Google Business Profile Archives | Databox

Google My Business SEO: 8 Tips to Optimize Your Business for Local Searches

Alexander B. Pavlinek — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 14:27:09 +0000

Did you know that 97% of people learn more about a local company online than anywhere else?

As a local business owner, you want to ensure that when consumers search for local services, your company appears on their screen.

To do this, it’s critically important that you optimize your Google My Business listing.

Google My Business is one of Google’s free features that help you increase your company’s visibility by showcasing all the relevant information in search engines to your area’s locals.

In this article, we will walk you through all the basics, show you how to optimize your Google Business Profile, and provide you with some super-helpful Google My Business dashboard examples.

Let’s dive in.

What is Google My Business?
Why Is GMB Important for Local SEO?
How to Create a Google My Business Account? 8 Steps
How to Verify Your Google My Business Listing
How Does Google Determine Local Ranking?
8 Ways to Optimize Your Google My Business Account for SEO
How to Fix GMB Account Issues
Most Important Google My Business KPIs
Google My Business Dashboard Examples and Templates
Streamline Your Google My Business Profile Optimization with Databox

What Is Google My Business?

Google My Business (aka Google Business Profile) is a free business listing feature that lets you upload your business’s photos, location, services/products, and any other relevant information.

By creating a profile, you will increase your business’s visibility and increase the chances of it appearing in Google Search, Google Maps, and other Google services.

However, to create an account, your business needs to have a physical location (e.g. restaurant) and provide services in person.

Google My Business is beneficial to businesses of all sizes. It gives you a competitive advantage to manage your online presence and attract customers searching for your business on Google search and maps.

Furthermore, with a Google My Business account, you’ll be able to share photos of your products or services, access and edit your business information (name, location, hours, etc.), and respond to reviews. Over time, this will give your business better visibility and engagement.

Google My Business is free, and there is no need not to take advantage of everything it offers for building your business. The only condition is that your business must have a physical location.

To demonstrate the importance of Google My Business for local SEO, we asked 53 SEO experts to rank several different marketing channels—things like websites, email marketing, content marketing, SEO, and various types of advertising—in terms of their importance for local businesses.

The most important channel was a local business’s website. The second most important is – Google My Business listing.

For local businesses, our respondents agree that a Google My Business listing is more important than social media, content marketing, email marketing, profiles on other directory sites like Yelp, and all forms of advertising.

Why Is GMB Important for Local SEO?

Here are 5 main reasons your business needs a Google My Business profile:

Improve Your Search Ranking and the Visibility of Your Business

By following a proper Google My Business SEO checklist, you can greatly improve your business’s search ranking and overall visibility.

When a prospective customer searches for products and services your business offers using related keywords, first, you’ll see Google ads, then Google’s local 3 pack, and after that, the organic results.

By creating a Google My Business profile, you have a better chance of making the top 3 local results, Google Maps and local finder, which will, in turn, give your business more exposure and leads.

Enhances Your Customer Support and Engagement

As we said, with a Google My Business profile, you’ll be able to respond more quickly to comments and questions about your products and services, and address negative or positive feedback.

Furthermore, customers are more likely to work with businesses they can easily contact, so with your shared information, it makes it easier for them to call you to ask a question or make a complaint.

Boost Sales and Traffic Volume

With local searches resulting in purchases 28% of the time, it’s a no-brainer that having a Google My Business account can positively impact your website’s traffic.

Naturally, when people search for products or services your business offers, they’re most likely to click on your website to learn more about you. With an effective landing page and CTAs, they’re also more likely to complete a goal.

Pro Tip: Here Is a Go-To Dashboard For Monitoring Local Business Performance

If you own and operate a small, local business, you are probably monitoring performance on a daily basis and looking for ways to improve. Many owners use Google My Business to do that, and now they can get actionable data in one convenient dashboard showing key business metrics including:

Views of your business listing. The daily number of times people saw your Google My Business listing.
Searches that found your listing. The number of times your listing came up in a Google search.
Sources for searchers finding your listing. Where did those searchers come from? View the number of direct, discovery, and branded searches, and understand how your visitors find you.
Actions taken on your listing. When they arrived on your listing, what did visitors do? Click on your website link? Click to call? Click for directions? Get a summary of each.
Calls received. How many calls did you receive from your listing in any month or other time period?
Total number of actions taken. Overall, how effective was your listing this week or this month? Can you do more to improve activity and response?

Now you can benefit from the experience of our Google My Business experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template that contains all the essential metrics for monitoring and analyzing your business listing. It’s simple to implement and start using, and best of all, it’s free!

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template

Step 2: Connect your Google my Business account with Databox.

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

Get the template free

Monitoring listing activity is useful, but the real value comes from understanding why those numbers change. Instead of manually reviewing each metric, teams now use AI data analysts like Databox MCP to ask plain-English questions about their local performance and get answers based on their actual historical data. For example, you can ask why calls dropped last week or what drove an increase in discovery searches, and get a clear explanation grounded in your own metrics and trends.

It Helps You Reach a Wider Audience

With an up-to-date Google My Business profile, you’ll be able to attract and engage a broader audience, a feat that would be difficult to achieve without running ads.

Establishes Your Brand as a Business Authority

As a result of the reviews, your business’ appeal to prospective customers is positively impacted. For example, a 4.7-star review depicts that your business is great at what it does, and as such, people are more likely to buy from you.

