I don’t know any business who isn’t interested in getting their phone to ring more with new patient leads. And one of the EASIEST ways I have found to do just that, without spending ANY money or any more money on marketing, is by optimizing the Google Business Listing.
Now, being transparent, I optimize Google Business Listings for my clients as part of their SEO strategy so they do have a monetary investment in marketing but this could be done internally if you have a tech-savvy and marketing savvy team member.
GOOGLE OPTIMIZATION RESULTS
Below are a few highlights of some of the results I have achieved for my clients JUST by focusing on their Google Business Listing. Results are looking at 30 days metrics or averages.
- Massage Spa in Manhattan
(initially optimized in February 2018 and these are the results from before to after with results holding monthly for almost 2 years)- 398% increase in the number of times their listing was shown in Google searches (from 20,361 to over 110,000)
- 84% increase in phone calls
- 153% increase in traffic to website
- Dermatologist in Long Island
(client opened a new practice in Long Island as a single practitioner and below are current metrics which are up from zero)- 8,901 times the listing has shown in Google results
- 279 visits to the website from the listing
- 299 phone calls from the listing
- Dentist in downtown Seattle
- 66% increase in the number of times the listing has shown in Google results
- 49% increase in phone calls from listing
A recent study of 73,000 online business location listings found that nearly half of them are missing crucial pieces of information. At the end of the day, incorrect or missing information isn’t just impacting patient trust, it’s impacting your practice!
What is Google My Business?
Google My Business (also known as GMB) is a free business listing on Google that enables your company to manage their online presence across Google including Search and Maps. It’s a core element of local SEO.
If you verify your listing and optimize all of the features you can help both existing patients and potential patients find your practice, tell them your story and provide them with easy ways to contact your practice to schedule an appointment.
It’s an all-inclusive platform to monitor and reply to patient reviews, add photos, accept bookings, message with patients directly, answer patient questions, promote offers and events, showcase treatments, gain insights on how and where people are searching for you and share updates about your practice.
What is it Useful For?
When patients search online using localized keywords or terms on Google, like in the example above, they’re presented with multiple local business results – all tailored to the search term used. And these searches happen in more places than you think such as
- Google app search on mobile devices
- Google search in browser on mobile or desktop
- Google maps on mobile or desktop browser
- Google maps app
- Google Home voice search
- Google assistance voice search
Depending upon on where they’re searching, the patient will see local pack results, Google Maps results or even have the local pack results read to them by a Google Assistant.
Google My Business is most useful for getting you in front of existing and potential patients!
Statistics You Need to Know
- 94% of all mobile and tablet search traffic comes from Google
- Over 63% of all searches are performed using Google
- 87% of smartphone owners use a search engine at least once per day
- 49% of businesses receive more than 1,000 views of their Google Listing on search per month
- A typical business gets 59 actions from their Google Listing every month
- Businesses with more than 100 images get 713% more discovery searches (non-brand name related) than the average business
- Businesses with more than 100 images get 520% more calls than the average business (most local businesses only have 11 photos on their listing)
- Voice queries have increased 3400% since 2008
- 60% of clicks go to the top 3 websites in search results
How to Get More Leads from Your Google Business Listing
Your Google Business Listing is one of the MOST important and useful tools in your marketing arsenal. But it’s not going to be extremely effective as a lead generation tool if all you do is verify it.
Google My Business is getting more sophisticated, continually having new features added and no longer simply relies on the information you provide to building your listing. In addition to information you add to the listing, Google also uses User-generated Content (UGC) to populate your Google Listing, including subjective attributes, photos and Questions & Answers, which means if you aren’t populating the information then someone else, including your competition, can.
Top Features to Focus On
Google has added a lot of amazing features for businesses to use to enhance and optimize their Google Listing. The top features I recommend you focus on include:
- Google Reviews
Generating quality reviews and responding to them has shown to significantly impact rankings and clickthrough rates. Put a strategy in place to generate 2-3 new, positive reviews every month and then respond to those reviews. - Google Posts
Google now offers the ability to post different types of information to your listing. Your business category determines what types of posts are available for your listing. My favorite is utilizing Offer posts as you can specify how long they show on the listing and a good offer will attract more attention and clicks.
- Basic Information
Make sure the basic information about your business correct such as website URL, phone number, business name, hours, attributes and business description. - Google Messages
Most businesses don’t enable this feature. Stand out by making it easier for people to contact you via messaging. In order to turn this on you’ll need to manage the listing from the GMB app on a mobile device. - Photos & Videos
It’s clear that photos make an impact on the engagement your listing gets. Upload 2-3 photos per photo category and 1-2 videos to start. At least once per quarter add new photos and videos to the listing. Patient testimonial videos are a great type of video to add to the listing.
- Questions & Answers
The Q&A section of the listing is one of the main user-generated content sections of the listings. Anyone can post questions and answer them. It’s important to monitor this section to ensure that YOU are answering questions about your practice and not someone else. You can also have someone else ask specific questions and then answer them similar to an FAQ page you’d put on your website.
FINAL THOUGHTS.
Setting up and verifying your Google Business Listing is just the start of getting the most out of this listing and increasing visibility on Google.
Google My Business is not going away anytime soon and considering that Google continues to add new features, it’s clear that this listing is becoming even more important for marketing your practice and generating new patient leads.
Additionally, if you have a marketing company who is “managing” your Google Listing find out exactly what they do to manage your listing. Most companies make sure that your basic information is correct and stays correct but they do nothing in regards to the majority of the features. And it’s these other features that make the biggest impact on getting in front of more potential patients and getting more leads.
Check out my article on Google Business Listing – New Features You Need to Know for how to optimize all the features of your Google Listing.