easy for someone to enquire, complete a transaction, or stay connected with an existing customer.

This brings us back to our central idea: the value of an online presence comes from the role it plays in the relationship between the business and the people it serves and wants to serve.

A website, an Instagram account, or a Google Business Profile only matters as long as it helps the business and its customers move forward.

Consider what can happen between the moment someone first becomes aware of a business and the moment they become a customer.

They might first discover that the business exists.

Then they may try to understand what it does and whether it is relevant to them.

If it seems relevant, they may evaluate it against other options. They may look at its work, expertise, reputation, pricing, approach, or what previous customers have said.

They may then decide whether they trust the business enough to make contact.

After that, the relationship doesn't necessarily end with a purchase. The business still has to deliver the service, communicate with the customer, support them when necessary, and perhaps earn another purchase or a recommendation.

Not every business needs the internet to play a role in every one of these stages.

A business that already receives most of its customers through personal referrals may not need to invest heavily in online discovery. It may benefit more from making it easier for referred customers to understand the business and decide whether it is a good fit.

Another business may have plenty of people who know it exists but struggle to turn that awareness into enquiries. Its opportunity may be somewhere else.

And a new business may have the opposite problem: very few people know it exists in the first place. Its opportunity lies in getting discovered.

What matters depends on what the business is trying to accomplish and what is already working in the relationship. And if people can encounter a business at different points in that relationship, we need to understand where they are starting from.

The right infrastructure depends on the business

Take Michael's catering business.

He already has a functioning business and receives most of his customers through referrals and repeat customers. If his existing customers are happy and the business has enough work, creating more awareness may not be his most important problem.

A website could still be useful. It might help someone who has been referred to him understand his services, see examples of his work, learn about the kind of events he handles, and decide whether to get in touch.

But that is a different reason for having a website from a new business that nobody knows exists. The difference is the business situation.

The same applies to customers. You need to understand not only who they are, but how they make decisions.

Where do they discover businesses like yours? What questions do they have? What information do they need before they will consider you? What makes them trust one business over another? What makes them take action?

Sometimes the opportunity is obvious.

A business might be easy to find, but people don't understand what makes it relevant to them.

Sometimes people understand the offering but don't have enough evidence to feel comfortable choosing it.

And sometimes the business has already solved most of these problems, and the opportunity lies somewhere else entirely.

This is why the customer's experience matters as much as the business's objective.

You can think about the problem as a series of questions.

First, what does the business want to achieve?

Then, what are customers currently experiencing, and where are they encountering difficulty?

Next, what information or experience would help customers move forward?

Only after answering those questions should you decide which online environment would be most useful, and what infrastructure needs to be built within it.

The business objective tells you what you want to achieve. The customer's situation helps you understand where the difficulty lies. And the gap between them helps determine what online environment and infrastructure could be useful.

Suppose a local service business wants more enquiries from people in its area.

We shouldn't jump straight from that goal to “build a website” or “run Google Ads.”

First we would ask what is happening today.

Are enough local people aware that the business exists? Are they already searching for the service? Can they find the business when they search? When they encounter it, do they understand what it offers and whether it is right for them? If they do understand it, do they have enough reason to trust it? And once they're ready, is it easy to contact the business?

The answers tell us where the actual gap is.

Only then does it make sense to decide what infrastructure could address it.

That infrastructure might be a better Google presence, a website, useful content, a social presence, improved reviews, a booking system, better enquiry handling, or some combination of these.

It might even be that the business doesn't need to build anything new yet.

Perhaps an existing asset is poorly used. Perhaps the real constraint is not discovery but the business's capacity to respond to enquiries. Perhaps the business has enough customers already and should focus on serving and retaining them better.

The point is to build enough of the right infrastructure to accomplish what the business actually needs from the internet.

And even once you know what could help, you still have another decision to make:

What should you do first?

Four businesses, four different problems

We can now return to the four businesses we met at the beginning.

Ethan started with the question, “What should I build?”

But his business was still taking shape. His first step was understanding what he wanted the internet to accomplish and how his customers might find and choose him.

Michael's situation was different.

His catering business already had enough work. His question was whether a website could add something valuable to the relationships he was already building. If it could help referred customers understand, evaluate, and choose his business, it might make sense. If not, there was no reason to build one simply because businesses are “supposed” to have websites.

Henry had already invested heavily in his digital presence but built an audience outside the market he serves. When his business became easier to discover in a context where local customers were actually looking for a car detailing service, the same work had a different opportunity to contribute to the business.

And then there was our own experience with Ad-Ascent. Our problem wasn't only visibility. It was also understanding what needed to happen after someone found us.

These are four different situations.

Therefore if you're thinking about your own business, you don't have to begin by asking whether you need a website, whether you should be on Instagram, or whether you need to invest in SEO or advertising.

Those may eventually be the right decisions.

But they are decisions that make more sense once you've understood a few things:

What am I trying to accomplish?

What is happening between my business and its customers today?

Where could the internet improve that relationship?

What do my customers need to know or experience?

Where could that happen most effectively?

What infrastructure would make it possible?

And finally:

What should I do first?

You may discover that you need a website that helps people understand and trust your business, or that your Google presence deserves more attention.

You may find that social media is genuinely valuable for your business.

You may realise that you don't need another asset at all, you need to make better use of what you already have.

Or you may discover that the most important thing to do first has nothing to do with building an asset. You may need to clarify your offering, understand your customers better, improve how you handle enquiries, or simply decide what you want the business to accomplish.

The point of understanding your online presence is not to end up with more things online.

It is to understand how your business exists on the internet, how people encounter it, and where the internet can meaningfully contribute to the relationship between your business and the people you want to serve.

Once you can see that clearly, deciding what to build becomes a much smaller problem.