It’s more important than ever to make your local business stand out. Here are some simple tips that will help you achieve quick victories.
All businesses want to benefit from greater online visibility, especially on Google.
How do I get known to the right people in local search listings and Map Pack?
Optimizing your Google Business Profile (GBP) listing puts your local business in the best position to be found and convert motivated searchers into paying customers.
Here are some tips that will allow you to achieve quick victories without breaking the bank.
1. Encourage feedback:
Reviews are one of the best ways to increase your GBP. They cost nothing but go a long way in raising the profile of your company among organic researchers.
Think about how you could review a large selection of local general contractors if you’ve never employed one before.
You have no idea how accurate the claims made on a contractor’s website are, as you don’t have third-party confirmation in areas such as costs and quality of work.
In this case, what you need are reviews from GBP to get you up in local searches.
People looking for entrepreneurs in their area will be more likely to trust your business if they see that you have 10 or 15 reviews in the four- to five-star category.
But these notices will not appear overnight.
You often have to do a little prospecting with happy customers to entice them to leave reviews.
You can do this via email, postcard, or simply by verbally asking them to rate their experience with you.
Another option is to take advantage of review management platforms such as BirdEye, ReviewPush, and Pozative. These programs allow you to:
- Organize your customers’ reviews.
- Send review requests via SMS.
- Respond to new Google reviews directly from email alerts.
No matter how you do it, your requests for reviews should encourage customers to be honest and detailed in their analyses.
Ask them to provide original photos of the work you did for them or a product you sold them.
Photos are ideal for further increasing your company’s visibility.
2. Avoid spamming tactics:
Google is certainly smart enough today to know when someone is trying to trick the system, such as automating content, creating landing pages, and stuffing with keywords.
The same idea applies to GBP.
This is Google’s tool, so why would the largest and most robust search engine out there let you get away with spammy tactics, like paying people to leave positive reviews?
Potential customers will trust real and honest reviews.
Google and the review sites I mentioned do it too. They know that you paid a dubious website to provide a fake five-star review of your business.
In fact, review sites are able to detect fraudulent reviews and will flag your site as dishonest.
The flag will result in a popup that users will see when they land on one of your pages, warning them not to trust your site.
The same concept applies to offering incentives, such as future discounts, for people to leave positive reviews on pounds sterling. In this case, it could simply backfire on your online reputation.
If people mention incentive in their review, potential customers might think their praise is wrong.
At the same time, trying to bribe people to get positive reviews is like glossing over the potential facts of a situation.
Even if people have had negative experiences with your business, they won’t say so in their comments.
It is therefore more likely that future customers will be “fooled” and end up having a bad time when they expected better.
3. Respond to negative reviews:
Instead of working harder than necessary engaging in these kinds of tactics, I simply advise you to anticipate negative GBP reviews before they happen or respond diligently to bad reviews that do come in.
In the first case, you will obviously have to rack your brain and make sure that all aspects of your business run smoothly.
Listen to your customers at all times, and if something goes wrong, be understanding, fix the problem right away, and make sure customers leave happy.
When negative reviews appear online, apologize to those customers and show empathy. This shows the general public that you care about your customers, even after they leave your establishment.
4. Take advantage of GBP tools:
My final recommendation to boost your GBP is to take advantage of the tools Google has for its e-commerce tool.
One such feature is the Google Marketing Kit, which allows you to create free stickers, posters, and social media posts to announce your company’s promotions and events.
Social posts, in particular, should be a huge asset to your online presence.
You can create cool posters of your positive reviews, with excerpts from the text, and then share them on your social media platforms.
GBP also allows users to follow your business’ local profile as they would on a social network such as Facebook or Instagram. Followers would then have access to your business:
- New social posts.
- Offers.
- Blog posts.
- Events.
- Product Updates.
All of these contribute to increasing brand awareness among your followers.
Finally, Google Posts allows you to announce new coupons, offers, and events in a creative way. You can even use images, videos, and call-to-action buttons to drive user engagement.
Google Posts is a great method of advertising in GBP because its analytics feature allows you to see how users have reacted to what you’ve posted. You can use the data you discover to design even better messages next time.
Also check out Google’s Local Favorites program. It awards digital and physical badges to the top 5% of local businesses in each category.
Conclusion:
Google wants you to optimize your company’s local profile. He wants to create that healthy competition that exists between local businesses.
Today, almost everything Google does is in the name of user experience.
Who can position themselves as the best seller of any good or service the user needs?
Your answer should be yourself. You can only achieve this if you have an excellent GBP that allows all relevant users to come directly to you.