Chasing Financial Freedom
Chasing Financial Freedom
Ep 299 | 5 Proven Techniques to Supercharge Your Business with Optimized Google Profiles
Unlock the secrets to elevating your business with Marilyn Jenkins, the digital marketing powerhouse behind MJ Media Group and Law Marketing Zone. Join us as Marilyn, who has been a trailblazer in digital marketing since 1998, demystifies the complexities of Google Business Profiles. Learn how to overcome common misconceptions, the critical importance of regular updates, and the steps to claim and verify your profile effectively. Marilyn shares real-world examples and practical advice on maintaining accurate business information and steering clear of pitfalls like inappropriate content that could get you flagged.
Discover how to turbocharge your business’s visibility and revenue, especially if you’re operating in multiple states. Marilyn unveils strategies like using QR codes to acquire reviews and leveraging consistent updates to keep your profile vibrant and engaging. Hear a compelling case study about a family law attorney who saw a dramatic increase in phone calls and revenue through optimized Google Business Profiles. Tune in to gain invaluable tips on managing your profile, ensuring it stands out from the competition, and maximizing its potential to drive business growth.
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Chasing Financial Freedom podcast. Hope you guys are having a great day. Today on the podcast we have Marilyn Jenkins. She's the CEO of MJ Media Group and Law Marketing Zone. She helps local businesses harness the power of Google to grow their business. So this is gonna be a cool conversation because, guys I'll be open and honest I've struggled with Google and I love to be able to pick Marilyn's brain and see what she comes up with. So this will be fun. So, marilyn, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1:You're more than welcome and thank you for a little bit of the wait, for coming on the show and looking forward to having a conversation with you.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Let's do it Awesome.
Speaker 2:So before we get into, how you're helping businesses with Google and so forth. Can you give the listeners a little bit of your background? Absolutely, I've been in digital marketing since about 1998, which that ages me really well for a while and then got back in. I love helping people build their online presence. So I started with building websites for business friends and then the next thing was they were like now we have a website, now how do we get traffic to it? So it's been a growth process like that in helping people, and that's my mission is to help people grow their business and cost effectively.
Speaker 2:And when Google Places came out, that was one of the things that we transitioned to to start adding to everybody's digital briefcase, if you will, and it's just been a growth process from there. In 2018, I started supermarketing to attorneys because we had some really great ads paid ads, results for our attorneys, and so service-based businesses, attorneys, local businesses work really well and anybody that's local needs their Google business profile. But what I found was a lot of people couldn't afford to outsource their marketing, but it's such an important tool. I wrote a book about the Google Business Profile Training Guide because I believe it's integral, if you're a local business, to be there. It's a free tool from Google and it's just an amazing way of getting what you want from Google.
Speaker 1:I know I've struggled with Google, so I've probably got plenty of questions to ask from the business perspective. But before we go into my stuff, what would you say the top three things that you face with your new clients when they come into the space? Are they struggling? Just the concept of using Google and Google? Have they changed the name? Is it Google my Business or Google Business? Is that correct?
Speaker 2:It used to be Google my Business and it's. Google Business Profile now. So every time they do a new iteration they change the name Google Places. Was it like eight iterations ago? The biggest struggle that I have when people come and they want to talk about their Google Business Profile, they are thinking Google my Business and it's only a place to store reviews.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And that it is so much more than that. But that's what a lot of people still have that misnomer in their head, because Google does search updates like a hundred times a year, so it's like people just go blind to it. I'm running my business, I don't have time to keep up with that. So I think it's explaining, getting them to understand the absolute necessity of having it, updating it and addressing it as often as possible, like once a week, and it takes 10 minutes a week. So it's getting that importance across to them and getting them to see. And then it's like a light bulb goes off because so many business owners remember the yellow pages and so many don't. If you take and think about, google imported the yellow pages to start Google Place and so everybody who had a listing has a Google business profile and then, as new businesses come in, they may have it and they may not. So it's getting you to take action on it.
Speaker 1:The action part. That's the hard. So can we back up and just start. You know from the beginning, let's say you do not have a Google business profile at all.
