How to optimize google my business for your agency clients

There are quite a few benefits to offering a Google My Business optimization service in your agency. Here are just a few.

It can be a productized service

A big benefit of offering a GMB listing or optimization service is that it can be systemized, meaning you can offer it as a productized service. Specifically, the GMB service offering can be:

• Easy to execute. It only takes an hour or two to create and optimize a listing for a business.
• Repeatable. Once you’ve created and optimized a listing for one type of company, you can use this same procedure to create listings for other similar companies.
• Scalable. You can create a checklist and system once and then delegate it to others on your team to do the actual work, which makes this service scalable.

Here’s the next benefit…

Delivers value quickly

Offering GMB optimization services lets you deliver value extremely fast. Since it only takes a couple hours for your team to create these listings, your clients will be able to see their listing almost immediately. And, depending on their business and their location, they’ll be able to see actual results fairly quickly too in terms of phone calls, website visits, and foot traffic.

The end result is that your clients receive a high return on their investment, which builds trust quickly. This leads to satisfied clients who will be happy to do business with you again.

Which brings us to the next point…

Great foot in the door offer

Offering GMB optimization creates a low-cost entry point into your sales funnel and is an ideal foot in the door offer for your web agency. This makes it easy for you to offer similar services, such as search engine optimization and local citation building.

There are a lot of other benefits to your agency offering GMB services to your prospects and clients which we will cover later in this article. The good news is that your clients will enjoy plenty of benefits too. Which brings us to the next point…

Offering Google My Business listings and optimization provides a lot of benefits to clients, which makes this service an easy sell and creates satisfied clients. Check out these benefits your clients will receive…

Increase their online visibility

An optimized GMB listing helps boost your client’s online visibility among Google Maps and Google Search. Plus when you update your client’s GMB listing, this information is updated across both Search and Maps… no extra steps required.

Attract more local customers

Once your clients have well-optimized GMB listings in place, they’re going to start seeing tangible results, including:

• More calls. Here your clients will have prospects calling who’ve already gathered preliminary information about the business, so these calls tend to be highly targeted from warm leads.
• More foot traffic actually coming into their store or office to look around, buy products and do business with your client.
• More website visits from prospects who are looking for information about their products or services. Your clients can use these visits to set themselves apart from the competition and/or capture them as a lead or even make a sale.

Your clients will be able to check their GMB insights to see which website visits are coming directly from the GMB profile. As for calls and foot traffic, all they have to do is ask their customers where they heard about the business.

Next…

Outrank the competition

Another benefit of optimizing your client’s Google My Business listing is that it helps them outrank their competition online. Not only can your client outrank the competition, but the listing gives them an opportunity to engage their prospects and let viewers know why they should do business with them (rather than the competitors).

In turn, your clients will attract more local customers, who then provide more reviews. When your clients get more reviews, then they’ll attract even prospects who’ll call or visit their place of business.

Get customer insights

Another benefit for your clients is that optimizing their GMB listing will give clients some insight into their audience. Specifically:

• They’ll find out how prospects found them.
• They’ll learn what prospects typically do after viewing their listing (e.g., call them, visit them, or click through to the website).
• They’ll learn more about what types of content or offers best engage visitors using GMB posts.

Plus customers who leave feedback and reviews will also help your clients know what they’re doing well, and where they need to improve in their business.

Saves time

Both your client and their customers save time because a GMB listing provides all the information that the prospect or customers typically wants to know, such as business hours, telephone numbers, direction to the business, and more. All of this information is provided in one place, so users don’t need to make multiple clicks over to a website to find the information.

Your customers will save time by displaying all the info they need in one place, saving time fielding inquiries such as “What time do you close?” or “What days are you open?” by email or phone.

Serves as another communication channel

Another benefit GMB provides for your clients is that it gives them another place to communicate with their audience. They can post videos to their listing, promote offers, make announcements, link to their social media profiles, and more. This gives your clients a chance to make a great first impression.

The bottom line here is that your clients will get a lot of benefit from their listing, which in turn helps you create a loyal client for your agency who’ll want to do business with you again as well as refer you to others.

So, with that in mind, it’s time for a crash course in creating and optimizing Google My Business profiles for your clients…

Now let’s take a look at how to complete a Google My Business Listing for your clients.

TIP: Take note that you should also complete and optimize your own GMB listing for your agency. One of the best platforms you have for selling GMB optimization services is your own GMB listing – if clients find you through your listing, they’ll immediately see the value of these listings.

You will need to set up an account with Google My Business here.

Here is the basic information you need to complete a GMB listing:

• Name.
• Address.
• Phone number.
• Website link.
• Short name/link.
• Business hours (including any special hours, like holiday hours).
• Business category/subcategory.
• Business description.
• Photos and videos.
• Q&A (questions and answers).
• Social media links.
• Posts.
• Reviews.

