8 Tips to Optimize Your Dealerships Google Business Profile
What is a Google Business Profile?
A Google Business Profile helps your dealership get found online. According to Google, “with a Business Profile, you can manage how your local business shows up across Google products, like Maps and Search. If you run a business that serves customers at a particular location, or you serve customers within a designated service area, your Business Profile can help people find you. Verified businesses on Google are twice as likely to be considered reputable.”
With Google boasting 92% of the world’s search traffic, it’s easy to see why it is important to optimize your Google Business Profile.
Benefits of Creating & Maintaining Your Google Business Profile
With a Google Business Profile you can maintain accurate information about your business online, interact with your customers, and attract new customers. When your dealership shows up at the top of the search results page; it is much easier to make a positive and professional impression, which will result in a higher CTR, or click-through rate on your website.
An active Google Business account is a powerful tool that can help you improve your website’s ranking in Google search results. Your Google Business Profile is the first thing a lot of internet users see, and sometimes, the only thing they see. It is important to make sure that Google can find you and that it has the right information.
It’s important to remember that potential customers will be comparing you to your competitors. That’s why it’s essential to have a complete and optimized listing. By making a good first impression, you’ll increase your chances of converting those users into customers.
Google Business Profile Optimization
Key Elements to Optimize:
Use your actual business name. Stuffing your listing with too many keywords is not only against Google’s Terms of Service, but it can also result in your listing being penalized.
List a local phone number. If you want to rank high in local search results, it’s important to have a legitimate local phone number. If you’re using a call tracking number, make sure to enter the tracking number in the primary slot. This is the number that will show up to users. Put your actual local number in the secondary slot.
Make sure your hours of operation are correct.
Write a compelling description. Make sure your business description includes information about who you are as a company and what you stand for. You don’t want to stuff this section with random keywords just to try and boost your ranking in searches – that won’t work. The description on your GBP won’t affect your ranking, but it will give potential customers and partners a good idea of what you’re all about.
Upload lots of high-resolution photos. This includes exterior, interior, and product shots. This will help the customer feel more familiar and comfortable should they visit in person.
Upload videos, if you have them. Videos must be 30 seconds or shorter and smaller than 100 MB.
Be Consistent. One of the most important aspects of digital marketing is staying consistent. You must post and update regularly to stay front of mind with your ideal customers and to remain an authority in the Outdoor Power Equipment world.
Get reviews from happy customers. A large ranking factor for Google is customer reviews. Businesses that have more reviews tend to seem more credible and reliable to consumers. Asking for review should be ingrained into your sales process. Why? 71% of consumers will leave a review, if asked. This is why it is important to have a strong brand reputation management strategy in place as part of your overall marketing objectives.
This Seems Like a Lot of Work – Is it Worth it?
A solid marketing strategy includes social media, brand reputation management, business listing management, dealership SEO, plus many Outdoor Power Equipment Dealerships also employ paid advertising in the form of Pay-Per-Click Advertising, Display Advertising and many other digital advertising strategies. With so many options, it can be daunting! At Dealers Digital we know what it takes to maximize your online exposure and boost your sales! Our focus is on the Green Industry. We know your market, we know your customers, and we know how to reach them. Whether you are looking for a do-it-yourself platform, (Here’s looking at you DealerAmp), or want someone to handle all of your marketing needs, we have a solution for you! Contact Us to start the conversation about upping your marketing game!
This article originally appeared in the July edition of OPE Business
Do you remember last year when the pandemic hit, how much fear swept across small retail businesses? Nobody knew how the pandemic would affect sales and ultimately their livelihoods, causing many of our dealers to pause their marketing and advertising efforts. And while COVID was certainly unkind to many small businesses, many of the dealerships we work with reported better than expected sales volumes. The smart dealers who continued to advertise in the early stages of the pandemic, reaped the benefits of being proactive in their messaging.
Fast forward to 2021 and the lasting effects of the pandemic are starting to manifest in inventory scarcity, resulting in a different type of crisis. Again faced with uncertainty, we’ve heard from many dealers who are pausing advertising programs, which is understandable if there is no inventory to sell, but the most proactive dealers can still position themselves to be top of mind when supply finally catches up with demand.