How to Create a Google My Business Account?

Creating a Google My Business account might seem a bit scary at first, but it’s actually surprisingly simple if you follow the right steps.

To get your business on Google, here’s what you need to do:

Step 1: Visit Google My Business and Create Your Account

Start by visiting https://business.google.com/create and creating or signing in to your Google Account. It’s recommended to use an email address with your business domain.

Step 2: Claim Your Business

Before claiming a business, it’s vital to double-check if it already exists with the same name/location. If you have a business profile for an old business already at the same location, suggest an edit to have it closed.

If you are all good here and don’t already have a GMB profile, claim your business by going to Google Maps, typing the name, and clicking on “Claim this Business”.

To open a new profile, simply click “Add your business to Google”.

Step 3: Add Your Business Name

Now it’s time to add all the details. Start by entering the name of your business.

To avoid any confusion, make sure the name matches your business’s signage.

Step 4: Choose a Business Category

Having a category will increase your visibility in search engines since Google will match it to relevant queries. For instance, this can be “Restaurant”, “Tech equipment”, “Bar”, “Coffee Shop”, etc.

Google has more than 4,000 categories, so it shouldn’t be a problem finding your specific one.

Additionally, you should add any category-specific services (if you’re offering them), like a vegetarian menu.

The more information you include, the better your Google My Business SEO will be.

Step 5: Add Your Business Location

Although this is optional, it is highly recommended for SEO.

If you have a website or social media account for your business as well, it’s important that you use the exact same address in all places.

If Google notices any inconsistencies in this regard, they won’t hesitate to penalize you.

And, if you offer delivery services, add that and the areas you deliver to.

Step 6: Write a Google My Business Description

This doesn’t refer to the description that appears under your business’s name on Google (this is something that they provide and you can’t make any changes).

Instead, you should a description in the “From the Business” section. Since this will be your business’s first impression, it’s important that you come up with something catchy yet informative.

Step 7: Fill in Your Business Contact Details

Here, you need to add details such as your phone number and website address.

There’s also an option to have a free website created for your business if you don’t have one.

Voila! You have successfully created a Google My Business profile.

How to Verify Your Google My Business Listing

Once you’ve created a profile, the next step is to verify it.

Surprisingly, this doesn’t involve anything tech or internet-related. Google simply sends you a postcard with a verification code to your set address. You should receive it in around five business days.

After verifying your account, you will be able to check out analytics, reviews, and relevant insights.

In case you offer services, but don’t have a physical address, you can contact Google support to ask for a phone or email verification.

How Does Google Determine Local Ranking?

For determining local ranking, Google takes these three factors into consideration:

Relevance – This is how well your business matches the user’s search intent. To increase the chances of your local business appearing in search results, you should feed Google with as much information as possible.
Distance – As the name suggests, distance refers to how close your business’s location is to the location of the user. If they don’t include a specific location, Google will use historical location data to roughly figure out where they are.
Prominence – Lastly, Google determines your local ranking by checking out how well-known your business is and whether it has a good reputation. To assess prominence, Google typically takes offline factors into consideration. Also, it goes through off-site links and articles related to your business.

While there are a few other values that Google analyzes, these three Google My Business SEO factors carry the most importance.

8 Ways to Optimize Your Google My Business Account for SEO

By now, you probably concluded just how important having a Google My Business profile is for your local business.

But aside from just creating a profile, you’ll need to take steps to optimize your Google My Business SEO to rank higher in local searches and show up in the local pack.

So, how to optimize Google My Business listings to earn higher rankings for local searches—or for a chance to appear in the local pack?

We asked our respondents to share the best practices from their Google My Business SEO checklist and here are 8 tips they recommend.

Verify Your Business
Fill out Your Profile Completely
Make Sure Your Profile Information Is (and Stays) Accurate
Ensure NAP Consistency across the Web
Pick the Most Relevant Categories
Include Semi-Professional Pictures
Get More Reviews
Take Advantage of Posts on Google

1. Verify Your Business

Before doing anything else, you should first verify your business with Google.

We already explained the process in one of our previous headings, but here is a brief reminder.

Once you wrap up the account creation process, Google will send you a four-digit code that will arrive at the address you provided in the business details.

When you receive the code, simply go to the provided link and enter it. This will let Google know that your local business is legitimate and they will officially publish your new profile.

2. Fill out Your Profile Completely

After you’ve verified your business, it’s time to fill out your profile. And while many of the fields are optional, several of our respondents said that it’s important that you provide every relevant detail. It’s preferred to fill out all the information you are being asked for. “Google rewards businesses who take the time to complete their profiles,” says Kenny Lange of Web Canopy Studio. “A complete profile is the baseline upon which all other recommendations (reviews, Google Posts, answering questions, etc.) are built.”

According to our respondents, the most important Google My Business profile details to include are your business’s name, address, phone number, website link, and categories.

But adding other details, such as your service area description, shouldn’t be ignored too. Cheyenne Schueman of Page 1 Solutions stresses why this is an essential part of optimizing your GMB profile: “Google My Business offers a handy feature called ‘services’ that’s easily accessible from the info panel. Filling out your products and services will not only tell potential consumers what you offer, but it will also keep them on your profile longer, making Google see your profile as more important than that of your competitors.”

