Sales & Marketing Playbook
Making Your Google Business Profile (GBP) Work for You
More than 90 percent of all internet searches happen through Google; that means you need to make sure to optimize the free real estate you own on Google: your Google Business Profile (GBP), which was formerly known as Google My Business and is also known colloquially as your company’s Google listing.
​
A third of all web traffic referrals come from Google as opposed to any other search engine or website, which makes sense considering Google hosts 5.9 million searches every minute. Don’t miss out on all this traffic. Master all these strategies with your GBP for a great start to your annual goals:
Get Access to Your GBP
If you don’t yet own your GBP, that’s step one.
​
Navigate to your company’s profile. There will be text on the profile or nearby it that asks if you own the business. Click there to have Google send a postcard to the address on the profile. Then, when you receive the postcard, follow the directions on the card to take control of the GBP.
​
If someone else already manages the listing but you need access as well, you can request access.
Google accounts for 91.54% of the global search engine market (89% in North America)
46% of Google searches have local intent.
Learn the Basics of Your GBP
More than 90 percent of all internet searches happen through Google; that means you need to make sure to optimize the free real estate you own on Google: your Google Business Profile (GBP), which was formerly known as Google My Business and is also known colloquially as your company’s Google listing.
​
A third of all web traffic referrals come from Google as opposed to any other search engine or website, which makes sense considering Google hosts 5.9 million searches every minute. Don’t miss out on all this traffic. Master all these strategies with your GBP for a great start to your annual goals:
Add Content to Your GBP
Google loves fresh content, so the more often you consistently update the information on your profile, the better. The order of businesses listings and websites returned from a search depends on a number of factors, including how helpful Google thinks your listing will be to visitors.
​
At the van line, we update our GBPs for Wheaton and Bekins every month with new content – although “new” here just means different than what we’ve added to the profiles in the past. We update and reuse content from the website pages and blog posts, so we don’t start from scratch every time we need a profile update. ​
Don’t try to reinvent the wheel! Use pieces of your previous blog posts – or those from the van line – to post new information to your profile.
Download the GBP Marketing Strategy document for more suggestions on adding content to your profile.
Ask Customers to Add to Your GBP via Google Reviews
When searching for a service provider, you want someone with lots of experience in delighting customers. Showing hundreds of 4- and 5-star Google reviews on your GBP is a great way to show potential customers that you know what you’re doing, so they can trust you.
​
After every interstate move, customers receive a customer experience survey, asking them to rate the experience in several categories out of 10 points. The van line uses GetMoreReviews.com to email all those who rate the interstate move an average of 8 points or above and ask them to leave a review of their experience.
​
It’s easy to set up a similar reputation management program for your local and intrastate moves!
-
Go to GetMoreReviews.com or a similar service (Capterra.com allows you to research companies easily based on side-by-side comparisons of everything from price to number of accounts to customer satisfaction). If you choose GetMoreReviews.com, let them know you’re an interstate agent for Wheaton | Bekins, so you should receive a special rate of $89/month.
-
Set up your emails. Your first email should be short and simple. Ask “We’re so happy you enjoyed your experience with COMPANY NAME! Will you leave us an online review?” Likely you won’t get everyone to open your email or leave the review that first time; GetMoreReviews.com allows you to create second and third emails that ONLY get delivered to people who did not click either YES or NO previously.
-
Finally, upload customer names and email addresses as you complete their moves, and that will start the emails.
-
Watch the reviews roll in!
​
It will help if your drivers let the customers know they’ll receive an email about leaving a review so the customers know to keep an eye out for it. Also, you of course need to have an email address for the customer in your system for you to be able to put them into this system, so make sure your move consultant captures the customer email addresses early in the process.
66% of web traffic referrals come from Google.
Answer Reviews on Your GBP
Asking for reviews isn’t the end of the process. When people leave reviews on your listing, you should always answer them, whether the review is positive or negative. Here is the base response the van line uses on our GBPs:
​
4- or 5-star review
Thank you so much for taking time to share about your moving experience. We are thrilled to hear that it was positive! We wish you all the best as you settle into your new home.
​
3-star review
We appreciate you taking the time to leave feedback about your moving experience. We’re always looking to improve the experience our customers have with our van line. We will share your feedback with our network so we can better serve customers in the future.
