She heard about your workshop from a friend. A few days later she is sitting at her desk, thinking it would be a fun thing to do with her team, and she types your name into Google.

‍

What she finds is a bit of a mess. A listing site. A page from three years ago. Maybe a competitor. Your own website is there somewhere, but it is not the obvious next click, and the booking button is four pages away.

‍

You did all the work to create that moment. Someone had a great time, told a friend, and that friend went looking for you. And then, right at the finish line, you were not there.

‍

This is the problem I see again and again with experience businesses. And the first part of the fix is simpler than most people think.

‍

Two kinds of marketing

A useful way to think about marketing is to split it into push and pull.

‍

Push is when you try to get in front of someone who was not looking for you. Ads on Instagram, a flyer in a cafe, a post in a local group. You are creating demand from nothing. It works, but it can be expensive and harder to crack, and most of the people you reach are not ready to book. Push will spend the budget you allocate.

‍

Pull is when you show up for someone who is already looking. They have a need, they search for it, and you are the answer. You are capturing demand that already exists.

‍

Meta is mostly push. Google and AI Search is mostly pull. Pull will spend budget based on demand (when someone pulls).

‍

‍

Here is the thing about experience businesses: people want to book with you every single day, and you did not spend a cent to make that happen. Every guest that leaves happy tells someone. Every group photo that gets posted. Every “where did you do that?” that ends with a name or a place. Most of those people end up on Google, typing your name, a misspelled version of your name, or something like “ceramics workshop Barcelona”.

‍

Pull marketing is simply being visible, at the top, when that search happens.

‍

The two kinds of searches

There are two kinds of searches worth showing up for, and they are very different.

‍

1. Searches for you. Your name, your name spelled wrong, “your name + booking”, “your name + gift card”. These people already want you. The only job is to get them to your website with the fewest possible clicks. Clicks are cheap, most of them book, and there is almost no way to lose money here.
2. Searches for what you do, where you are. “Ceramics workshop Barcelona”, “cooking class near me”. These people want the experience and they want it locally. They have not picked a place yet, and you are one of a handful of options. For most businesses this is the sweet spot: enough people searching to matter, few enough providers that clicks stay cheap and a good share of them book.

‍

The exception is if you are in a market where everybody is, like tours in Rome or Barcelona. There the competition is real and it needs a bit more care. But if you run a workshop, a class or a studio in a normal-sized city, the searches happening around you are yours to take.

‍

Start with your own name. Add your area the week after.

‍

Do I need to pay for this?

Yes. Google Ads requires some investment, but you can do some free things beforehand that will make the return on that investment even better:

‍

• A Google Business Profile that is claimed, up to date, has recent photos and links directly to your booking page, and a critical mass of reviews. For “searches for you” this is often the first thing people see.
• A website optimized for converting visitors into bookings. It needs to be easy to understand what you offer and to book it, with as few clicks as possible.

‍

Then the honest answer on ads: if you search your own name and your website is the first thing on the page with a clear path to booking, you can wait. If that is not the case, whether it is a listing site, a review page or a competitor sitting above you, a small campaign on your own name fixes it immediately. It also catches the misspellings and the “your name + giftcard” searches that organic results miss.

‍

For “searches for what you do”, ads are usually the only way to show up reliably. Ranking organically for “cooking class Copenhagen” takes years. Buying it takes an afternoon.

‍

What does it cost?

Two tiers, two budgets:

‍

• Ads on your own name: 100-200 EUR a month is usually plenty, and you will in most cases get a lot of revenue back on that. Clicks are cheap because nobody else should be bidding on your name, and most of them book.
• Ads on what you do: 150-500 EUR a month and up. This is where the real growth is, but it needs monitoring. Budgets, keywords and bids need adjusting as data comes in, otherwise you pay for clicks that never book.

‍

If you are not sure where to start: your own name this week, what you do next month. All of this can be automated directly from Understory, reach out if you want our help to set it up.

‍

The short version

People are already looking for you. Pull marketing is about not losing them. Search your own name today and look at what your next customer sees. If it is not you, you know what to do.