Marketing Mondays: Google My Business and Yelp
Over the past few weeks, we’ve covered Creating a Website, Facebook Ads, Social Platforms, Google Ads, and more. This week, we are going to talk about Google My Business, Yelp, and suggestions for responding to customer reviews.
When you go to Google and type in a business name, most likely, this is what you’re going to see:
Placing your efforts towards creating and maintaining an updated Google My Business account is very important. This is one of the first places your customers are going to come in contact with your business, and you want your information to be accurate and up to date.
To get started, go to https://www.google.com/business/
In the top right corner, click “Manage Now”
You will be asked to sign into your Google account
You will then need to choose your business category, for example, Mobile Defenders’ category is “Electronic Parts Supplier.”
Next, you need to add your business information and choose a verification method. There are several ways you can do this, through email, phone, mail, and more. This is Google’s way of making sure you’re a legitimate business and providing the correct information.
Finally, you need to finish filling out the information on your Business page. This includes special hours, info, business description, open date, photos, and more. This is going to help you stand out on Google.
We recommend adding photos of both the inside and the outside of your store, along with photos of your services, employees, and more. For example, these are some of the photos we have on our Google My Business page.
At this time, you will also need to choose a profile photo, this should be a photo of your logo so you can develop brand recognition. Having an updated Google My Business page is crucial when running a business. You want to make sure your customers have access to accurate and updated information about your business.
If you don’t have a Yelp Business account already, we highly recommend you create one. Yelp helps customers find local businesses. It also gives your customers another outlet to leave reviews and photos of your services.
To create your account go to https://biz.yelp.ca/
Enter your business name and address. If your business is on Yelp, you have the option to “claim your business.” If your business is not on Yelp, click “Add Your Business.”
It will then ask you to create a business owner account, where you need to fill out all of your personal information along with your business address, services, and more.
Similar to Google My Business, make sure that all of your information is correct on your Yelp page.
Once you’ve input all of your information, your account is ready!
Next, you’ll need reviews. Once you have your account(s) set up, encourage your customers to leave a review after every repair. You can incorporate this into a conversation when they come to pick up their device, “I hope you have a great day! Please don’t forget to leave us a review on Google or Yelp. It takes a minute or less.” Once you start getting reviews on your Google and Yelp business pages, we recommend you to respond to every single one, good or bad.
When responding to bad reviews, it is best to respond quickly (within 24 hours). This is important because you are showing the customer that you care about their experience with your business.
Here are a few sample responses for negative reviews:
Review:
John Snow: “Very rude staff, over-priced phones, and bad repair. Do not go to this business if you want your phone repaired! They use cheap parts for your replacement, my phone broke again within two weeks!”
Response:
Hi John, I wanted to take the time to apologize for your negative experience at our business. We take feedback very seriously and want to make sure all of our customers are satisfied with their repairs. We would like to get more details about your visit. If you could please contact our General Manager, Bill Smith at 555-555-5555 or [email protected] at your earliest convenience, that would be greatly appreciated. We hope to hear from you soon.
Review:
Mike Smith: “I took my phone here for a replacement screen since I broke it, the repair took 30 minutes longer then they had quoted me. Once I got my phone back it seemed that there were two small hairline cracks at the bottom of the screen. Very disappointed with my repair from this location.”
Response:
Hi Mike, thank you for taking the time to give us your feedback. We are so sorry that you experienced this; that was not our intention. One of our main goals as a business is to ensure that all of our customers are satisfied with their device repairs. If you could please contact our General Manager, Bill Smith at 555-555-5555 or [email protected] at your earliest convenience, that would be greatly appreciated. We hope to hear from you soon!
When responding to customers, you want to be polite, genuine, sympathetic, and consultative. If they are expressing dissatisfaction with an element of your business, make sure to give them your general manager's contact information so they feel like they can get to the source of the problem if needed. This shows them that you care and want to help them solve the problem.
Having both a Google and Yelp business account is vital when starting a business. This allows your customers to search, view, and review your services, potentially leading to more customers!
After reading this blog, we hope you’re able to better understand the importance of Google My Business and Yelp! f you have any specific topics you would like us to cover in our Marketing Monday’s series, please email [email protected].