3. Make Sure Your Profile Information Is (and Stays) Accurate

It’s not enough to just fill out the information on your Google My Business profile. You also need to make sure all of the information is accurate—and that it stays accurate.

“The most important thing you can do is make sure all of the information on your listing is accurate,” says Cindy Venerio of Nerds Support. “That might seem obvious, but there are so many businesses out there with incorrect information.”

“Google My Business listings are becoming the virtual storefront for most businesses, so it’s important to keep them up to date,” says Womply’s Dallin Hatch. “If you can, set a daily or weekly reminder to keep your information current.”

“This may sound like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised at how many times we’ve found that this basic—yet critical—online customer touchpoint is outdated or missing: phone number out of service, website down, email bouncing, location listed incorrectly or not at all, out-dated reviews, and more,” Hatch says.

Another way to keep your profile accurate and up-to-date, as Grand Cru Digital’s Casey Bryan recommends, is to add your holiday hours as needed.

This can be extremely important, especially if your business listing says that you work on Sundays, but when potential customers arrive, they see that you’re closed.

Not only do you lose sales this way, but your business’s credibility suffers as well.

4. Ensure NAP Consistency Across the Web

It’s still not enough to just keep your Google My Business listing accurate. You also need to make sure that it’s consistent with all of the major local directories on the web.

The details that are the most important are referred to as NAP – name, address, and phone number.

If Google notices that your address or phone number aren’t the same on your social media page and on your Google My Business profile, you’re risking a penalty.

Colibri Digital Marketing’s Andrew McLoughlin emphasizes this, “make sure your NAP on Google My Business is an exact match for the listings on your website, social profiles, and other directory listings.”

“Discrepancies are easily avoidable but can seriously lower the listing’s rankings,” McLoughlin says.

One tip recommended by Vye Marketing’s Travis McGinnis is embedding a Google Map on the contact page of your website. “For businesses with multiple locations, do the same thing for each location page on the website with the NAP information and map embed.”

5. Pick the Most Relevant Categories

One of the most frequently mentioned things in the Google My Business SEO checklist of our respondents was picking the right service categories.

This feature heavily impacts Google’s decision on whether or not they will display your local business in an organic search.

When picking a category, you can choose one primary and nine secondary ones. With 4,000 choices available, there is something for every industry.

“Make sure you have the most relevant, current category selected for your primary category,” says Kyle Sanders of Complete SEO. “We’ve seen instances where clients see a jump in 5-10 positions simply from moving the most relevant category from secondary to primary.”

“Additionally,” Sanders says, “don’t go overboard on secondary categories that are a stretch in terms of relevance.”

Joe Goldstein of Contractor Calls says, “Don’t just guess what your categories should be. Search for a target keyword, expand the local pack, and note the category displayed for each business. Then, repeat with at least five other keywords and keyword variations.”

“When you track that data on a spreadsheet, it can help you find other categories you may have overlooked, or it can make you reconsider your primary category.”

“The categories you choose determine which searches you’re eligible to rank for—and there are often trade-offs for each category choice—so understand your options and choose carefully,” Goldstein says.

6. Include Semi-Professional Pictures

“One of the most important aspects of Google My Business is having pictures,” says Juliane Sunshine of Tandem Interactive. “As simple as it may be, the picture for a Google My Business listing plays an important role.”

“Pictures show Google that this is a legitimate business. They give the user an inside look at your business. They help build trust—a huge factor that Google considers.”

“In order to improve rankings, make sure to have semi-professional pictures; the higher the quality the better. Have photos taken of the outside, inside… any little aspect can help boost rankings on a Google My Business listing,” Sunshine says.

Growth Hackers’ Jonathan Aufray recommends “uploading high-quality pictures of your office, as well as pictures of your team. People like the human aspect of companies, and showing that there are people behind your company name will help you attract prospects to visit your business.”

And don’t forget to optimize your images. You should treat your images as you would when optimizing any other type of content. In words of Max Robinson of Green Bee Gardeners Fife, “

“Photos are a seriously underrated aspect of trying to rank for Google My Business. Google will use the information—such as alt text, titles, captions, and geotagging—included within your photos to determine the location of your business. If you aren’t properly optimizing your photos, then you’ll find it very hard to rank for local results.”

7. Get More Reviews

Once your Google My Business profile is entirely set up, you should focus on getting as many reviews as possible.

Reviews not only help you grow your profile ranking on the search engine and Google Maps, but they also influence the click-through rate.

Here are some things you can do:

Create a review strategy. This can involve anything from reaching out to customers individually and asking them to leave a review to using tools to do the heavy lifting for you.
Make sure your reviews are legitimate. Keep in mind that search engines want people to rate you naturally and will weed out spammers with ease. And even if the bots miss the fake enthusiasm, people for sure won’t. So do whatever you can to facilitate the process of getting reviews.
Aim for quality over quantity. “Now that Google has deemed reviews with 200+ characters more valuable, the mission is to not only generate positive reviews but also to have them include descriptive sentences that explain why the place is good,” says Miva’s Luke Wester.
Respond to your reviews. “Responding to reviews is an opportunity to show customers (current or potential) that you care about their experience with your company,” says Portent’s Amanda Putney. “Reviews are also treasure troves of information service and quality information, which are especially crucial for local businesses.” Also, SmartBug Media’s Sam McCue reminds us that responding to bad reviews is an opportunity to get that review revised and improved: “Once I got a response to a bad review that was absolutely perfect. It read: ‘Hi Sam. Though we enjoy reading all of the good reviews our customers leave, it takes reviews like yours to help us become a better business. I thank you for your candid feedback and am committed to making sure your next visit is nothing but superb.’ After reading that, my frustration was gone. I went back to the restaurant and ultimately changed my review,” McCue says.