Here are three ways you can keep your dealership visible to potential customers.
Utilize Google My Business If you’ve sat in any marketing webinar in the past two years, every dealership marketing consultant has likely driven home the importance of utilizing your Google My Business (GMB) profile and I am certainly no different. Why? Because it’s free and it’s extremely powerful. Here’s are two new features that will hep you make the most of your GMB profile:
Turn on GMB Messaging: Google recently turned on the ability for customers to message you directly from your GMB profile. Make sure you go into your GMB settings and turn on this functionality. Eliminating any friction between you and your potential customer is important, especially in this competitive space.
Add products to your profile: In 2020, Google gave businesses the ability to manually add products directly to their profiles, complete with photos and pricing information. So if a potential customer is searching for “Cub Cadet Ultima ZT1 42” and you’ve added that product to your local profile, you’ll boost your chances of being discovered for that product.
Engage Your Existing Customer List In the OPE industry we find that dealers will spend tens of thousands of dollars per year to acquire new customers and ignore (or just take for granted) their existing customer base. According to Marketing Metrics, the probability of converting an existing customer is between 60 – 70%, but the probability of converting a new prospect is only between 5 – 20%.
The way our industry is structured, especially with how co-op ad dollars from OEMs work, the majority of our focus tends to be on new customer acquisition. And while acquisition is extremely important, think about where your business really makes its money and its margins. Most would say it’s in service and repeat purchases.
Every dealership has a customer list, but do you have contact information for your customers? An email address? A cell phone number? Maybe buried in your DMS somewhere? Smart dealers can take control of their data but utilizing a CRM (Customer Relationship Management). If you don’t have a CRM or a DMS capable of exporting your customer list, making this a priority for the second half of 2021 is a good move. When coupled with an email marketing and text automation tool, creating and maintaining a robust CRM pays dividends multiple times over by allowing you to communicate with existing customers in real time, informing them of service promotions or other incentives. And if you DO happen to have good inventory on a particular model, you may be in a unique position to sell quickly to a captive audience.
Once you have a system in place to capture and nurture those contacts, consider driving more people to sign up to join your list. Be creative by creating a “wait list” for customers to sign up to be informed when new inventory arrives you can have them sold by the time they hit the floor.
Don’t Stop Spending If you decide to completely stop your advertising programs during slow times, remember that there is always a competitor out there who is maintaining some level of spend to make sure that their name is the first one found when customers are searching. You should definitely cut down your ad programs from your usual peak spending highs, but make sure you maintain a presence to keep your dealership in the spotlight. You can stop video ads, banner ads and even social ads during this time, but consider keeping some budget in the Google network, either utilizing Search ads or Local ads. These ad types appear when someone is specifically searching for you or products you provide so this tactic allows you to be present when a potential customer is showing some intent to find you. Best of all, if they don’t click, you don’t pay.
It is important to spend any “down time” preparing for when inventory starts to arrive because this forced shift in seasons won’t last forever. If you are proactive now, you won’t be scrambling to move late-arriving inventory before selling season is completely over.
As a business, how likely is it that potential customers will come through your door if there’s no way for them to know if you exist? The whole point of an online presence and digital business listings is to entice customers into your showroom so you can convert them to paying customers rather than just browsers online. Anything else is just a waste of time.
Nothing is more frustrating as a customer than finding out that you have been given the wrong information about where a business is located. As a customer, how likely are you to give this company your business? Not very. In fact, according to Placeable, 73% of consumers stated that they lose trust in a brand when the online listing shows incorrect information.
1. Missing hours of operation information can be a dealbreaker
There are many things that people look for in listings, whether they are looking at that search engine on a PC or on a mobile device. The top piece of information that most people look for is the hours of operation, especially with mobile searchers who are highly likely to visit a business within 24 hours of searching..
In fact, in a study conducted by local data aggregator Localeze, hours of operation were noted as the most helpful feature in selecting a business during local search. 76% of respondent reporting that they expect this information when searching and 61% believe that it is a feature that helps them to select a business.
