So what’s this Google my Business all about?
Roz Chandler, a digital marketing expert and flower farmer talks you through the easy-to-follow steps of setting your cut flower business up on Google Maps and highlights how important this is for your cut flower farm. This is important for your search engine optimisation and therefore Google rankings and it’s a vital part of the visibility of the brand for your flower farm.
You will learn:
Connect with Roz Chandler:
Thank you for listening. I’d love it if you subscribed to the podcast and left a review or rating.
So what’s this Google my Business all about?
Roz Chandler, a digital marketing expert and flower farmer talks you through the easy-to-follow steps of setting your cut flower business up on Google Maps and highlights how important this is for your cut flower farm. This is important for your search engine optimisation and therefore Google rankings and it’s a vital part of the visibility of the brand for your flower farm.
You will learn:
Connect with Roz Chandler:
Thank you for listening. I’d love it if you subscribed to the podcast and left a review or rating.
Welcome to the Cut Flower Farming Growth and Profit In Your Business podcast. I'm your host, Roz Chandler, a flower farmer for over ten years and thirty years as a business owner marketing director. This podcast is for you if you're an ambitious flower farmer, and looking for hints and tips to grow your business, we'll be covering strategy, marketing tactics, pricing, social media, and upscaling your flower farm. So much more. I'm so excited to introduce you to my amazing guest speakers along the way. All of you will be at different points in your business. Our podcasts will take this into account. We look forward to joining you on your journey.
Hello, today we're going to be talking about Google My Business. And this is a really, really important thing you should do for your business. If for instance, you searched for us, Field Gate Flowers, you would see on the right-hand side of the page, our Google My Business. If you were searching for us in Milton Keynes, and you were looking for Field Gate Flowers and you were located in Milton Keynes, you would find us on a map. And that is a really good bit of real estate when you're talking about search engine optimisation, and probably one of the most important things you can do for your business.
So first of all, step one is to sign in to Google My Business. So you go to www.google.com/business to sign in. You need to sign-in with a pre-existing Google account, a Gmail account, or you can create a new one. If you've already signed in, skip ahead to step number two.
Then you need to add your business. Enter your business name. Sometimes this appears as a drop-down menu. And sometimes you just need to add your business.
Step number three is to enter your location. If you have a physical location that customers can visit, just select yes, then add your address. You may also be asked to put a position mark or move it around. And we had to do this because actually where it’s located, our postcode wasn't exactly where we were. So you can move it around, which is really important. Postcodes can cover six or seven properties and therefore you need to move it to exactly where you are.
Step number four, you need to fill in your contact information, obviously, you need to enter your business phone number, your website address, so customers can reach you. If you use a Facebook page instead of a website address, you can use that instead.
Step number five is you need to finish and manage your lead list and just check yes, if you'd like to receive updates of notification and then click finish. You'll then be asked to verify your business. So this is really important. So this is that somebody can't claim your business. It's important that you verify your own business. So what you need to do is sign into the account that you've already set up, click verify now and choose a way to verify. So postcode by mail is a default option. And it seems very old-fashioned, doesn't it? But most businesses have to accept the postcode by mail and you get a number on the Google card that comes in the post. It’s variable, how long it takes, but normally takes about two weeks. If your business is eligible for other methods, such as phone or email, choose one of those ones if you prefer. Like I say two weeks later, the card will arrive with a number on and you can go online and verify your location using that five-digit verification code that they've sent you.
So there you've claimed your business, then what? So the most important thing is to optimise your Google profile. So you've got this wonderful profile. Now that Google has given you a bit of their real estate, it's free, what not to do. So the first thing you do is fill out your whole profile and make sure you put as much detail in here as possible. Give Google as much information about your business as possible. It makes it easier for your searches to find your business. It improves your search ranking no end. So Google determines local ranking based on three factors and local ranking is becoming a really important factor of Google. Google determines it by relevance how well your listing matches a search by distance, how far your location is from the search or the searcher and prominence, how well known your businesses based on several other factors. So it's really important to use the right keywords and we've talked about that in another podcast. About defining your keywords to improve your relevance.
So for instance, Field Gate Flowers is a wedding florist and it's also a funeral florist and it also does DIY buckets and bouquets and also online courses. So we would have different pockets of keywords for each of our products and services. So you need to start thinking about that our Google My Business predominantly drives our wedding and funeral business. And they're the keywords that we use.
We actually have three Google My Business accounts. We have one for Milton Keynes for funeral flowers because we have a separate website for that. It’s called Milton Keynes Funeral flowers and is registered here, it's an address. We also have a business around Field Gate Flowers, which is predominantly a wedding florist. And then we have another location, which is our administration office in Northhampton, which helps us because it's twelve miles from our location here in Milton Keynes, so it covers two locations really well. Obviously, we've set up another company for our online courses and we'll be looking at doing more Google My Business. Honestly, I can't stress enough how important it is to get this right.
Then you need to get together your best images and you need to start using them. You could use your logo, you know, for your brand. You can use lots of images and you can upload them. You know, if you've done a professional brand shoot, use those. It's really important to get some really good ones. You can also use some video too. You can post news updates and special offers. That's really important. So if you're running, I don't know, a wreath-making course at Christmas, or you've got some special offers on Mother's Day, you can add these offers to Google My Business. This starts to tell a story really, that Google My Business is a living breathing part of search engine optimisation. It isn't something you can do and that you can leave, you need to be constantly updating it. So you can also add special features and attributes in Google business accounts. So things like your opening hours, or your service offering, product catalogues, anything you can think of, add them as special features.
And perhaps one of the most important things you can do is encourage customers to leave reviews. People trust other people more than they trust you. A good review can be a deciding factor that tips prospective customers into your favour and can also improve your Google rankings. So it's important to get Google reviews, the best time to ask for a review is after a customer’s had a great experience. So we do it after we've delivered wedding flowers. We ask the bride a couple of weeks later. We go back and say, hope you had a lovely day one, if it's at all possible for you you to leave a Google My Business review, and we give them a link to it. And that helps our Google rankings. Now, you can build trust with reviews. And it's really, really important to build trust and positive interactions, of course, build loyalty. But remember to answer them. Remember when someone's put a lovely review about you, you've delivered some amazing Mother's Day flowers. They've said how wonderful they are, to thank them for their review. It's really important. This goes for negative reviews as well. Not everybody's perfect. So don't ignore them. Turn things around by listening to them and addressing the issues they’ve raised. Even if some of it is a little bit unfair. And sometimes we feel that. But be honest, recognise that's their point of view, and try and turn it around. Private message them and ask them if there’s some way you could make it up to them. It happened to us once on Valentine's Day a few years ago, where the recipient didn't receive what he expected. And that was his opinion. So we turned it around. And I think it's most important to do that. Because what you don't want him to do is to leave you a one-star review and that you haven't responded to it. And you haven't said this is fair.
And actually, that also builds brand loyalty. And that builds the fact that you're honest and builds integrity. And that's really important. So I hope I've given you a little bit of insight into Google My Business and how important it is. It helps your search engine rankings, it helps your brand, it definitely helps local searches, so will get you in front of more customers. And really, why not? Look at lots and lots of ways to update it. Please don't do it and leave it. Just keep updating it. Keep it as a breathing machine. And good luck.
This has been your host, Roz Chandler. If you'd like to know more about growing your cut flower farm, do join our Facebook group. It's called Cut Flower Farming Growth and Profit In Your Business. Many thanks.