8. Take Advantage of Posts on Google

Did you know that GMB allows you to create interactive posts that appear in search results?

This includes articles and blog posts that are posted on your website, or specific events like courses and promotions.

By creating a high-quality post, you can increase user engagement and generate much more traffic to your business.

Here are some of the things our respondents recommended when writing such posts:

Write at least 10 posts. Sky Alphabet Social Media’s Steve Yanor recommends writing 10 GMB posts (or more). “These 10 posts expire after 14 days, but you can simply re-post them if you don’t want to write new ones. Each post should be around 1,000 words and contain the keywords you want to show up for in Google searches.
Add new content regularly. “Google prefers content that is up-to-date, new, and consistent with the season,” says Irena Zobniow of Insightland. “Therefore, post an update regularly, add new photos, write what has changed recently at your company, etc.”

How to Fix GMB Account Issues

Facing any type of issue with your Google My Business profile can feel overwhelming, and it’s completely understandable.

After all, you don’t want to risk having all of your hard work suddenly disappear.

Let’s go over some of the most common GMB account issues and how you can fix them.

Suspension
Managing User/Google Edits

Suspension

If Google suspects that your local business goes against their guidelines, they won’t hesitate in suspending it.

This can be caused by:

An incorrect business name
Multiple listings for the same business
Posting forbidden content

Before you try reinstating your suspended account, try to identify what caused the issue. Go over the official Google My Business guidelines and locate the potential reason.

Remember, Google won’t give you the reason, so be meticulous in your search.

After you’ve identified the issue, you can try solving it by making the necessary changes to your profile.

Once you have gotten rid of the incorrect information and deleted the problematic content, you can ask Google to review your account again.

The reinstatement form will ask you for your email, business name, and address. Also, you’ll have to give a legitimate reason why your account should be reinstated.

Remember, reactivating your account can be immensely time-consuming, so be extra careful not to break any rules in the first place.

Managing User/Google Edits

In many cases, Google will edit your profile information (or apply an edit that you suggested) and you will receive a notification for this.

When you open a Google My Business listing, you can click on “suggest an edit” to open this box:

By pressing “Change name or other details”, you will be able to suggest an edit for the following things:

Name
Category
Business address
Phone number
Website
Pictures
Location

If you click on “close or remove”, you will see this screen pop up:

Luckily, Google doesn’t simply remove your GMB listing because someone said that it was closed. Rather, you will receive an update in case they find any contradictory information on the profile.

Google typically highlights the features that they think might need to be changed. For instance, if your category is highlighted in a certain color, it means that they think you should change it.

You can either choose to apply these changes or stick with your original information.

The best way to avoid Google edits is to make sure everything in your profile is up to date and correct.

Most Important Google My Business KPIs

Optimizing your Google My Business listing for higher rankings is great, but knowing whether or not the changes you made were effective is even better.

So what KPIs should you track in your GMB SEO dashboard to monitor the performance of your listing and the impact of your optimizations?

According to our respondents, the most important KPIs for Google My Business are:

Events
Phone calls
Website clicks

Other than these 3, our respondents also mentioned views, direction requests, and searches by source.

If you need a way to monitor your key Google My Business metrics alongside data from the other marketing channels you’re focused on—such as your website, email newsletter, and social media profiles—consider building your own custom reporting dashboard with a robust SEO dashboard software like Databox.

Google My Business Dashboard Examples and Templates

In recent years, Google has heavily increased the amount of analytical data that local business owners can acquire on Google My Business profiles.

By introducing “Insights”, you can now easily understand how and why the customers engage with your local business the way they do.

For instance, you can get metrics related to:

Where customers find your local business (total views, search views, and map views)
How customers find your local business (total searches, direct searches, and discovery searches)
Customer actions (total actions, website actions, directions actions, and more)
Phone calls (total number of phone calls, phone call duration, etc.)

But, with more metrics comes more responsibility.

Even though native GMB offers a wealthy amount of data, it can be rather hard to track and monitor it and understand which metrics are the most important.

Databox can help with this.

By integrating your Google My Business Profile with Databox, you will be able to properly track all the significant KPIs and metrics and easily spot areas for improvement, which will directly help you keep your GMB profile optimized.

To give you a kick start, we prepared a few examples of Google My Business dashboards that you can download for free.

Google My Business Insights Dashboard

To keep track of how many people are finding your local business via organic search, you can use this Google My Business Insights Dashboard.

This dashboard will help you stay on top of all the relevant insights that you need to establish healthy business growth and improve local search ranking.

Some of the main things you’ll learn include:

The number of people that viewed your listing
How many GMB searches did you have during a specific month
The actions that the customers took on your listing
The number of calls you received during a specific month
Which sources generate the highest number of searches

Google Analytics & Google My Business (Goals & Conversions) Dashboard

This is one of the best Google My Business examples for understanding goals and conversions from both your GMB profile and Google Analytics.