Speaker 2:Then I would say do you? Maybe you don't know. If you do, so what I would suggest is you go to Google and you type in your actual business name.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And if it comes up in a little box, you have one. There'll be a link there to claim this profile, claim it and get started verifying it. So with Google, my business, the verification was a postcard. They would mail a postcard with a special code on it and then you verify it. Now it's completely different. There are videos. There are so many different ways of verifying it. So, number one you claim it, you fill it out with your basic information and then you verify it. Once you verify it, then you can do all the other things like add photos, add videos, add services and that sort of thing. So it's really the one of the biggest problems was is it could have been that you had, maybe you put one together, say, raise Plumbing in Charlotte, north Carolina. If your business name isn't Raise Plumbing in Charlotte, North Carolina, you'll get that taken down.
Speaker 2:Your business name needs to be the actual business name, not seeded with keywords.
Speaker 1:So I guess the other piece of it is I know from our standpoint our real estate side of the business. When we started putting items up on our profile, we got flagged a lot of times and it was our own. So we're an affordable housing developer and when we would put something up about what we were doing on our developments they flagged us because they thought we were soliciting people and I'm like no, it's our own work and that's been downhill for us because I haven't spent a lot of time.
Speaker 1:So I guess for people out there that are not really spending enough time on their profile, what are three things we should actually do and to refresh it and be able to utilize it properly.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so, because of the big changes and they're doing changes consistently on it and the Google business profile is one place you can actually talk to a real person at Google. So if you have a struggle you can. The first thing I would do is I would check and make sure the name is exactly the name of the business, the company, your address is complete, your phone number is complete and then the next step is your categories. Ok, they used to be three, choice of three categories. I believe it's seven now, and so, in priority order of what's important. Okay, those categories are telling Google what searches you should come up in. Then you can add services and products. So if you're selling products, if you're selling services, it could be that if you were to list that now as maybe a post. So you have to think about Google as not social media, but Google is the number one search engine in the world, right? They're there because of a good user experience. So if what you're doing is feeding Google more and more information about your business and keeping your data updated, then you are interested in the user experience as well. You're interested in giving them a better user experience, so they will give you more weight in the ranking.
Speaker 2:So, reviews obviously you want to get reviews. You want to reply to all of those reviews. So the most important are going to be obviously, name, address and phone number. We relate to that as the NAP and your categories. Those are huge. From there, that's your three, but there's a lot of different things you can do in there Photos, videos, posts, the questions and answers. That's another one that people don't realize. Every business has an FAQ, right? So if you don't have any questions and answers on your Google business profile, go and put one in every week and that way you're telling Google the types of people that you want to appeal to and the searches you should be for.
Speaker 1:So I want to step into another phases. Let's say we've got that profile set up and we're doing consistently cleaning it up, making sure we're maintaining it. What are some tips and tricks that we would actually want to do? Are you saying daily? It takes about 10 minutes? Should we be working with the profile on a daily basis or weekly?
Speaker 2:Weekly Weekly is fine because you think about this. Ok, if you haven't gone into your V Google business profile in a long time, your competition probably hasn't either. So if you start doing a little update every week and think about, they have a post feature now. So if you have a blog on your website or you're doing any type of social media type posts about your business, you can put them on your Google business profile. Use your keywords, make sure it's keyword rich and the more you tell Google, the more they understand what searches you should come from be displayed in.
Speaker 1:So do you have to physically put the post? So let's say I've got a reels from Facebook or from Instagram. Can I copy the link and move it over, or does it have to be natively posted to the profile?
Speaker 2:You should natively post it.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And then the next really important thing are citations. So what Google looks at is all the information you put on your Google business profile. So now they know about you and you're updating them weekly with something simple. It could be that you just reply to a couple of reviews, that's just something. And then your hours of operation. They're incredibly important and when people are out there in a consumer mode and they are searching on their phone for something, it'll actually tell them how recently you updated your hours of operation. So with a holiday period coming up, it's super, incredible, incredibly important that you have your hours of operation updated.
