By Google Business Profile (GBP) is an often overlooked listing that many businesses neglect, leaving money on the table in the process. Even if a business has a Google Business Profile, it’s not likely something they pay attention to or update regularly. By offering your clients Google Business Profile management, you can drive measurable results for them while adding an additional revenue stream for your business.
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In this article, we’ll go over what exactly GBP is and why it’s so important, as well as how you can build it into your portfolio of services.
What is Google Business Profile?
Google Business Profile is Google’s native business listing. When you search for a business in Google, this listing appears to the right of the search results and includes the business name, contact information, photos, posts, reviews, questions and answers, and links to their website and other pages.
Beyond the basic setup, why should clients care about having an optimized GBP?
Because their customers are using it to discover important information and make purchasing decisions. In fact, 60% of smartphone users contact businesses directly through their GBP profiles by using the “click to call” feature, and over half won’t do business with a company that has an average rating of under 4 stars.
Having an optimized Google Business Profile establishes trust with prospective customers, ultimately resulting in more sales. Since Google is by far the most used search engine, it is one of the most important listings for your clients.
Selling listings management services
A good way to position Google Business Profile management is as part of a complete listings management service. GBP is certainly one of the most important listings, but local businesses should have up-to-date, matching listings across a range of websites for optimal local SEO performance.
Your clients may have already set up a basic profile when they established their business, or a third party may have set one up on their behalf. If they have multiple locations, they may have even set up location groups for their multiple profiles. In either case, their listing almost certainly requires attention.
If it was set up by somebody else, such as a fan or customer, it will need to be claimed. There are several ways to do this, including by postcard, phone number, or email. In the process, you can also add your agency or business as an owner with all permissions to manage the profile. This way, you’ll be able to offer ongoing listing management.
The basic business information that should be included in Google Business Profile management includes its name, address, website, phone number, description, category, and attributes. It’s essential that the contact information exactly matches what appears on your client's website because a mismatch can be meaningfully damaging to local SEO results.
Another field that is often completed in a hurry, with detrimental effects to local SEO rankings, is the category. Google has over 2,000 categories, and selecting the one that most accurately describes a business’ activities will increase the chances of it ranking in local searches for its product or service. Updating categories should be part of Google Business Profile management for clients.
Attributes offer a chance to showcase a broader range of a business’ capabilities such as whether it is suitable for kids or groups, whether it has wifi, or any other attribute that your client wishes to highlight.
Images can also be added to enrich the listing, as can products and services.
Finally, just like other social profiles, GBP listings can include posts. These allow businesses to share news, updates, promotions, and anything else they may want to feature that isn’t included in the main profile.
By offering Google Business Profile management as part of a complete listings management package, you can ensure that all of a client's listings match and are up to date, giving them the best chance of ranking in local SEO.
Google Business Profile management: Creating campaigns
In addition to setting up and maintaining GBP profiles for our clients, GPB optimization can be used as part of sales and marketing campaigns.
Since so many prospective customers will see your client's Google Business Profile, creating an editorial calendar for the posts section can be very effective. Not only can posts be used to keep the profile fresh and interesting and to demonstrate that a business is active, but they can also be used to feature promotions.
The latest posts on a profile are visible in Google’s search results for that business. This is prime real estate to showcase offers that entice buyers to visit in person, shop online, or take another action that will lead to more conversions.
Every sale, promotion, or marketing campaign should include accompanying GBP posts to maximize results.
Bundle Google Business Profile management with other services
Bundling services can help you increase the monthly recurring revenue of each of your clients while establishing your business as an integral partner in their success. The more services you offer your clients, especially as part of bundled deals, the less likely they are to shop around with your competitors.
Listing management services lend themselves well to a variety of bundles; here are some of our favorites.
Bundle with SEO services
SEO services help your clients get organically discovered on Google, while GBP optimization helps drive more conversions. It’s the perfect pairing to generate organic sales.
Bundle with reputation management
A huge component of a winning profile is an active reviews section with a high average rating. Reputation management services can generate positive reviews regularly, building trust and driving more conversions through GBP.
Bundle with social media management
The posts section of a Google profile requires content planning and creation to align with business goals. The strategy implemented here should align with the broader social media strategy, making the bundling of these services a good solution for a unified strategy.
Fulfillment of Google Business Profile management
Don’t have the in-house capacity to handle Google Business Profile management for your clients? This isn’t the only way to start offering this service.
Instead, your team can focus on selling while you rely on a team of white-label, Google-certified experts to craft and maintain winning Google profiles for your clients. This way, you can scale this service to as many clients as you like, without staff time limitations.
Start offering Google Business Profile management services today
An up-to-date Google Business Profile may have been an afterthought for businesses in the past, but today, it’s essential for local SEO success. Many local business owners are unaware of the impact a well-managed profile can have on their organic traffic and conversions, making this a must-have service to start offering your clients.
