Playbooks

The questions owners actually ask.

How do I get more traffic. Why does my site get visitors and no leads. How do I turn a cold lead warm. Should my menu really be inside an iframe. 18 pages that answer one question each, with the number or the trade-off that makes the answer usable — and a source line on anything we did not measure ourselves.

These are about running a business, not about hiring us. If you want the four questions about working with Revio, those are in the guides.

Growth

Traffic, leads, conversion and measurement — the questions that come up no matter what you sell.

Traffic

How do I get more traffic to my website?

There are only four durable sources of website traffic: search, paid ads, referrals from places your customers already are, and an audience you own like email or SMS. Most small businesses get the order wrong — they start with social media, which is rented, and skip search and email, which compound. Turn on paid ads for immediate volume while you build search and an owned list underneath it.

Conversion

Why does my website get traffic but no leads?

A site with traffic and no leads almost always has one of six problems: the traffic has the wrong intent, the page hides the price, there is no obvious next step above the fold, the form asks for too much, there is no proof the business is real, or nobody replies fast enough to matter. Fix them in that order, because the first one makes every other fix look like it failed.

How do I turn website visitors into paying customers?

A visitor converts when five questions are answered in order: is this the right business for my problem, can they actually do it, what does it cost, why should I believe them, and what happens next. Most sites answer the second and skip the rest. Answer all five on the page a visitor actually lands on — not spread across five pages they will never click through.

AI search

How do I get my business mentioned by ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini?

An assistant can only name your business if it can read your pages without running JavaScript, if those pages answer questions directly rather than teasing an answer, and if the places it sources local results from — Google Business Profile, Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook and Reddit — agree about who you are. Nobody can guarantee you a position: ask Gemini the same question twice and it names the same top business only about 7% of the time. What you can buy is eligibility.

Owned platform

Should my business live on social media or on my own website?

Use social media for discovery and own everything after it. On a platform you rent reach, you cannot contact your own followers without paying, you cannot see who they are, and a policy change or a suspension can remove the business overnight. The working arrangement is simple: social earns attention, a site you control converts it, and an email or SMS list lets you reach those people again for free.

Paid ads

How much should a small business spend on ads?

Do not budget a percentage of revenue. Work backwards from one job: take what a closed customer is worth to you, multiply by the share of quotes you win, and that is the most you can pay for a lead. Multiply by your leads-per-month target and you have a ceiling. Then check it against the floor — a search campaign needs roughly 30 conversions a month before its bidding can learn anything, and under about $1,000 a month most local campaigns never get there.

Measurement

What should I track to know which marketing is actually working?

Track five things: where each lead came from, which page produced it, what share of leads become quotes, what share of quotes become jobs, and what a job is worth. Everything else is decoration. Most businesses cannot answer the first two, which is why their reports show traffic going up and revenue standing still.

Lead nurture

How do I turn cold leads into hot leads?

A cold lead is not an unconvinced buyer, it is a buyer whose timing is wrong. You cannot argue someone into readiness, so the job is to stay present at low cost until their situation changes, and to make it trivially easy to restart the conversation when it does. In practice that means a fast first reply, a short structured follow-up sequence, then a cheap long-term channel — and, before any of it, working the list of past customers you already have.

B2B

What actually works for B2B lead generation?

B2B lead generation works when the list is narrow, the first message is about the prospect rather than about you, and the follow-up survives a sales cycle measured in months. Volume is the wrong lever: two hundred well-chosen companies with a specific, observable reason to be contacted beat five thousand generic sends, because the only scarce resource is a reply worth having.

Social to sales

How do I turn Instagram DMs into booked jobs?

Answer the price question in the DM instead of deflecting it, then move the conversation to something you own before it goes quiet. The three things that lose DM sales are refusing to give a number, sending people to a link in bio instead of straight to a booking, and having no record of the conversation once it scrolls away. Fix those and the channel you already have starts closing.

By industry

The same questions answered against the constraints of one industry, where the generic advice stops working.

Dispensaries

Why is my dispensary website not bringing in customers?

Most dispensary websites cannot be found because their menu is inside an iframe, which means the products live on the menu vendor’s domain rather than yours — so your own inventory produces no searchable pages, no product photos in image results, and nothing for an AI assistant to quote. Add an age gate that blocks crawlers and a product catalogue with no photographs, and the site is invisible on the exact searches that convert best: a strain name plus a city.

How can a dispensary make money from its own website?

Brands already spend money on placement — they just spend it with the menu marketplaces and the platforms, because that is where the measurable audience sits. If your own site and app carry real traffic that you can measure, you can sell that placement yourself: featured slots, brand-day landing pages, email and SMS features, and in-store activations bundled with digital. The requirement is not sales skill, it is proof, and proof means analytics you actually control.

Home services

How do home service businesses get found online in 2026?

For contractors the order is fixed: Google Business Profile and reviews first, then a page for each service in each area you serve, then paid search on the emergency terms, then the question pages that get quoted by AI assistants. Maps drives the majority of local calls and costs nothing, so a business skipping it to buy ads is paying for traffic it could have had free.

Google Ads or Local Services Ads — which should a contractor run?

Run Local Services Ads first if your trade is eligible, because you pay per lead rather than per click and the ads sit above everything else on the page. Add Google Ads search underneath it for the jobs LSA does not categorise well and for the control it gives you over exact search terms. They are complementary rather than competing — LSA buys presence at the top, search buys precision.

Restaurants

Should my restaurant use DoorDash or its own ordering system?

Use the marketplaces for discovery and your own ordering for regulars. Marketplace commission typically runs 15–30% per order and the customer belongs to the platform — you get no name, no contact details and no ability to bring them back. Your own ordering costs payment processing plus a platform fee and keeps the relationship. The mistake is treating it as a choice: keep the marketplaces for strangers and make direct ordering the obvious option for anyone who has already eaten your food.

Automotive

How does an auto shop get more booked jobs from its website?

Auto shops lose bookings in three places: a quote form that cannot describe the actual vehicle, no prices anywhere on the site, and no follow-up on the declined work already sitting in the system. Fix the form so year, make, model and the symptom can be entered properly, publish ranges for your most common jobs, and contact every customer who declined recommended work — that last one usually fills more slots than any amount of new traffic.

Clinics & studios

How do clinics and wellness studios get new patients online?

Patients search their symptom, not your specialty — so the pages that bring in new patients are condition and symptom pages, not a services list. Pair those with online booking that shows genuine availability, reviews that name the practitioner and the condition treated, and a reactivation message to patients who stopped coming. That last group is the cheapest new business a practice has.

Apps

Does my business need an app, or just a website?

Build a website unless your customers come back often enough to justify a place on their home screen. An app earns its cost through repeat use and push notifications, so it makes sense for businesses with weekly or monthly customers — a coffee shop, a dispensary, a gym, a salon. For anything bought once every few years, an app is an expensive way to be uninstalled. If you are unsure, a progressive web app gives you most of the benefit at a fraction of the cost and no app store review.