Your Google Profile is Important
If making money for your local business was a room, then Google is the 500 pound gorilla. If you ignore it. It could be dangerous, but if you make it your friend, it could be very useful.
And the key to that for your business. Is your Google business profile. That's what we're going to cover today. If you already have a Google business profile, you can skip the first section. And jump right to how to maximize the money you make from it. Let's jump in.
Setting Your Google Business Profile
One thing before we get started to actually set up your business profile, this is a very important step. You want to make sure you have a unique email address. Just for your Google business profile or at the very least use an email address that you've set aside just for administrative purposes. I do not. And I repeat, do not use your personal email address when you're setting up your Google business profile.
Now when you're ready. Go to google.com/business. Now when it gets started. It's going to ask you to go ahead and enter your business name. What Google is trying to do is determine if the profile has already been made for your business. If it has follow the steps to claim your current profile. If there isn't one, then you make a new profile. I'm not going to go step-by-step with all the buttons to click, it's really straightforward. And it changes quite often. Just follow the steps.
Verifying Your Business with Google
Near the end. You'll have the option to prove that you're a real business and this is a key, right? It's like Pinocchio. I'm a real boy. Google wants to make sure that before they give you their stamp of approval that you're legit. Now there are four ways this goes down and I'm going to really emphasize a fourth one. You will not get these four options necessarily. You will get the options that Google decides to give you. But these are the four potential options. One, they're going to send you a postcard. You punch in the code. The second one is you call a number and there's some sort of phone verification, same thing with email. The fourth one, which is I'm seeing more often. And I find it very interesting is they want you to shoot a video, proving that you have access to this building and that you are a legit business, right? So they're going to have you like walk up to the door while recording the video with your phone, unlock the door, walk in show some sort of proof that you have a business license. And then you click submit. Now note when you're doing this, this is not something that you work can record and then upload, you have to click the button and record immediately because they do not want you tampering with the video before you upload it to them.
After that you wait. I know it's not fun. But that's part of the process. Finally you get your profile and I seem, I know this seems very straightforward, but that's just the way it is. The one thing I want to note is you may have to check yourself. I have one instance where the profile got approved, but they received no like notification. So make sure to check yourself every couple of days to see if your profile is up and running.
Optimizing Your Profile
You can sometime do this before your profile is approved but whether before or after its approval, ,You need to make sure your profile is fully optimized. Here are the key thing:
- Make sure your business hours are set up
- Make sure you've attached your social media links
- Please add photos. Nothing's going to improve your business profile faster than adding good photos of about your business.
- Ensure that messaging is turned ON (messaging is your friend for potential customer under 40)
- Fill out your business description (Note: I've noticed that recently Google is auto creating these descriptions and you can't mess with those, but if you have the option, make sure to do that)
Getting More Business (and thus Money) from Your Google Business Profile
Now that you've gone through the process of setting up your profile. How do we make money from it?
Capture Calls with Missed Call Text Back
The first way is to have a way to capture those calls. There are different ways to do this. Obviously, having someone in your office or you yourself answering the phone is critical, but you have issues with people calling them after hours. You have. Issues with maybe someone doesn't grab the phone in time. There were a lot of systems for this. I would search for something called miss, called text back and see if you can get that for your business or you can reach out to me. I'd be happy to help with that. The key is that if someone calls you this system automatically sends them or a response until you yourself could get back to them. Keep those calls warm and fresh.
Have a Review Generation Machine
The second thing is to have a review generation machine. Getting business is great, but if you want to keep getting business from Google, you need social proof and the best social proof you're going to get is reviews on Google itself. Now there's lots of ways to go about this. I highly recommending getting an automated system with follow-up that will send messages to your customers. Asking them for reviews.
Jump into Google Ads
The next thing you need to realize is that to maximize how much money you make from Google. You're going to have to play Google's game and give them money. I know this might not be what you want to hear. Your Google business profile is still the first and foremost way to get leads, but eventually once you get your business to a certain place, you're going to want to spend money with Google.
There are two major ways to do this. The first is the Google local services. I am shocked at how many businesses don't know about this. If you haven't heard about this as your first time, you need to check it out. Google local services is only for certain industries, but for the industries that it's for. It's fantastic. You pay for actual calls, not just generic leads on your website. It's a great program. Check it out. The second thing is what everyone knows a standard Google ads. This is the ads that you normally see all around Google. Even if you have Google local services set up, it's still useful to allot part of your money to standard Google ads, because what that's going to let you do is to maximize the amount of exposure you have on the top of that first page of Google. So when someone hits. Your keyword, right? So your type of business near me. You'll be there in the map. You'll be there in the Google service and you'll be there in the standard ad and it's boom, boom, boom. And this person will think, wow, this business is legit. They're all over the first page of Google.
Upgrade Your Website
Finally. You need to make sure that your website is up to par for Google. Google doesn't like bad websites and Google doesn't want to give love to bad websites. So it's in your best interest to make sure your website is super fast and mobile friendly. If there are two things that have the greatest impact on your ability to please Google is to its speed and mobile friendliness for smartphones. For many businesses, 90 to 98% of the traffic they receive is on smartphones.
If your website is not the par, Google will not give you as much love. And look, even if you're busy right now, remember slow seasons com and Google is a key way for people to find you. You need to respect that 500 pound gorilla. Give it the respect. It deserves. And we'll help you grow your business. In the meantime, if you need help with any of this hit the link below, I actually have a checklist to maximize your Google business profile and your Google local services and click that link to find out more. In the meantime, stop wasting money on broken marketing.