See our Google My Business Optimisation & Management packages.

How quickly can your potential customers find the information they need?

When people are searching for services like yours, time is of the essence. Relying on potential customers trawling your website or finding you on social media to get the information they need can lose you sales.

Placing your essential information directly in search results

Google has a tool to help fix this problem. It’s called Google My Business and it effectively provides customers with a mini information hub about your business, directly in search.

You’ll have already come across Google My Business listings whilst searching – they’re the results that appear with a map when you search for ‘restaurants in Nottingham’, for example.

Google My Business listings appear in the following places on search results:

What are the benefits of a Google My Business profile?

Having the information customers need presented instantly in the search results can help by:

• Reducing customer frustration. Your contact details, opening hours and other vital information is all available straight away, without prospects having to hunt for it. Potential customers can phone you with the click of a button, get directions to your location and get up-to-date information about whether you’re open on an upcoming bank holiday – all easily and quickly.
• Lowering the barrier to conversion. The quicker and easier a potential customer can get the information they need – and the less steps required in that process – the higher your conversion rate from leads to customers is likely to be. At every step that someone needs to take to become a customer – even tiny steps like clicking a link – there’s the potential to lose them. Particularly with urgent services, such as plumbers and locksmiths, the conversion journey is likely to be short and quick. If a customer can find your listing, see some good reviews and phone you quickly – all from one place – the chances of a conversion are increased.
• Presenting a professional image. With more and more of our interactions with brands moving online, what appears for your business through search results may be the first impression a potential customer has of your brand. A claimed, completed and maintained listing helps to show your business in a positive light – giving an impression of credibility and reliability that your business is active and in control of its online presence.
• Developing trust. Customer trust and business transparency are rightly becoming more and more important in marketing. Google My Business listings offer an unbiased, third party place for customers to review their experience with your business – good or bad. A claimed profile also gives you the opportunity to respond as the owner of the business. How (and whether) you reply to both positive and negative reviews can be very telling about your business’ personality and approachability.

Sounds good? Take a look at our Google My Business Optimisation & Management packages.

Google might already be representing your business- without your control

There’s an interesting feature of Google My Business, in that rather than listings only appearing when business owners set them up, many have been generated automatically – using information available on websites, social media profiles and online directories.

If your business has been online in any of these places for a while, it’s likely you’ve already got an automatically generated listing. You can check this by searching for your business name on Google or Google Maps and looking for a profile.

Whether or not you want the benefits of an optimised profile, at the absolute least you should ensure that you’ve claimed your business listing. This is free and easy to do – simply click ‘Own this business?’ on the listing and follow the steps to verify yourself as the owner.

The risk of leaving your business ‘unclaimed’

An unclaimed or unverified business listing gives you no access to edit any incorrect information about your business. The ramifications of this can range from innocent (but potentially costly) delays in having the correct contact information – such as updating your phone number but having to wait for Google to recognise the new one from your website – through to bigger issues such as malicious edits to your information by spammers or unscrupulous competitors. This can include people altering the web address, contact information – or even business name – in an attempt to cause chaos or send business elsewhere.

There’s no way to stop people suggesting edits to Google – but with a claimed and monitored profile, these suggestions can be seen and changed back if necessary to ensure your customers always get the right information.

How to engage customers with an optimised listing:

Beyond the basics of accurate opening hours, contact information and a website link, there are a whole variety of ways you can optimise your listing to drive engagement and sales conversions.

A claimed Google My Business listing allows you to:

• Add a description – which is effectively a short statement about your business to say what you do and why you’re different.
• Upload photos and short videos – which not only highlight the personality of your business, but are great for capturing the attention of people viewing your listing.
• Answer Q&As – which can be submitted by people viewing your profile. You can optimise it by submitting and answering FAQs from your customers.
• Include a booking calendar – great for businesses such as restaurants, beauty salons and consultants – allowing customers to immediately make a booking or reservation with your business.
• Add links to menus and delivery websites – of particular use to restaurant owners.
• Publish temporary hours for upcoming holidays
• Add a COVID-19 statement – to let customers know of any changes and updates during the pandemic
• List products and services  – highlighting what you provide as a business.

Ongoing management of your listing

A listing shouldn’t just be claimed, optimised and then left alone – ongoing management includes:

• creating posts – quite like social media posts – which appear prominently on your profile for 7 days. These can be used to communicate news, offers and updates with your customers.
• monitoring any changes other users have suggested, to ensure inaccurate information doesn’t make its way onto your profile.
• responding to reviews – good or bad! – and encouraging customers to post reviews.
• answering new questions from customers.
• ongoing photo and video uploads to keep your listing up to date.

How we can help:

At HeyYou! Digital, we offer Google My Business Optimisation and Management services for small businesses like yours – ensuring your business presents a professional, accurate and engaging listing on Google search results.

Find out how we can help you boost your online presence with our starter, standard and advanced packages.

Not quite the right fit? We also offer custom marketing solutions to meet your business’ individual needs and budget. So if you want to mix and match elements of different packages, swap in some training for your in-house team or run Google My Business optimisations alongside other digital marketing support, call us for a chat and we’ll put together a perfect-fit solution for your business.