Seven hours. According to Google's research, that's roughly how long someone spends getting to know a business before they spend serious money with it.
Think about the last time you were about to spend serious money on something: a service, a supplier, someone you'd been referred to. What did you actually do before you picked up the phone or filled in the form?
You probably Googled them. But I'd bet you also looked them up on LinkedIn, watched a video or two on YouTube, or asked Claude or ChatGPT what to know before hiring someone like that. Maybe you checked whether a friend in a WhatsApp group had heard of them. That's what people do now. And while you were doing all that research on someone else, your customers were doing exactly the same to you.
One place used to be enough
For twenty years, getting found online meant Google. You hired someone to fiddle with your website, you climbed the rankings and the enquiries came in. Simple enough.
Then your customers started searching everywhere. YouTube, LinkedIn, AI tools like Claude, Gemini or ChatGPT, people they trust in private groups. They look for evidence that you know what you're talking about, in four or five places, before they make up their minds. If you only show up in one of them, everyone searching in the others can't see you. That's most of your market.
Seven hours, eleven interactions, four locations
A while back Google published research on what it called the Zero Moment of Truth. It's the moment someone thinks "I'm interested in this, let me find out more." They haven't decided to buy, or who from. They've just pulled out their phone and started asking questions.
The pattern that came out of that work for big buying decisions goes like this. Around seven hours of engagement before someone is ready to spend money, added up over time: reading, watching, listening, asking around. Around eleven interactions before most people start paying proper attention. And four different places where they come across you.
So how easily could someone find seven hours of content about your business right now? If I can find answers to my questions about you quickly, and nothing about your competitor, who am I going to trust?
The eleven makes sense if you think about how many times you've scrolled past the same person on LinkedIn before you stopped and read what they were saying. The brain needs repetition before it builds familiarity, and familiarity before it builds trust. Eleven touch points isn't a lot to ask. You just have to show up often enough to collect them.
The four will vary depending on who your customer is. Your LinkedIn, your website, YouTube, a podcast, a newsletter, a recommendation from someone they already trust. Either way, most people need to come across you in more than one place before they'll spend money with you.
Where are your customers searching?
"How do I rank on Google?" is a fine question. It's just too small now. The bigger one is where your customers are searching, and whether you're there.
Are you on YouTube? It's often called the second largest search engine in the world, and people go there to learn about things before they buy them. Are you showing up when someone asks an AI tool about your industry? Those tools draw on what's published. Write useful stuff and you're feeding them. Stay quiet and they'll quote someone else.
And on LinkedIn, are you there often enough that by the time someone needs what you offer, they already link your name with it? Turning up when you remember won't do that.
Please don't try to be everywhere. That's a recipe for exhaustion and mediocrity. Pick the four places that matter most to your customer, and give them enough substance there to add up to seven hours of trust.
Because being findable is only half the job. What people find when they get there is the other half. Does it answer their real questions? Does it show you understand their situation? That's what turns curiosity into a conversation.
Your customers are already out there searching. Right now, some of them are looking you up.
