Google My Business with Splash Social Marketing's Jacquie Peterson

0:00
Welcome to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. I'm Josh Elledge, founder and CEO of up my influence.com. We turn entrepreneurs into media celebrities, grow their authority, and help them build partnerships with top influencers. We believe that every person has a unique message that can positively impact the world. stick around to the end of the show, where I'll reveal how you can be our next guest on one of the fastest growing daily inspiration podcasts on the planet in 15 to 20 minutes. Let's go. All right, Jacquie Peterson, you are the founder and CEO of Splash Social Marketing and you're in Clermont, not too far away from where I am. As we're recording this. We have a hurricane that's bearing down on us. We're the skies are still looking really nice right now. But within a couple of few days, it'll be all the little bit different. And we're right now I don't know if you've been to Publix, and seen store shelves.

1:01
Yeah, there's nothing there. There's no bread. There's no water. But we have gas up all four cars here. And

1:07
it's good for you. All right? Well, by the time someone's listening to this conversation, this will be a long gone and long happened. And so hopefully we're still this, this will not be a time capsule of that time that that we were still alive. And we could joke about that because we're Floridians.

1:27
We've been in business for 10 years, we've been through quite a few hurricanes. And the great thing about us is as soon as we get power, we're back up back up and running and able to help out our clients. So good for us.

1:38
So talk to me, one thing that we were talking about before we started the interview is Java. So you do a lot of social media consulting, you work with some of your clients, you work with some big car dealerships, a lot of local businesses that right?

1:52
Yes, absolutely. Our heart is really with the small mom and pop businesses where we can really come in and make a difference and help them compete. What's really now a level playing field with the larger companies. But we do also work with you know, I've I've clients in Australia and UK and we've worked with bigger companies like ups and Ford, but our our hearts really are with a small local business.

2:15
Yeah. So one thing that I want to talk about with you, just because you had mentioned this, I'm like, Oh my gosh, seriously, I cannot tell you how many people are missing. This. This is it's such This is a layup. As far as free advertising and establishing some authority that is going to go into when a consumer is searching for you. They are going to immediately see this. And if you don't have this put together, you are leaving money on the table. And Jacquie, that is Google My Business. Can you give me an overview of what Google My Business is?

2:57
global my business replaced Google Hangouts. Which was, Google tried to compete with Facebook, it was a great product. But everybody was always already well entrenched in Facebook. So Google made lots of changes and eventually phased out Google Plus Google and made Google My Business. And it's phenomenal. I'm amazed at how many people are missing. The opportunity is, as you said, it's absolutely free advertising. You literally can just type in Google My Business, and log in to find your business, you claim your listing, and then there's a ton of information you put in all about your business. And the key for Google My Business is to go back on a regular basis, and see if there are any new parameters. Now here at splash. We're in all the time so we will see changes Oh, look, they just added a parameter for if you're a woman lead business or if it's a veteran owned business. This is huge because one of the main points of social marketing is that you Want to engage and connect with customers and potential customers. So they say, Well, I really like working with veterans or I really like promoting and supporting women owned businesses, for you to be able to just tick that off. It's huge, really, it helps tremendously. But Google doesn't announce when they're going to make these changes. So you need to go in and play around every now and then. And make sure that your listing is as as robust as it can be. Now they know it's going to have stuff put in there from customers. So customers when they post images, and they tag that they're at your location, those can show on your Google My Business Page. But as the business owner, you can also make sure that you're taking photos and uploading to the page. And one of the biggest things that came out was a few months ago called Google posts, and it's actually lets you create an ad and They show in Google Maps and Google search. It stays up for seven days. And then it expires. And you could put a new ad up. But it's just like Google paid advertising, but you don't have to pay. So when you think about it, when people are going on when they're looking on their phones, predominantly, they're on search, or they're on maps. And this is where those free ads are going to show. And because so few people are utilizing it. The businesses that do are way above the curve and just out in front of their competition.

5:34
That is amazing. I'm looking at this right now. So to someone who's listening to our conversation, here's what I want you to do open up your browser and go to business.google.com. And hopefully, you got your business in there already. If not, you need to fix that. So make sure you do that. Now. Google is going to want you to verify your address and the way that they do that is when you put in your address. They're going to send you a postcard is that right sound all familiar Jackie, you're more of an expert on AT

6:04
now. Sometimes they give you an option where they will actually let you verify over the phone. I honestly don't know why sometimes that's an option. But normally it is a postcard. It takes five to seven days to get to the location. It looks like garbage. It looks like a little postcard flyer that you get to a lot of businesses, it just gets dumped into the mail. When you verify, make sure whoever is getting your mail, make sure you tell them to look out for this postcard that will have your verification. If you throw it out, you just ask them to send you another card. It's not a big deal, but it just prolongs the process. But yes, and something else that a lot of people don't have. We have so many people that now work as freelancers or solo printers, they're working out of their home, and they say they don't want their home business to be their home address to be published on Google. You can use a p o box at UPS or the post office or number of different stores, most of them will allow you to use their street address. That is a way you can get around having to publish your home address, you can use the post office street address and still get verified.