Speaker 2:I had a client that came to me and says I don't know what's going on, but our foot traffic is just virtually nothing on Tuesdays, when it's always been Tuesdays, a good day. We got to check in his Google Business profile and it shows that he's closed on Tuesday. Now he doesn't remember ever changing that. So when we changed that, within two Tuesdays his foot traffic was back to normal. So updating it is super important.
Speaker 2:Citations are links in directories to your website Any kind of local directory, any niche directory, any of that kind of thing If you have the exact same name, address and phone number and you're listed in things I mean like CitySearch and like Yelp and all of the big ones, you will get more relevancy in the Google search because more people are linking to you. So it's all again that big web of data, and Google says, okay, ryan's plumbing is obviously very important because he's got, you know, 30 backlinks and he keeps updating his Google business profile. So all of those things play a role in it and that's why I say I wrote the book. You cannot just grab the book, grab the checklist and make sure you're getting everything filled out, but make a note every I don't know what's your admin day Monday, wednesday, friday pick a day, spend 10 minutes and do something on your Google business profile.
Speaker 1:That's going to help you in the long run? Does your book walk you through the priorities? So if you're doing that once a week, you can take the top priority and just work your way down the list.
Speaker 2:Exactly it does.
Speaker 1:Okay, I will have to check your book out because, I'll be honest, ours is sitting out there. It's doing nothing. I know it is.
Speaker 2:I'm just transparent as I possibly can be and the interesting part is, if it say you, you didn't claim yours and it's sitting out there and your competition didn't claim theirs, they could actually claim yours and put their phone number on mine's claimed we've got it up there.
Speaker 1:It just hasn't been I can't tell you. The last time I touched it it's been more than months. Yeah, I need to go. I need, I would have to go in and see what's going on with it.
Speaker 2:But and that's a really very user-friendly management portal on the Google business profile that's so much more user-friendly than even the one for Google my Business. When you open it up, it immediately tells you in the very middle of the screen what you need to do. If you haven't completed your profile, they've made it. You can get insights to see what people are using your profile for Are they clicking to call, are they getting directions, are they clicking to go to your website, all of those types of things and so you can get really fast feedback on how consumers are using your Google Business Profile.
Speaker 1:I got some work to do and a book to read. What type of benefits if we actually consistently updated the profile on a weekly basis. What are some benefits that we get from it?
Speaker 2:Long term. We've seen that you can get up to 4x return on investment or 4x more customers from your Google business profile than from paid ads.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:So, because Google PPC is quite expensive, there's also a lot of competition in it, where, when you think about your Google business profile and especially if you're, if you wanted to run like, say, local service ads in your area, those two are combined. Now Google has them connected together so you're going to get business from it. Think about every time you're a consumer, you're in a new town or maybe you're just in town for the afternoon and you decide you know what guys will you get a pizza. So you look up pizza on your phone, you get to that pretty part that has the map on it. That's what everybody looks at. Google says 50 to 80% of people click in the map pack. So if you're a consumer and you're doing it, your customers are doing it as well, and if you're on one of those top three, you're going to get those customers. If you're on the second page, as they say, where's the best place to hide a body? Page two of Google.
Speaker 1:But also to be realistic, the work and effort to get on that first page is probably a lot.
Speaker 2:It is a consistent effort. It is so there are. When it comes to citations, there are four big data aggregators that will then push you down into other directories, so that's something to take a look at, but it's worth it. In the end. What else can pay off and bring you customers for 10 minutes a week that costs you nothing.
Speaker 1:No, I agree, it's just a matter of time and effort and how consistent you are. No, I totally. It's just a matter of time and effort and how consistent you are. No, I totally agree with that. I'm just trying to figure out over a period of time, what can it do. And then you talked about local business. Like for our entity, truevest, it's not a local business. We do business in multiple states, so how does an entity like that benefit from having a Google profile? How does an entity like that benefit?
Speaker 2:from having a Google profile. You will benefit just for having your information out there. As far as you spending 10 minutes a week on it and really focusing on it and growing it for local traffic is probably not going to be beneficial.
Speaker 1:If local traffic are not, if I'm not looking to find you and walk into your office. I want to be found by local homebuyers potentially, but we don't have an office in those places we build.