​
1- or 2-star review
[If any of the negative responses below apply, please use the applicable message]
​
Hello, [First name]. Thank you for bringing these issues to our attention. We have made our Customer Service Department aware of your concerns so that we can better serve our customers in the future. If you have not already, please submit a claims form detailing any damages.
​
There are a few other responses we use if certain items are included in the review:
​
Review mentions a specific person or group of people positively
We’re glad the moving process went smoothly, [First name]! We’ll pass your kind words along to [Employee name or occupation, i.e. driver, crew, salesperson, customer service team]. We wish you all the best in your new home!
Safety issue
Hello, [First name]. Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. As always, [Brand name] is committed to high standards of safety, and I assure you that we are investigating. ​
There are 5.9 million Google searches per minute.
Make sure you have someone keeping an eye on reviews to reply and also to keep everyone in your office aware of any issues. If you work with a marketing agency, this may be a service they can offer you. ​
When customers leaving a positive review mention their move consultant, the driver, or members of your crew, that’s time for celebration! Many agencies offer benefits to their employees for being named in positive reviews, for instance a $25 gift card for being highlighted by name in a 5-star review or an entry per mention into a weekly prize drawing.
Recognize Google Search Results
Google is constantly changing the way it delivers results to visitors. Searches today return a lot more than just the link to the homepage of a website. Do a google search for moving and storage, and you may see:
​​
Sponsored listings
These listings are in fact Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads, which fall in the bucket of Search Engine Marketing (SEM).
After an initial trial period where your marketing person figures out which phrases, days and times yield the best results (i.e. clicks that convert), there are tons of ways you can stretch your money with PPC ads:
-
Set your campaigns to show your ads only on days that have proven to be higher converting for you.
-
Set your ads to be shown only during times that your office is open (so you can respond to leads quickly rather than losing out to a competitor using a call center open after hours. If you’re interested in a call center, reach out to wheatonmarketing@wvlcorp.com to find out more about Wheaton | Bekins Connect.
-
Edit the copy in your ads so it reflects local, intra, or interstate ads – whichever yields a higher profit margin.
Talk with your local marketing vendor (or join the next Marketing Success Group call to ask your peers for advice) on other ways to optimize your SEM.
Businesses
In the Businesses section of the search results page, Google shows business locations on a map of the local area. The GBP is shown when visitors click on the location dot on the map.
​
This is a great way for people to find businesses near their homes, their workplaces, or another location they frequent so they can find the closest provider to their home. Even if you aren’t the closest option, you can overcome that hurdle by having a higher star rating and / or more 5-star reviews than your competitors.
​
People Also Ask
This section shows a list of questions that may interest people who searched for the original word or phrase. The van line has been able to get its pages and posts included as links in answer to these questions by including FAQs on multiple website pages.
​
Organic Site Links
Links to websites optimized for the search term appear next. To optimize your website on your own, use SEMRush or another software you find via Capterra, agent suggestions, or the van line’s third party vendor list. You can also farm this work out to a marketing firm that specializes in search engine optimization.
​
What People Are Saying
The What People Are Saying section is newer and doesn’t appear for every search. Service provider searchers for plumbers, for example, show this user generated content (UGC), usually videos, taken from social media sites.
​
One way you can encourage more UGC is by running a giveaway with your customers. Offer an entry to win a great prize – an iPad, a hover board – for every video 30 seconds or longer about your service. Draw a winner every 6 months or so to make sure there are plenty of entries.
​
Pro tip: require entries to use a certain positive hashtag to make sure all the entries are from happy customers.
Discussions and Forums
Finally, another section that depends on user generated content is discussions and forums. This category showcases UGC that is usually textual, on sites such as Google Help and Reddit.
​
Ensure your company’s two cents are included in this section by asking your employees to offer advice in these forums.
Before you or your employee posts for the first time, however, make sure you and they are very clear with the forum about who they are – a representative of COMPANY NAME. Make sure you are not trying to sell to people on the forum, but instead you are teaching them how moving and storage works so they know what to expect. Transparency and authenticity are extra highly regarded by online customers.
Keep up-to-date on how Google works so you can bump your listings to the top of the organic results and hopefully appear in some of the other categories as well.