The Google Analytics & Google My Business Dashboard combines all the relevant data from your website’s Google Analytics with the phone calls and actions from GMB.

You can use the dashboard to track key metrics like goal completions, goal conversion rates, views, actions by type, searches, top sources, and dozens more.

Additionally, you will gain insight into:

How many customers visit and find your local business via search
How many customers are contacting you directly from GMB
Whether your Google My Business profile is acquiring real customers

Streamline Your Google My Business Profile Optimization with Databox

No matter if you run a restaurant, bar, or offer repair services, if you have any type of physical interaction with customers, you need a Google My Business profile.

With so many people searching for local businesses online, it’s mandatory that you establish your digital presence and optimize it.

Even though learning how to optimize Google My Business profile isn’t very complex, there is simply too much data to keep track of and analyze.

Figuring out which metrics and KPIs matter the most and identifying areas for improvement will undoubtedly take up a hefty amount of your time.

By having advanced software such as Databox at your disposal, you will be able to streamline this whole process.

With our customizable dashboards, you can track all the important GMB metrics in one place and transform the dry data into beautiful charts and graphs.

All you have to do is connect your Google My Business profile to Databox and pick the metrics that you want to track.

And what used to be a 3-hour job will now become a 3-minute task.

The post Google My Business SEO: 8 Tips to Optimize Your Business for Local Searches appeared first on Databox.

12 Proven Ways to Encourage Customers to Write Reviews (According to 100+ Marketers)

Alexander B. Pavlinek — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 14:28:57 +0000

It doesn’t matter if you run a B2B or B2C business, marketing agency or SaaS company, eCommerce shop, or local store: reviews are essential for every business.

But it can be tricky to get people to write positive reviews about a business. As Growth Hackers’ Jonathan Aufray says, “Most happy customers will never tell you that they’re happy. Unhappy customers will let you know.”

So, how do you get happy customers to write raving reviews for your business on public websites? To find out, we asked more than 100 marketers to share their best tips.

Customer Reviews – What Are They and Why Are They Important?
How to Ask Customers for Reviews: 12 Proven Ways to Get Your Customers to Write Reviews
Top Customer Review Sites Your Business Should Prioritize

Customer Reviews – What Are They and Why Are They Important?

Customer reviews are personal opinions on a company’s product or service that customers write about to help others better understand the quality of said product or service. Many people read these reviews to learn more about businesses and research their products or services before making a purchase.

One reason customer reviews are important is that they help with SEO, especially if you are a local business. But speaking of benefits for any business in general, having reviews on popular review sites lets you own more SERP real estate for branded search terms.

Most importantly, reviews are crucial for your business because they have a huge impact on the buying decisions of your prospective customers. As consumers and prospects have turned more to self-guided research, they rely more on the opinions and experiences of other customers in reviews when evaluating options and making purchasing decisions. Our own research also confirms that “customer proof” is the most important factor when evaluating 2 (in our case) software products.

Lastly, having positive reviews helps build trust and confidence in your business and its products/services.

How to Ask Customers for Reviews: 12 Proven Ways to Get Your Customers to Write Reviews

If you’re struggling to figure out how to encourage customers to write reviews, consider these proven tips that our respondents recommended:

Start By Just Asking
Create a Process for Asking for Reviews
Automate the Ask
When Making the Ask, Target Satisfied Customers
Personalize the Ask
Explain Why Reviews Are Important
Make Writing a Review as Simple as Possible
Provide a Template for Reviews
Engage With Your Existing Reviews
Offer an Incentive
Send Review Request Emails at the Right Time
Follow Up on Your Requests

Pro Tip: Here Is Your Go-To Dashboard For Measuring Your Customer Support Team’s Responsiveness to User Concerns

No matter your role in customer support – agent, manager, or VP – your core focus is to ensure that customers’ issues, complaints, and information requests are always dealt with promptly and efficiently. But to stay on track, you probably have to log into multiple tools and spend hours manually compiling data into a comprehensive report. Now you can quickly monitor and analyze your customer service performance data from HelpScout and Stripe in a single dashboard that monitors fundamental metrics, such as:

New MRR. How much monthly recurring revenue (MRR) comes from new customers? Track new customer MRR at a glance.
Revenue churn. See how much MRR your business lost due to subscription cancellations and downgrades within a specified period of time.
Refunds. How much money in refunds and cancellations did you lose last month? See the total amount of money refunded to customers within a given time period.
New customers. Track the number of new customers acquired by your business each day, week, or month.
Customers helped by team members. Evaluate the performance of your customer support team members based on the number of customers they helped individually and their happiness score.
Customers helped. Get a day-to-day update on the number of customers your customer support team assisted through live chat, email, or phone.

Now you can benefit from the experience of our customer support experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template that contains all the essential metrics for monitoring and analyzing your customer service performance and its correlation to churn rate. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in customer service reports!

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template

Step 2: Connect your accounts with Databox.

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

Try this template

1. Start by Just Asking

According to Greenvelope’s Alex Kelsey, the best way to encourage customers to write reviews is to “just ask. More often than you think, your fans and customers will be happy to write about their experience with your business, product, or service.”

