How to Prospect, Audit, and Map Service Area Businesses

Understanding Service Area Business Support

Service Area Businesses (SABs) are local companies that serve customers at their locations or across a defined region, rather than operating from a public storefront. Examples include plumbers, electricians, consultants, and landscapers. Your CRM's Prospecting tool now fully supports these businesses, allowing you to find, audit, and analyze them just like traditional storefront locations.

Key Benefits

This support makes prospecting more effective for agencies and teams working with real-world local service markets.

• Broader Search Results: Discover service-based businesses that were previously difficult to find in prospecting searches.
• Accurate Audit Scoring: Marketing Audit Reports adjust their evaluation criteria so SABs are not penalized for lacking a public address.
• Complete Workflow: You can search for, add, audit, and generate Local SEO Heatmaps for SABs within the same prospecting tool.
• Better Market Fit: Prospect more relevant business types for local service industries.

Searching for Service Area Businesses

Finding SABs is integrated into the standard prospecting workflow. There is no separate search mode required.

1. Navigate to the Prospecting tool in your CRM.
2. Enter your search terms, such as a business category and a city or region.
3. Review the results. Service Area Businesses that match your criteria will appear alongside other local business listings.
4. You can identify them by the lack of a public street address in their listing details.

Adding and Auditing a Service Area Business

Once you find a promising SAB, you can add it as a prospect and run a full marketing audit.

1. From the search results, select the Service Area Business you wish to evaluate.
2. Add the business as a prospect to your list.
3. With the prospect added, generate a Marketing Audit Report for it.
4. Review the report to assess the business's digital presence, online listings, reputation, SEO, and website. The audit logic automatically accounts for the service-area business model.

Understanding Google Business Profile Scoring for SABs

The Marketing Audit Report tailors its evaluation for Service Area Businesses. A key difference is in how it handles the business address field.

• The Business Address field will be marked as Not applicable (service-based business).
• Instead of showing a passing or failing indicator (green or red), the report displays a neutral status for this field.
• Overall scores are calculated based on the relevant criteria for this business type, ensuring a fair and accurate assessment.

Generating Local SEO Heatmaps

You can now create Local SEO Heatmaps for Service Area Businesses to visualize their search visibility across their service region.

1. Open the details for the Service Area Business prospect in your CRM.
2. Initiate the Local SEO Heatmap workflow.
3. Configure the heatmap settings, such as the geographic area and search terms, based on the prospect's service territory.
4. Generate and analyze the heatmap to understand competitive density and opportunity areas within their market.

This feature provides a powerful visual tool for evaluating the local search landscape for businesses that compete across neighborhoods rather than from a single location.