The phone book learned new tricks.

At The Cornucopia Shop in Aurora, Illinois, the merchandise is tea. The marketing problem was getting people to discover it. Dave and Katie Lasota opened their storefront in 2019 and later sought help extending its reach. In early 2023, American Marketing & Publishing began updating listings, adding imagery, and creating posts. Then came the less glamorous part: Dave kept asking customers for reviews.

Seven reviews and a shop full of tea

AMP’s account of the shop describes recommendation cards mailed out and review invitations sent after customer calls. Its account manager, Morgan Goslin, put the mechanism plainly:

“Dave takes what we say and applies it.”

Morgan Goslin, AMP account manager

According to that company-published case study, the shop moved from seven reviews to 170. In 2025, it recorded more than 75,000 Google views and over 1,400 website visits. Those are measures of attention, not a profit statement. Still, the detail that makes this story useful is wonderfully ordinary. Someone supplied tools. Someone else used them, repeatedly.

Keep the shop. Change the medium.

To understand AMP, start with the customer rather than the technology. Brothers Abe and Adam Andrzejewski founded the company in 1997, publishing community-specific HomePages directories. The early markets included Fox River Grove, Illinois, and Lowell, Indiana. The proposition was local: give independent businesses a way to reach people nearby.

The product list expanded. CloseBy text marketing arrived in 2011; OPTIMA, its online presence service, in 2014; interior tours in 2015. Social posting and video followed. Read in sequence, the history suggests an organization carrying its customer relationships into additional media. A printed listing, a Google profile, and a message about tonight’s special each answer a different moment in the same neighborhood transaction.

Today, AMP describes an audience of tens of thousands of independent businesses nationwide. Its categories include restaurants, retailers, automotive shops, professional practices, and civic organizations. The shared problem is easy to recognize: running the business leaves limited time to maintain its public face.

Someone has to keep the lights on

OPTIMA addresses the housekeeping that sits behind being found and trusted: business information across search destinations, reputation tools, merchant content, and website options. Its programs include different levels of service. For an owner, the practical benefit is having help with changes that otherwise accumulate on a mental to-do list: hours, photographs, descriptions, and feedback.

This puts AMP between several alternatives. An owner can manage profiles directly, buy separate marketing software, or hire a local agency. AMP’s proposition combines its own platforms with production and account support. Its distinction lies in that combination; the individual tasks are familiar. For an owner who wants assistance doing the work, the person attached to the program may matter as much as the interface.

Photography adds another kind of reassurance. Get Seen Virtually interior tours let prospective visitors look around a business through Google Search and Maps. AMP Video packages scripts, professional voiceover, licensed music, and imagery for distribution online. A shop’s atmosphere or a practice’s interior can become part of the decision before anyone arrives.

There is real coordination behind those pictures. AMP’s March 2026 photographer summit brought 29 photographers together remotely from 20 states, with training on equipment, spaces, and procedures. That is an operational detail worth noticing: a digital service can require people to travel to very physical places.

A price tag for the phone screen

CloseBy works later in the relationship, when a customer has opted in to receive messages. It gives a merchant a way to announce an offer, promote an event, or fill a quiet spell. Support includes coaching and promotional materials for building a subscriber list.

The published Premium price is $1,350 annually. A March 2026 Dodgeville city council packet lists the same price on a renewal order, an unusually tangible glimpse of the business model. Other packages have different allowances. Buyers need to confirm the current offer, included work, and contract term.

For evaluation, count incremental purchases and their margin. A well-timed message can produce redemptions while leaving little profit if the discount is too deep. An empty subscriber list also limits the product’s immediate usefulness. Permission, a relevant reason to write, and someone willing to run the program are part of the economics.

The broader package deserves the same practical reading. AMP’s terms generally set a twelve-month minimum unless otherwise specified. Website options include templates with fixed elements, and the terms describe publisher-owned domains with a conditional paid transfer route. Those details matter to an owner expecting extensive custom design or easy portability.

A useful buying conversation would start with the bottleneck. Is the business hard to find, hard to judge, or struggling to bring existing customers back? Those are different jobs. A listing service, an interior tour, and a text campaign should earn their place against the problem the merchant actually has.

For the tea shop, the revealing detail is the owner’s participation. Outsourcing the maintenance did not remove his relationship with customers. It gave that relationship a more regular public expression. The case is a reason to examine the process carefully, rather than assume that another shop will reproduce the same numbers.

The next call still matters

The current company remains ambitious. In June 2026, CEO Abe Andrzejewski reported record digital sales volume for January through April and described discussions about doubling AMP over four years. That is a plan. In October, AMP promoted longtime employee Janelle Hannon to lead inside sales new business development, tracing her career from print selling into digital products and management.

The lesson a reader can copy is smaller than that growth ambition. Keep business information current. Give customers an honest look inside. Ask for feedback while the visit is still fresh. Measure what follows. Whether an owner hires AMP or handles those tasks personally, the useful unit of marketing is often a modest action completed on time.