Our respondents offered lots of ideas for how to ask customers for reviews:

“Ask in every email you send, especially if you are on the customer support team. You don’t have to make it a big thing, but something as simple as adding a link to a review site in your email signature can work great.” (Megan Moseley, Referral Rock)
“Reach out to customers on Twitter and—in a friendly way—ask them to write a review. Most of them will!” (Miguel Piedrafita, Blogcast)
“After every job, we give our customers a small business-card-sized handout with a QR code that takes them to our Google My Business page. It opens a window on their smartphones that links directly to where they can write a review for our company and post it on Google.” (Kaitlin Martin Choice Windows)
“Include a call to action on the base of a menu, invoice, or receipt—or even a sign on the back of a toilet door: “While you’re sitting here, why not give us a review?” It’s a bit cheeky, but if it suits your brand, why not!” (Erica Stacey, Scout)
“Hand out flyers explaining how to write a review. Our flyers come with a bit.ly link that sends customers directly to Google’s review platform.” (Dr. Bryan Bruno, Mid City TMS)
“After a customer makes a positive comment about your business, ask the customer to post it online while he/she is still on-site. Have the customer come behind the desk to your computer or produce a tablet, and direct the person to type in that comment.” (Elliott Jaffa, Dr. Elliott B. Jaffa Associates)

2. Create a Process for Asking for Reviews

One way to make sure that you’re asking customers to write reviews is to have a process in place for making the ask.

“Chocolate Films has been pursuing Google reviews for a year,” says Alexandra Lens. “We quickly reached a 5-star rating and have maintained it since.”

“To achieve this, we made asking for reviews an integral part of our production process. At the end of each great video project, our account managers ask the client to leave a review as part of their sign-off emails.”

“Clients and account managers are happy at the end of a successful project and will have established a great relationship, so incorporating asking for a review as part of the production process has worked really well for us,” Lens says.

3. Automate the Ask

Other respondents use a series of tools to create and automate the process of asking for reviews.

“If you can automate your review process based upon specific actions, then it will be even easier to scale and ensure continuity for review requests,” says 9Sail’s Kyle Kasharian.

As LoclWeb’s Jorge Sheffy says, “Asking for reviews manually is not recommended. It will become too much of a burden on you and will also be much more inconsistent.”

Several of our respondents shared examples of how they automate their review-request processes by creating a poll.

Pop-Up Forms + Follow-Up Emails

“We use a pop-up form on our site to get reviews after customers have made a purchase,” says John Holloway of NoExam. “This form automatically populates the review on Shopper Approved, a third-party review site.”

“We then follow up two weeks later via email and ask customers to write a more thorough review of their shopping experience. We’ve collected over 1,000 user reviews with this method.”

Monthly Customer Feedback Request Emails

“We send out customer feedback emails every month asking our clients and candidates to complete a 30-second survey about our customer service,” says Fiona Kay of Nigel Wright Group. “At the end of the survey, we ask if they would be happy to submit a Google review.”

“Since introducing this, we’ve experienced a huge increase in the number of reviews we’ve received, the vast majority being positive. We now have an average star rating of 4.6 across our nine office Google My Business pages.”

Online Booking Systems

“Some of our clients use online booking systems for their services,” says Niles Koenigsberg of FiG Advertising + Marketing. “We’ve used these systems in the past to successfully acquire customer reviews.”

“After their appointment is finished, customers receive an automated message (text, email, etc.) that asks them to:

schedule their next appointment and
leave a review to help the business improve their services.”

“It’s a great tactic to engage with customers when the quality of the service is fresh in their minds. This way, you receive more honest feedback and get that review in quickly before they forget about it.”

Review Acquisition Services

“The best way to encourage customers to write reviews is through a dedicated review acquisition service,” says Michael Anderson of GeoJango. “These companies will automatically send an email to your customers and ask them to leave a review after a specified number of days.”

“Some are geared towards eCommerce and will have their own review-capture platform. Others focus on local businesses and will work towards acquiring reviews through Google, Facebook, and Yelp.”

Not a HubSpot Marketing user? No worries. We have similar dashboards for SendGrid, Marketo, Seventh Sense, Mailchimp, and ActiveCampaign.

4. When Making the Ask, Target Satisfied Customers

“You shouldn’t just focus on getting reviews,” says HealthJoy’s Rick Ramos. “You need to focus on getting good reviews. You can do this by encouraging reviews after a customer has expressed satisfaction.”

David Peterson of HealthMarkets agrees: “We’ve had success inviting reviews from customers who provide us with positive survey results. If they can be stewards for our company and brand because of the experiences they’ve had, we encourage that.”

So, how do you find out who’s had a great experience sending review requests to the right customers? Our respondents offered several suggestions:

“We utilize an NPS survey that goes out to all of our clients on a quarterly basis. If a client responds with a promoter score, we send them an automated follow-up email asking if they would be willing to write a positive review.” (Jasz Joseph, SyncShow)
“We use a combination of SurveyMonkey and GatherUp. SurveyMonkey helps us distinguish happy from unhappy customers. We extract the happy ones and upload the lists to GatherUp where we have templates and automatic rules for the email sequences that will ask for a review.” (Nada Pupovac , No Bounds Digital)

And Chas Cooper of Rising Star Reviews says you can also use this process to “turn unhappy customers into happy customers.”

“First, ask the customer to rate your business privately. If the customer would give you a 5-star rating, then encourage him/her to write a review. But if the customer gives you a bad rating, ask what you could do better, fix any problems you discover, and go the extra mile to make the customer happy. Then encourage a review.”