Speaker 2:So that would be a challenge. Yeah, Then what you would use it for is website traffic trying to get people to call you or go to your website.
Speaker 1:Okay, interesting.
Speaker 2:Do you publish your address on it or do you have your address turned off?
Speaker 1:No, the address is on.
Speaker 2:Okay, then you could still benefit from it, but being not interstate, but it would just be local.
Speaker 1:Okay, if you have your address, but you actually have multiple, you do business in multiple states. Does that affect it also? Because, that's, we have an address here in Arizona, but we do business in Kentucky and Indiana and Ohio?
Speaker 2:Do you have addresses in those other states?
Speaker 1:No, it's just our Arizona address.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now, if you had another office, you would have another Google business profile.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Because the Google business profile is designed for that local search. So if you have multiple offices, some home services will have multiple offices at multiple locations retail stores, restaurants you would have one for each location.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's probably where I've had the disconnect for a while is that we'd have to get a physical address or some type of address that we can add and create another profile. Okay, so let's talk about local businesses. How can they benefit by having an updated, consistently Google profile?
Speaker 2:Traffic. Now we, like I said whenever, consider when you're a consumer. What are you doing? 50 to 80% of the clicks go to the map pack. So what you want to do is you want to do everything in your power to get to the top of the map pack.
Speaker 2:In Google my Business the old iteration of it everyone assumed that the one with the most reviews would be number one. That is no longer true Now. If you've got 10 reviews and your competition has 130, well, they're probably going to be ahead of you just because of that. But if you are working to get the frequency of your reviews up, meaning you're getting reviews every week, make that a part of your business plan. If you have a service person that goes out and does a service, they need to have a QR code on a card. Or you leave a card for a QR code for them to go and leave your review. It should be.
Speaker 2:Reviews should be part of your business. Every business transaction needs to end with a request for a review. If you have under 10 reviews right now, I suggest going to your suppliers the people you do business with and asking them to give you a review of your character. So nowhere in the terms and services. Does it say that they have to be a customer? These are reviews, so they can be character reviews, whatever. You need to do that Now. If you have a database of people and you have not been doing asking for reviews, don't go ask everybody to do it right now, because what Google sees is you have no frequency. If, all of a sudden, you get 20 reviews in a week, they're going to block all of those. It needs to look natural, okay.
Speaker 1:Interesting. So foot traffic is going to be is the biggest win.
Speaker 2:And calls. They have the click to call button and that's a big winner there.
Speaker 1:And what are they so once they're consistently updating that profile, you're saying they're getting four time X, four X on versus pay-per-click ads. But what does it really do for their bottom line? You've probably got plenty of clients that have done pretty well. How does that over a period of time and I know it takes a while but what could they see to the bottom line by doing this consistently?
Speaker 2:One of our clients increased her phone calls by 42% over two months. Okay, just from her Google business profile that 42% over two months. Okay, just from her Google business profile. That 42% increased her caseload. She is a family law attorney and she was able to close I think it was six cases over those phone calls, because you can track those calls coming from Google and they'll tell you where they went. And it was direct cases. Now would she have gotten those cases otherwise? She's not the only family law attorney in her city. So you know six cases and an average caseload of five thousand dollars. You're talking thirty thousand dollars of revenue, so it can be directly contributed to it. If you sell online, you can, if you sell stuff on your website, but they can come to your store, but you can always also ask people whenever they come in how did you hear about us? And you'll start tracking where people are coming from that.
Speaker 1:I don't know the best way to describe that is the 10 minutes of time that you're putting into it and what it sounds like people are getting out of it. For a local business, it's a no brainbrainer. Why aren't more people doing this?
Speaker 2:I think people just didn't understand, or just don't yet understand, the power of it. Google puts these things out there, but they don't do a lot of education about it, right? And if you're not listening, if you're not in digital marketing, if you're a painter or a baker or a pizza place, you're not spending your time learning what Google's dropping new. You've got too much other stuff to do. So I think it's just people don't know the power of it and don't know the new details in it. So that's what my job is is to make sure how incredibly important it is for your business and for the future of your business. Now, we all were in the yellow pages, whether we liked it or not. Right, you were either, but you paid extra for bold or display or all of this kind of stuff. It's the same thing. It's there, it's listed. And if you need to keep tabs on it, what if you have a bad review that you didn't know because you haven't been checking your Google business profile?
