Getting Started with Google Business Profile: Your Ultimate Guide

Your Google Business Profile allows business owners to have more control over the information which Google displays about businesses when it populates Search results pages and Google Maps.  This used to be called Google My Business but has since been renamed.

If you’ve ever been to Google and searched for a business name directly, you’ve probably come across something that looks like this.

This box on the right is called a Knowledge Graph.  When you search for, in this case Crane Jewelers, the search engine gets the information in the Knowledge Graph from the Google Business Profile that the owner of the business has completed. It’s also using that information to populate Google Maps:

And also the “Snack Pack”, or the local listings:

Why is Google Business Profile so important?

On average, businesses receive 943 Search views of their Google Business Profile listing information on a Google search results page and 317 Maps views each month.
A typical business receives up to 59 actions (meaning clicks to your website, clicks to call, and other options that people can take when they view your Google listing) per month on a Google Business Profile.
64% of consumers have used Google Business Profile listing info on a Google Business Profile listing on a Google search results page to find contact info for a local business.

With all this traffic that’s coming to our businesses, it’s important to optimize your Google Business Profile.  Here is a list of items that you can optimize with your profile:

Claim your Business Profile
Complete every section of your Google Business Profile account
Be meticulous with contact information
Select primary and secondary categories
Mark off applicable attributes
Write a complete “from the business” description
Publish Google posts weekly
Upload new photos weekly
Answer questions
Collect and respond to reviews
Add your products and/or services
Set up messaging
Maintain your Business Profile

Before we dive into each of these and show you how to optimize them, think of Google just as you do the homepage of your website. The Google Business Profile needs to have all that pertinent information.  The reason is because almost 50% of searchers DON’T click beyond the search page.  They are now getting all their info from your profile, without even landing on your website.  This is called Zero-Click searches (they are searching but not clicking through to your website):

When you’re maximizing your Google Business Profile, it’s all about improving your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

First, let’s start by sharing with you how you get to your Google Business Profile:

Go to google.com/business
When you do that, you’ll see this come up. If you already have a profile, you’ll need to be the Admin in order to enter information.  If you don’t have a profile, you can sign in and sign up for an account.

Google is in the process of changing how you update your information, so you may see a pop-up message that says:

If you do, you just click on the “Manage on Search” button above.  Google is getting away from having a dashboard where you go to manage everything.  Then, if you’re logged into Google, you can type “Google Business Profile” and it will bring up all profiles that you are an Admin for and you can click the “view profile” button:

When you do that, you’ll get something that looks like this:

You can see the Knowledge Graph on the right-hand side, and over to the left, you some areas that you have the ability to edit.  That allows you to manage the information that would populate into the Knowledge Graph.

Let’s start off with the “Edit Profile” button.

The first thing you want to check is the business information.  This is where it’ll list contact information, location info, hours, and more.   When you fill out that information, it’ll all show up right here:

Then you want to go to “Products”:

When you do this, you’ll have the ability to type in and edit all the different products that your business sells.  It will allow you to also leave a description of those products:

Once you do that, this is where the information will show up in your Knowledge Graph:

Next up, you could list services.

Any services you offer you can add and list right here:

Once you have those updated, this is where they’ll show up in the Knowledge Graph:

The services are important. This is where the search engines pull information to match the query that people type into the search bar.  The more information you can input there, the better, as when someone creates a query, the algorithm looks here in the Services section to find a match.

Then, you want to add photos, a logo, and your cover photo.  These are all very easy to do, as they use a drag and drop feature:

When you update those, you’ll see those reflected in your Knowledge Graph here:

Take a second and review the part with the photos.  It’s very easy to complete.  However, a lot of small businesses don’t spend the time to do that, and keep it updated.   Here’s why you should:

Searchers are 42% more likely to request directions to a business if its Profile has photos.
Searchers are 35% more likely to click through to its website.
Businesses with more than 100 photos get 520% more calls, 2,717% more direction requests, and 1,065% more website clicks than the average business.

Spend a little time and ensure you have that section updated.

Next, in your Profile screen, you’ll see this button, the Promote button:

When you click here, you’ll see this screen:

Performance is metrics about your Google listing.  It’ll allow you to choose the time frame that you want, and then you can see how much traffic you had to your website, how many calls, messages, how many click to directions, and more.

Towards the bottom of that informational page, you’ll see “How people discovered you.”  This tells you how people came across your listing.  Was it through mobile, desktop, etc.   And then, on the right-hand side, you can see some of the keywords or phrases that people had searched for when your listing came into view:

Next up, ask for reviews!  So important!

