Grow Your Business With Local Marketing
Google My Business Accont offers you an amazing opportunity to increase your local marketing and grow your client list. Check out our handy guide below on the steps you need to take to get set up and optimize a GMB account for your salon.
[/text_box] [/ux_banner]Google searches are becoming increasingly local focused. This gives salons a great opportunity to get new customers. Setting up a killer Google My Business listing will help customers looking for services find your salon.
Benefits of having a listing include being able to post images of the amazing services you can offer your clients, respond to online reviews, post the products and services you offer and track metrics of how people are finding your business.
THE SET UP
Start the process – Go to https://www.google.com/business/ and press “Manage Now”
Email: Go to your GMB profile and click ‘verify now’. Choose ‘email’ from the verification options then check your email address. Verify using the email that google sends.
Postcard: Choose ‘Postcard’ on your GMB profile as the verification option. Make sure the address its being sent to is the right one. If it isn’t update your address before having the postcard sent. Postcards take about two weeks to send, don’t update info in the GMB profile in the mean time as it will delay the verification process.
Once you receive the postcard you can click ‘verify location’ button from the menu and enter the 5 digit code that is on the postcard they send you.
Phone Number: Choose ‘verify by phone’ on your profile. A message will be sent to your phone number. You can enter the code they provide to your profile to verify it.
OPTIMIZING YOUR PROFILE
Now that you’ve got your profile set up it’s time to optimize it! The reason we want to optimize it is so when someone types into Google “Brow Tinting near me” Google will show the top three results and we want to be in those top three results google shows.
The first steps are making sure all our information if filled out currently
Business Name The Business name is the name that appears on your sign. Don’t add extra keywords in here because google penalizes people that stuff too many keywords.
Categories The next step is selecting the category of your business. Most salons will want to pick beauty salon but you can add secondary categories if you offer more services. Customers won’t see your secondary categories.
Locations/Services This should be the address of your business.
Hours Add your usual hours of operation. You can add special hours for days you are closed or open/closing early. Use special days for holidays you are closed for.
Phone Number Use your local number as your primary phone number. You can also set up a new phone number to track how many people are calling you through your GMB listing.
Website URL You can add your business website here, it must be a working website before you can add it to your GMB profile. You can also add an appointment url if you have a separate webpage clients can use to book appointments.
Description –This is one of the most important parts of your listing. You can enter 750 characters but google only shows the first 250.
When writing your business description, you want to tell first time customers what your business does. It isn’t a place to pitch your services as customers reading it are already interested in your services. For example, if your service is brow threading whoever is reading your description is here because they are already interested in brow threading so don’t sell them on threading, sell them on your business instead.
Get your main point across, don’t include a website here and focus on your main keywords.
Photos – Photos play a huge roll in the success of your profile. The photos give your first impression so make it a good one. Think about uploading the following:
- A cover photo **THIS IS THE FIRST IMAGE CUSTOMERS WILL SEE**
- Logo
- Exterior/Interior photos
- Team photos
- Photos of your results.
- Photos of your team at work
KEEP YOUR GMB UP TO DATE
Google loves it when you keep everything up to date and rewards you with better ranking. You can respond to questions in the Q&A section, create content through posts, respond to reviews and correct any mistakes on your profile.
You will also want to help people that stumble across your profile with any deals or events you have going on.
There is a lot to running your business and marketing. Having an up to date GMB profile is a great place to start for helping you find new customers in your community.