Will anyone actually see a business's listing on a local media directory?

It's a common objection when a business looks at a listing on one of my local directories. The site looks cool, I get that you have subscribers, but will people actually go to my page?

Here's how I answer it, and how I coach salespeople to answer it.

Who actually sees the listing?

Newsletter readers, first. We push people to business pages through the newsletters. In some ways that makes us better than Yelp, because Yelp doesn't have a newsletter anybody reads. We get in front of 20,000 to 40,000 local people directly in their inbox.

When a newsletter mentions a restaurant or a business, we link to its page on our directory, not straight to the business's own site. That keeps building the directory's authority.

Will it get as much traffic as Yelp?

No. And that's not the goal. We're optimizing the business's profile to be cited by AI.

When somebody asks ChatGPT who the best roofer in town is, it reads sites like ours because they're well optimized. A listing increases the business's chances of being the one named.

Why would AI trust a local media site?

This is a belief based on what I'm seeing, not a proven result.

"I am a big believer with what I'm seeing, that over time, local media brands are going to be treated the same way by AI that they've been treating Reddit for the last two years"

The best shot at being named as the best plumber in town is a good homepage of your own plus citations on local media brands. That's why the directory is built for AI first.

What makes a listing worth citing?

Custom content. An AI review of my own directory told me the next big lift was custom content, because the pages were all scraped. LLMs want unique answers to real questions, not hours and a list of services:

• What are the five biggest questions people have about your service?
• What do people misunderstand about roofing in your town?

The way I get that is a free interview. The owner answers questions in a text interview built in greetform, and it posts to their page automatically. AI can't interview a business owner unless someone like a local media operator facilitates it. Before I'd promoted the form at all, eight owners had found it through Google and filled it out.

Is $50 a month worth the risk?

"It's like, what is the risk? If these guys pull off what they're saying, you're going to make a hundred x your money. If they're wrong, you lost 50 bucks a month."

It reminds me of SEO in 2004. Local businesses that optimized early probably did well for the next 20 years. Few owners understand AI citations yet. Nobody controls what a model recommends, so I don't promise placement. More on the build in how to build a directory AI will cite.