“If you ask for a private rating before asking for a public review, you’ll get a second chance to impress unhappy customers, and you’ll raise your average star rating in the process,” Cooper says.

5. Personalize the Ask

Several respondents said you’ll get more reviews if you personalize the ask.

For example, Casey Hill of Bonjoro recommends “sending a personal video to the customer, thanking them for supporting you, and asking if they would leave you a review. Personalization is a key lever in rapport-building and a great way to maximize reviews.”

Ollie Roddy of Catalyst Marketing says that “the best thing to do is ask someone personally. Call them and physically go through the feedback/review form with them. It will only take your account manager two minutes, but the likelihood of someone saying no is insanely low.”

“Your submissions rates when sending someone a link though will be much lower. That’s not because people are rude; they’re just plain busy,” Roddy says.

Another way to personalize your ask, says Digital Marketing Consultant Rotem Gal, is “to create a specific review funnel for each product/service.”

“If someone is buying a product directly from your mobile app, he/she should be able to review it from the mobile app. If someone is buying a service from your website using a desktop computer, he/she should be able to review the service from the desktop via a follow-up email.”

6. Explain Why Reviews Are Important

“To increase positive reviews for your business, inform and educate your customers on how important reviews are to your business,” says Miva’s Luke Wester. “The customers who want to support you will show their support in the form of positive reviews.”

Lauren Triance-Haldane of PathFactory agrees: “Before the vendor sends out a review campaign, we send a heads-up email to our customers letting them know we’re about to run a review campaign, asking for their participation, and outlining why it’s beneficial to everyone to leave reviews.”

Brooks Manley of Engenius gives us an example on how to explain why reviews are important for your business: “Push the idea that leaving a review benefits other consumers. Some people are much more apt to help ‘others like them’ find the best business, product, or service—as opposed to helping the company get one more 5-star reviews.”

7. Make Writing a Review as Simple as Possible

“It’s important to remove any friction from writing the review,” says Garrett Sussman of Grade.us.

“We use an email drip campaign and send customers to our review funnel landing page. The review funnel provides our customers with a few review site options to choose from. Each option has a direct link to the write-a-review URL of the various review sites.”

“When customers have a few review sites to choose from, they are more likely to take the time to leave a review on the site that they’re familiar with,” Sussman says.

Example review request email template from Grade.us

Alistair Dodds of Ever Increasing Circles agrees, recommending that you “send your best customers a direct link to your Google My Business review section.”

“When sending the email, keep the email short, make the customer feel special, and include a link to take them straight to the review process,” says Hans van Gent of User Growth. “You want the process to be as easy as possible for them so that it will take the least amount of time.”

And Samantha Kohn of AutoVerify suggests “using a platform that automatically requests the review and takes customers directly to Google, Facebook, and the system’s own review platform.”

“Review services that have their own platform are the only way to encourage reviews from non-tech-savvy customers without asking them to sign up for a Facebook or Google account in order to write the review,” Kohn says.

8. Provide a Template for Reviews

Another way to make it simple for customers to leave reviews and write testimonials is to write some part—or all—of the review for them.

The Blogsmith’s Maddy Osman recommends “providing a template in terms of the response you’re looking for.”

“To give an example, whenever I reach out to people I’ve done business with to get a testimonial, I share a few bullet points about what I perceive as the highlights of our business relationship that they can either use or ignore.”

“A nice side effect of this approach is that it allows me to influence what they’re going to say. And as a bonus, my clients appreciate that they don’t have to think too hard about sharing feedback, which increases the likelihood that they’ll provide a testimonial,” Osman says.

9. Engage With Your Existing Reviews

Lika Djukic of Best Response Media says that the best way to encourage customers to write reviews is to engage with the people who’ve already written reviews.

“People who wouldn’t generally leave reviews—regardless of whether they are satisfied or not—will feel encouraged to leave a review if they see replies and feedback from businesses.”

“It’s better to respond to negative reviews and try and resolve the issue rather than shying away and ignoring the review. The same goes for positive reviews: a simple thank-you message goes a long way,” Djukic says.

Lots of our respondents agreed that engaging with your reviews is crucial. In fact, when we asked our respondents how often they respond to customer reviews, 53.5% said they always respond, and another 30.7% said they respond most of the time.

Another way to show customers that you’re engaged with their reviews is to share your reviews on social media.

Here’s a client’s review of Databox we shared on Twitter.

10. Offer an Incentive

If you do decide to offer an incentive for reviews, consider this advice from NeverBounce’s Nick Harley: “If you’re going to offer an incentive, make it clear in your email subject line. Otherwise, you may not attract as many respondents as possible.”

Our respondents offered lots of suggestions for types of incentives that work for their customers.

Discounts/Credits

Another approach: Justin McGill says offering gift cards and credits has worked well for Gist. “We combined a partnership with Capterra to give $20 gift cards for reviews with three additional account upgrades should users choose to leave a review.”

Charitable Donations

“We partner with our G2 Gives program to create social good through user reviews,” says G2’s Lauren Pope. “Anyone who leaves a software review on our website can choose a participating 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and G2 will give that charity a $10 donation for their review.”