When you click this button, it’ll take you to a page that provides you a special link for your business.  You can provide that link to your customers. When they visit that link, it takes them directly to where they can leave a review for your business:

Once a customer leaves a review, they automatically get populated into the Knowledge Graph.

For the “Add Update” button, think of this as adding a post to your Knowledge Graph.

When you do, you’ll come this page.

Here, you have up to 1500 characters, which is a pretty lengthy update.  You can choose a button, and even add photos.  This is just another way to add to the material in the Knowledge Graph.  You can also add an offer here, like some kind of discount.   Or, you can even add an event, like a sales promotion or something like that.

When you do, this is where all this information gets populated in the Knowledge Graph.  You’ll see they look like little individual posts.

Now, let’s look at the Customers button:

When you click on that, you’ll see this drop-down menu:

Clicking on Reviews will show you all your reviews that you’re received, as well as your responses:

If you don’t know this already, reviews are IMPORTANT!  Not only do people read reviews, but close to 75% of people ALSO read the business’ responses to those reviews.

The more reviews that you have, the more likely people are to engage with you, so the more reviews you get, the more leads you’re likely to get.

The more positive reviews you have, the more purchases you’re likely to get.  Consumers research and read reviews before making decisions. In fact, they read a minimum of 10 reviews before feeling confident in making a decision.

The higher your reviews, the higher your rank!  Google rewards businesses that have frequent and positive reviews.  They are a definite local SEO ranking factor, as confirmed by Google itself.

Next, is Calls:

Under this section, you may see this:

This is something that Google is rolling out rather slowly.  This may or may not be available.  To find out, click the “Learn more” button.  It’ll tell you if it’s available to you at this time or not.  If it is available, that means someone could click on your phone number from your Profile and Google would track it (showing information here).

A few things to know before you turn this feature on, if it’s available:

Once a call history is on, customers connect to you through a Google Forwarding Number instead of through the number on your profile. And, at the start of a call, you’ll get an automated message that says “Call from Google”
On your Business Profile Listing, customers see your business number. But, with this feature activated, when they click the “call” button on your profile, their call is forward to a unique number to reach you that Google assigns.  This number is different from the one on your profile.  So, on their phone dialer they see a different number.
When possible, the forwarding number shares the same area code or prefix number as your business. Otherwise, a local number in your geographic region is used.

If you click Messages:

This is a feature that you can turn on, and you can receive text messages from potential customers who have questions.  By default, this is not activated, so you do have to turn this feature on:

If you do turn it on, then someone would see this option when they Google a business or if they are in Google Maps:

If they decide to do that, then they will see a customized greeting and they can text back and forth with that person.

If you click Q&A:

This is where you can view any question that a person has asked the business, and where business owners can respond.  We suggest going in and populate questions on your own, similar to FAQ’s so that there’s content prepopulated:

When you do this, you’ll see them show up here in your Knowledge Graph:

A Google Business Profile should be updated weekly.  It will help your SEO ranking.  It’ll ensure everything is correct.   It also allows you the chance to ensure that all questions that are asked are answered, and all reviews are responded to.

As you can see, there is a LOT that a business can do on their own to help themselves.  This is a great start to get your online profile started.

Once you’ve done this, then you want to take a look at SEO and Online Reputation

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Health & Wellness & Digital

When the pandemic hit in early 2020, I do not think anyone had any idea how it would impact our daily lives. Work environments changed, school dynamics changed and the world of 6 feet of separation changed every industry, especially the health care world.

Common conversations in any household include words and phrases like “exposure”, “contract tracing”, “vaccines”, “is it a cold or covid?”, “quarantine”, “tests”, “mask-up” and more.

All eyes and ears are focused on health and wellness and the constant question in everyone’s mind is, “where do we go from here?” At first you think of all the new-ness Covid has brought about, like testing, vaccines, and self-diagnosing and education, but it has affected so many health-related businesses in so many ways. We are all in need of self-care and making sure we are mindful to take care of ourselves. Some ways this can be accomplished is through nutrition, diet, exercise, mental health and preventive health and wellness. And with all our routines and lifestyles changing, the medical landscape has been changed significantly.  As we adapt, it is essential for advertisers to pivot and keep up with the latest trends and strategies to reach their audience in a whole new way. U.S. Ad Spending for the Health & Wellness category surpassed $900 Million in Q4 2021.state-of-health-wellness-ads-report-2022

Some of the digital leaders for health and wellness have been mobile marketing, social, display and video. Social climbed the charts in 4th qtr 2021 with with a 70% share of spending. Vici has seen many great success stories in this space in a variety of different types of health and wellness campaigns.