Even if people are new to your dealership, it doesn’t give people a good impression if the business hours are not listed and they don’t know that it’s only open from 11 a.m-6p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. Imagine that potential customer who is ready to spend their money on a fancy new zero-turn mower, but shows up on Monday at noon only to find it closed. That customer is likely going to do another search on a mobile phone to find a different store and spend their money there.
2.You can’t spell NAP data (and score a citation) without an A(ddress)
While most people would assume that the number one reason people do a search online is for the address or location of a business, the address is actually behind hours of operation as the second most desired information. But, of course, the whole point of being in business is to make money doing what you love or selling what you love. And that happens by attracting foot traffic and increasing customer base.
It bears repeating that if a business address is incorrect on listing sites such as Google or Bing, then customers will not be crossing the threshold. A simple thing such as the wrong number on a street address, or even the wrong town, can mean that a customer cannot find you. The US Postal Service relies on a complex system of checks to verify and standardize addresses, and many of the search engines will default to the USPS for correct mailing addresses.
What this means for the average dealership is that unless a business is in an established location, getting the correct address on their listing means that both the address from City Hall and the information on USPS must be consistent. If USPS doesn’t recognize that address, then a business owner must contact them to verify their new address and get that information updated on USPS’s online database.
3. Local searchers are mobile creatures
According to Localeze, mobile-phone-based searches drive in-store purchases with more than 75% of searches ending in a purchase—if a business has their listing details correct. Now if half of the people searching for a business listing on a local search engine, such as Google Local/Maps, can’t find the store’s business listing details, then the business is going to lose 100% of their business.
For ease of use for potential customers, some of those details need to be as readily available as possible in a mobile-friendly manner. This can be accomplished with a responsive website that supports cellphone and tablet-specific versions. Is your website responsive? We can help.
4. Updated, accurate websites still serve as a first impression
At the same time, more than 60% of searches on PC platforms have a similar chance of ending in a purchase. While mobile searches are becoming more of a standard in where a customer searches, you can’t discount the power of a consistent and accurate listing that is reflective of the business website.
Any listing should be linked to the business’s website and feature the exact same information, but more of it. While a website should be enough to entice a customer to visit or buy, if those inconsistencies exist, then trust issues may arise in a business’s practices before a customer ever crosses their threshold.
5. Local searchers mix it up across multiple devices, situations and times
People who search for listings are doing it in many more ways than when the Internet first coalesced into existence about two decades ago. In that time, we went from working on desktops to laptops to PDAs to Blackberries to Apples to tablets—and in each iteration, the methods of search have changed.
However, that has slowed over the last five years or so as web developers realize that they need to be smarter. Rather than designing three different sites for three different platforms, they have created websites that are scalable to the search device. And that has been helped along by the proliferation of types of devices in use everyday.
According to Pew Research Center, In 2015, smartphone ownership in America was at 68%, with tablet and computer ownership at 45%. Statista says that almost half of American adults use their smartphones the most to search for local information online, the other half being split between computers (40%) and tablets (11%). According to Localeze, like the types of devices used, what we are searching for varies by the time of day and device. Entertainment is searched for during work hours on computers, restaurants during evening using phones and health/fitness evening using tablets.
The most important part of those mobile searches is accuracy. If someone cannot find your business in a local search or find inaccurate results whilst out and about, then your business has lost the chance for that browser to become a customer. So having those business listings correct in all of the device formats is a must as we, and our technology, continue to evolve in the way we interact with local businesses.
6. Local search results are trusted sources of information
Last but certainly not least is the fact that local search results are considered the most trustworthy. In a study by Neustar, it was determined that these searches, such as “zero turn mowers Batavia, NY”, are what people do the most since they put that trust in local business more than big box, big website stores.
Local searches lend themselves to instant gratification and that interaction between browser and salesperson will convert that browser from someone who might get just the minimum to a loyal customer – a customer who brings their equipment back in time and time again for parts, service and repair. Acquiring a customer is a big deal. And local search visibility is the first step to earning that business.
Those interactions are what lead people to local searches and the absolute necessity of getting your listings correct. Trust leads to loyalty, which leads to more business, which leads to happy customers and business owners.
And it all starts with that correct business listing in that customer’s local search.