All very straightforward, right?

It is. But you’ll deliver better results for your clients if you optimize each of these sections. Which brings us to the next point…

In order to get the best results for your clients, when setting up and optimizing their GMB profile, you will need to fill out every section of the profile mentioned above. The more information you provide in the profile, the more value it provides to those who read it (which in turn leads to more calls, website visits, and foot traffic.

So, with that in mind, here’s how to optimize each of the main sections of a GMB profile for your clients:

The key here is to make sure the information you provide is accurate and consistent.

It’s important to have accurate information for prospects and customers. If a prospect calls a phone number and it’s the wrong number, that prospect loses trust. If they go to a physical address and the business isn’t there, you can bet that prospect isn’t going to be very happy.

Secondly, it’s important that this information is consistent across all other web sources, which helps Google verify the listing is correct. These sources include social media, your website, and similar business directory/citations sites.

For example, the business name should be the same name used on the storefront, on business cards, and elsewhere.

Another example: the phone number should be the local number customers call whenever possible vs. a toll-free number or a number that directs to a call center.

You can create a GMB short link for the business free of charge.  Businesses can then give this short link to their customers for the purposes of leaving a review. This name typically takes this form: g.page/shortname

The key here is to be sure the short name accurately reflects the name by which the business is known. For accuracy, you can include a location as part of this short name when working with a business with multiple locations.

Here again, you need to be sure you provide thorough and accurate information. You should only list the hours when your clients’ businesses are open, and they’re interacting with customers.

For example, if a client has an “after hours” call service, that doesn’t count as part of their regular business hours. You only list the times when customers come to the place of business (or when the business goes to the client’s location, in the case of service providers).

Be sure to list special holiday hours. If your client’s business hours change – as is the case with a seasonal business – then be sure to update this information as needed.

Choosing the right category for the business is important because this is how your client’s customers will find them using a general search.

For example, if a customer searches for a “dentist near me,” your client’s dental practice will pop up in the results if you’ve chosen “Dentist” as the main category.

The other reason for choosing the right category is important is because certain categories let you highlight the attributes of the business. For example, if your client is running a restaurant, then you can include a link to a menu or even a link to a service like Open Table where prospects can make their reservations online.

The business description should be short and to the point, as you only get a limited number of characters to explain what the business does (and only the first 244 characters show up in the preview). The key here is to tell prospects what the business does, and how the business differs from its competitors. Avoid typical sales language, promos, hype or similar verbiage in this section.

The photos in a listing are often what help create the first impression for prospects, which is why you only want to use high-quality photos which accurately present a good reflection of the business. Here are the types of photos to upload:

• Exterior photos of the business.
• Interior photos of the business.
• Photos of the products or services being sold.
• Photos of employees, which helps create a personal connection.

Generally, Google suggests that you upload at least three high-quality photos in each of the categories mentioned above.

Be sure to post photos that create a positive impression of the business.

The GMB listings let anyone both ask and answer questions in the Q&A section. Admittedly, sometimes the questions and answers coming directly from prospects and customers can reflect poorly on the business. That’s why it’s to your client’s advantage to create their own list of frequently asked questions and answer them.

You’ll also want to make sure you or your client monitor their profile regularly for any new questions posted by visitors. That way, your client can answer these questions, rather than having another visitor answer them (with answers that may or may not even be accurate).

Here you’ll want to do two things for your client:

1. Make sure all links pointing to your client’s social media platforms are accurate.
2. Make sure the linked platforms are active.

In other words, don’t link to a platform where your client hardly ever posts. When someone clicks on a social media link, you want them to arrive at a thriving, active, busy platform with plenty of relevant and helpful content.

Another great feature of Google My Business is that it allows business owners to make posts. You’ll want to help your clients develop a regular schedule for making new posts. These new posts may include content such as:

• Coupons.
• Special promos.
• News and announcements.
• Videos.
• How-to information, tips and similar.
• Explainer videos.
• Download links to reports and other content.
• Videos that help your client differentiate them from the competitors.
• Information about upcoming events.

These posts serve as a good way for your clients to connect with the audience, engage them, build relationships, and show these prospects why the business is a good fit for them.

This is one section that you cannot fill out for your client. Instead, your client needs to naturally collect reviews from customers over time.

The key here is to makes sure that your client doesn’t go against Google’s terms of service (or the FTC) to collect reviews testimonials in a prohibited away. For example, business owners can’t buy reviews (which includes offering coupons to those who leave a review), hold contests where entrants need to leave a review, or ask people to fill out a survey and then use the results to decide whether to ask someone to leave a review.

Instead, what your client needs to do is to directly encourage customers to leave a review as part of their sales and fulfillment process. For example, if a restaurant customer raves about their food, the server can ask if they’d be willing to post that feedback on Google. Alternatively, a business can print a request on a receipt so that everyone is encouraged to leave a review.