A homeowner opens the cabinet under the sink, sees what she sees, and shuts it fast. She is on Google within a minute. She taps the map, looks at three listings, and picks whichever one has recent photos, a decent rating, and looks like it answers the phone.
You have been treating houses on that street for eleven years. That counts for nothing on that screen. She is not comparing technicians. She is comparing three squares on a map, and yours has not been touched since the last time your nephew updated it.
So the busy season comes and you fill the truck off referrals and repeat customers, which is fine, and you never find out how many first-time calls went somewhere else. The quiet months arrive, you finally have an afternoon to sort out the marketing, and there is no money coming in to spend on it.
Then a competitor with worse chemistry and a newer van starts showing up first for every pest in your town, and you cannot point to the day it happened.