Here are a few that topped the charts.

Category: Fitness

Background:
A national wellness membership brand was looking to determine the best media mix for their membership campaign for their nine locations.  They needed to penetrate a 5-mile radius of all locations, as research showed most members will travel within 5 miles of their home to visit a gym/wellness facility. Their main membership push is in the Winter to Spring months.

Strategy:
Focus on targeting prospects that look just like their best customers. The target customers for this campaign were adults that “follow a regular exercise routine”, that like basketball, weight training, swimming, cardio, and exercise regularly. To target these prospects, we recommended geo-targeting specific neighborhood based on previous membership heat maps and active users utilizing Mobile Conquesting and behaviors that coincide with their core customers. For example: families with children, singles, couples, HH income $75k+ and market for fitness, health clubs, aftercare programs, swim, basketball, personal training and group exercise.

Results:
After the launch of the campaign the click thru rate was a .92, 13 times the national average, and 1,532 memberships were obtained. The next promotion yielded 3,135 memberships and the next season 3,795 memberships. Overall, the success continues to climb and memberships top season over season.

Category: Healthcare – Addiction Treatment

Overview:
A regional Addiction Treatment Center, who turned to digital advertising to generate more leads saw great success and was looking for new ways to reach
more people who suffer from addiction, especially during COVID-19. The goal was to increase patient lead intake online.

Digital Strategy:
Facebook Social Mirroring was recommended to broaden the reach of socialaudiences outside of their Facebook app. An online campaign was designed
and launched utilizing a Social Mirror strategy to engage adults who feel isolated and alone and need help. The call to action was, “I want treatment now” that directed them to a phone # or a click to landing page with comforting messages about positive connections that could connect them with help and encouraged them for them to fill out a form or engage in live chat messaging.

Results:
The additional impressions that ran for this campaign on social mirroring were 150,806 and resulted in 4,421 clicks with a click thru rate of 2.93%. This is a remarkable percentage as it is nearly 42 x the national average. Plus, the campaign had 163 view thru visits (home page visits)
and 11 new patient conversions in the first month of launch.  With a per patient ROI of $3500, the client was thrilled with the results of this cutting-edge strategy.

Category: Public Health

Background:
County health department wanted to use digital advertising in a branding and awareness campaign aimed to promote COVID-19 safety measures and provide testing locations and information to the Hispanic community.

Strategy:
The client utilized Mobile Conquesting categories targeting Hispanics and demographics set to Hispanic or Latino ethnicity combined with Geo-Fencing and Geo-Retargeting. A social strategy was also included and involved Facebook Video ads using categories to target Hispanic community members in provided zip codes who also had their browser set to Spanish. All ads were created in Spanish.

Results:
The campaign served 1,071,509 impressions and reaped an impressive 12,890 clicks resulting in a 1.20% CTR which is 17.19 times the national average.  The campaign was able to track almost 200 view through visits to the homepage and drove an estimated 500 trackable visits to testing locations. The Facebook portion of the campaign received an incredible 58,237 post engagements and almost 250 post shares. The client has renewed the campaign and is extremely pleased with the results.

Category:  Health and Wellness

Background:
With Heart Month around the corner our Hospital Client wanted to increase screenings for a heart disease risk assessment called a “calcium heart scan”.  With complicated language and a very niche market it would be challenging to isolate candidates through offline marketing only.  The Client was looking for a solution that targeted current cardiac patients who had been given information by their primary physician that they might be at risk for heart disease.

Strategy:
We identified the ideal patient profile and the typical behavior of a patient who is minimally aware about their risk for heart disease.  We determined that it was important that the Client be found for key Heart related searches online as that is where patients typically turn, but also that we reach out to ideal adults via online and offline methods to find patients not already aware of their risk.  We built a 13 week program of broadcast radio, and health targeted behavioral and keyword display ads.

Results:
The client reported, “Call volume to our tracking number increased 93% in January from the previous month and 17% in February from the previous month.  We saw a 16% increase in booked appointments in January from the previous month and a 20% increase in February from the previous month.  We are thrilled with the results!”

US digital ad spending will grow by nearly 50% in the next four years. By 2025, the digital ad market will top $300 billion—more than three-quarters of all media spending. Digital has eclipsed all other forms of advertising. Healthcare is a large % of where the rise will be coning from. What does your digital check-up look like for 2022 and beyond?

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