7:15
Yeah. So here I am, I'm actually in my Google My Business profile for the on the admin on the back end side. So I see this where you can create posts, and they have four different categories. You can create a post about what's new, and create an event an offer, or you can highlight a product. This is incredible. And Jackie one more time on like, if I do this, where does this show up

7:42
in search and maps, so it looks just like a paid ad. But it's in search and maps. And it will it doesn't let you target nearly as specifically as you do with Google AdWords or Facebook ad. But it will be there. Google send us there. I'll go Read them. So hopefully it is showing to the people that you want to reach. And it stays up for seven days, you don't have to worry about taking it down, it'll go away. Here's another tip, Google will send out an email saying your Google post is about to expire. I get a lot of phone calls from people saying what happened to my Google account? It's expiring, no, that's just that post that you made. But it's a great reminder that you can go in and put another another post up. So you know, restaurants it's great to let people know about special menus or your special products or any any number of things. And they do when they first came out, they really tried to focus on events and products, but you can now you see one of the options is add update. So you really can put anything out there but I do think that the best track traffic is on events and special offers are special.

8:53
Yeah, for sure. And you could add a photo or a video. So I mean, you could even just you know One thing I'm going to do right now after her call, is I'm just going to record a video and put it on there, you know me like waving and like, you know, just saying, hey, thanks so much for checking out my influence. You know, here's who we are. Here's what we do

9:13
we use you know, I always tell people, there's no reason why you don't always have something up there. Now I I'm doing it for so many businesses, I often neglect my own, which I think a lot of us tend to do. But one of the things that were we got a lot of great traction, we actually won Best web design for South Lake County in 2019. So when we got our award, that was a great way to get it out there and let everybody in the local area know have a special commendation that we got.

9:43
Yeah, for sure. Well, this is really great. And now another thing they just added and I see it, it's listed under beta right now. But you got also where you can list all your products. Well, that's cool, more free stuff and

10:00
And if the insights and the analytics that you get from this page are huge, they will let you know actually, not only the days of the week where you get the most phone calls and the times of day, but it will tell you the time of day where you have the most foot traffic into your business. So maybe realized, Hey, you know what, I need more cashiers or more servers this time of day. And people will typically ask, Well, how does Google know that? Because people walk in with their cell phones and Google knows when they're there. So it really it not only with the reviews and all the information, the photos to let people get excited and say, Wow, that looks like a great place I want to try out for the business owner. It really lets you manage and say okay, this people are our phone times we get the most calls on Mondays and Thursdays. Let's make sure we have people here to answer the phones or we get the most foot traffic on over the weekends. Let's make sure we're properly staffed. So it's a very, very useful tool.

10:58
Yeah, you know, I So I like this both from a visibility and from a, you know, from an admin standpoint. But honestly, I'm excited about this from an authority standpoint. So if people want to know about you, and then all of a sudden they're searching for your business, and they see this whole right hand panel, that's all about your business has got photos, it's got your products and services, it's got content. It's these are all trust indicators. And consumers are absolutely searching for these things to find out if they should do business with you or not.

11:35
Absolutely. And that's the best thing about social marketing, as I said earlier, is that ability to really engage with the people that are going to be a good fit for your business. And when you might meet somebody face to face networking or so but the first thing they're going to do is they're going to go home and they're going to pull up your online presence. They're going to see take the time to look and see you and when they see it. Just as you sit on this right hand side, all that content, they know Wow, this is an active, relevant business. This is somebody who is out there really doing what they say they're doing. This is somebody that I want to get to know more and possibly do business with.

12:15
Yeah. Awesome. Well, Jacquie Peterson, thank you so much for this conversation. Again, you're the founder and CEO of Splash Social Marketing, on the web at Splash Social Marketing.com. You would be a good person to call in just regards to all things Google My Business, I think, addition to you know, you do other social media management stuff, but boy, what a what a lay up here. And of course, I would imagine you do, you could do management of people's Google business profile and make sure that it's loaded up with good stuff so that they're getting those sales.

12:52 We provide either training so that people can run off and be successful with it themselves or we manage it for them on a daily basis.

13:00
I love it. Jacquie, thank you so much.

13:02
Thank you. Stay safe during the storm storm.

13:07
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