Speaker 1:So Very true. A couple other questions as we get close to the end of this is one Are you I get back that up, back up and we'll we'll re ask that one from the standpoint of a small business that is, let's say, they're consistently doing this and they're focused on once a week, okay, and they're starting to see some traction. Are there other items within the profile that they should focus on that would help them? I don't want to say I guess escalate or push their profile higher a lot quicker.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would do. I would focus on the products and services section. Okay, and that is like a free form field, so you could choose services, name your service, put a photo of it, name that photo, the keyword for that service, so instead of it being image1902.jpg, it's whatever the service is in city, right? So you're telling Google right now this is what this is about and then write about the service using the appropriate keywords, but not dumping too many, that it doesn't make sense. Okay. So if you do, if you offer I don't know a plumber, do you plumbing in HVAC? Okay, what falls under that? Under HVAC, is it air conditioning, heating? Each of those are a different service, right? If you sell products, maybe you sell fencing or roofing products I don't know, I'm just spitballing here and each product can have a photo and a description.
Speaker 2:So what you're doing every time you add something to your Google business profile in the posts section, in the services section or product section, you're feeding more keywords, so you're giving Google more and more information. So now they giving Google more and more information. So now they're knowing more and more how many searches you should show up for and use those long tail keywords. And that's a digital marketing term that I'm sure you're familiar with but maybe your listeners aren't. A long tail keyword would be my service keyword in my city and say it like that when you reply to a review thank you for using our service in our city. Use your keyword. So we want to do that. And also make sure that your website has really good onsite SEO, because the link from your Google business profile to your website they will crawl that often to see any changes on your website and make sure that you've got all of that information, that they've got all that information. It gives them more weight. And then, of course, like I said, citations.
Speaker 1:I love it. So two questions to wrap it up and we'll get you off and get you out of. Here is one are you bringing on new clients? Yes, or working with new clients Okay yes. Or working with new clients Okay yes. Is there a specific type of business you're looking to work with, or is it just any business?
Speaker 2:Any local business, and we're just launching a new program called Google Maps Power Booster. Okay, and we've seen an increase of ranking of up to 12 positions in left in 60 days.
Speaker 2:So, it's pretty impressive what the case studies that we have out of it. If you are a local business that depends on local consumer traffic, we can help you. If you're a local business looking for business to business traffic, you still need to do it. We can, actually we can optimize your Google business profile for you. We can optimize your Google Business Profile for you and you would add people that are helping you as a manager, so you own the listing. That's hugely important to know, because we don't ever want to give someone your IP.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's great.
Speaker 2:And then where's the best place someone can reach out and work with you? You can find me at mjmediagroupco. You can get my book at maximizeyourcom.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'll put both links in the show notes so we can get people out there. Man, I'm missing the boat. I feel like I'm distant right now, but I'm really thinking about how we can make it work and it's.
Speaker 2:It feels overwhelming when you think about all the things that are in it. But if you just think, take it, look in the management portal. It is so clear and clean, so much better than it was in the past. And just start at the top on the left hand side and work your way through. Do something every week. You'll be doing 10x what your competition is doing.
Speaker 1:Interesting. I'm going to get your book and we're going to take a look at it, because we also have a lending side of the business where we don't have a physical location, but I do have an address that we use here in Arizona, so I don't, could that work? I mean, we don't, it's not physical, it's still remote, but I still have a physical address that we tie into the business. Can that work?
Speaker 2:If the physical, if the physical address makes sense and is valid, yes, you can do that. If you choose to now say you are a work from home, home services, something, and you say don't use my address, that's going to be a downfall, Okay, you can still rank eventually, but you're not playing the game that they like to play, which is for local businesses.
Speaker 1:Learned a lot. Thank you for coming on and explaining this and dumbing it down for me, because I think I missed the boat on it and I want to get your book and then be able to read it and see what I can actually do and start tackling this once a week.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. This has been a blast.
Speaker 1:You're more than welcome.