“Currently, we partner with Chicago Tech Academy, and all of the money we donate through our review campaigns goes back into helping prepare the next generation of tech employees. It all aligns with our mission of creating an inclusive tech experience and promoting real-time, fresh user reviews,” Pope says.

Best Company, according to McCall Robinson, uses a similar approach: “We run fundraising contests to encourage people to write reviews. For these contests, we partner with a local organization and commit to donating a certain amount of money for every review we receive within a certain time period.”

“This encourages consumers to write reviews on our site because they are, in turn, helping raise money for a local organization. It’s a great way to get the word out about your company, incentivize review generation, and to do good in the process!”

“Customers also love a company that is willing to give back to the community,” Robinson says.

Free Publicity

“When customers provide us with reviews, we always backlink to their websites and tag them on social media,” says Danny Peavey of One Week Website. “We make it a priority to highlight one or two customer reviews per week. Our customers love the shoutouts and the attention for their businesses.”

Vito Michael of Vaetas takes the free publicity incentive even further: “We started a vlog (video blog) and invite our customers on for guest episodes. We interview them using Zoom and record the interview. They range in time from five to eight minutes.”

“The format is:

customers provide an overview of their businesses and how they help their customers,
they provide helpful business tips, and
they explain how they’re using our product in their businesses and how it benefits their businesses.”

“We also post a link back to their websites and LinkedIn profiles, as well as share the videos on social media.”

“We send out a personal video email invitation to each customer based on our content calendar. The response has been overwhelming because it’s a win-win strategy,” Michael says.

Free Content

“Content is an extremely important commodity, so it’s always an excellent place to start when looking for an incentive,” says Angela Ash of MailCharts.

“Create short ebooks that offer information, explain your company in more detail, and provide additional products or services that might appeal to your current customers. Once a review is submitted, you can automatically email them a copy of your ebook as a thank you for sharing their experiences. It’s that simple!”

11. Send Review Request Emails at the Right Time

So, when is the best time to ask for a customer review?

When it comes to getting customers to write reviews, many of our respondents said that timing is everything.

Getting the timing right when asking customers to write reviews is important, but it varies greatly from business to business.

When Should You Ask for Product Reviews?

If you’re seeking product reviews, Graham Charlton of SaleCycle says to “time emails so the purchase is fresh in the customer’s mind and they’ve had time to use the product.”

Frank Pinder of Oxatis recommends “sending an email after the customer has purchased the product and following up 1-2 days after he/she receives it.”

However, the type of product purchased should influence when you ask. As Kim Kohatsu of Charles Ave Marketing says, “If your product is, for example, a skin cream, wait until enough time has elapsed from delivery for the customer to notice the product’s effects.”

“If you ask for reviews at the right time—when customers are feeling positive about your product—they are more likely to leave them,” Kohatsu says.

When Should You Ask for Service Reviews?

Knowing when to ask for service reviews, again, depends on the type of service you’re offering.

“Try to ask for a review as close as possible to the completion of the service,” says Marc Howard of BizPayO. “If you’re a digital agency, ask for the review right after the project is complete or the payment has been made. Even if the service was a free consultation, it’s still an opportunity to ask for a review.”

For service businesses that work with clients on an ongoing basis, Kurt Uhlir of ShowCase IDX recommends asking for reviews at major milestones.

“Even the happiest customers are busy,” Uhlir says. “But when they’ve worked with your brand and are approaching a new milestone (e.g. renewal, completion of a campaign, additional purchase, etc.), they are usually focused on the benefits of your product/service and are motivated to see you succeed.”

“Timing your request for an authentic review to right before a milestone does two things:

it improves the chance that they’ll take the time right then to write the review, and
it gives you the opportunity to follow up after the milestone with a reminder if needed,”

12. Follow Up on Your Requests

While most of our respondents agreed that asking is one of the best ways to get more reviews, several noted that it’s helpful to ask more than once.

“You should ask for a review,” says Donna Duncan of B-SeenOnTop. “And you should also remind those who are agreeable to writing a review but don’t follow through.”

“We have obtained nearly 100 Google reviews from our clients within the past 1-2 years with an email campaign,” says Alex Cascio of Vibrant Media Productions. “Both direct contact and follow up were key, as many of the customers would put it off or say they would ‘get to it soon.’”

Top Customer Review Sites Your Business Should Prioritize

There are tons of potential review sites you could include in your email when asking for reviews, but you probably don’t want to add links to every possible review site. Instead, it’s better to focus on the channels your customers are already using.

To provide you with a starting point, we asked our respondents to weigh in on which business review websites they think are the most important for B2B businesses.

The top responses included –

Google Business Profile – here, you can list your business on Google with a free Business Profile. Then, people can leave reviews for anyone to see.
Glassdoor – is a website for both jobseekers and companies – here current and former employees anonymously review companies.
Capterra – this is a free online marketplace vendor serving as an intermediary between buyers and technology vendors within the software industry.
LinkedIn – is a business and employment-focused social media platform. You can both build your brand and get reviews either for your company or even for you personally by having people endorse your skills.
Trustpilot – is a digital platform that allows customers to review a business from which they’ve purchased a product or service or contacted customer service.
TrustRadius – is a buyer intent software that helps businesses track verified reviews and ratings of different products.
Clutch – is a B2B research and reviews platform that provides detailed analysis, client reviews, and ratings of companies offering various services.

Above All, Provide a Great Experience

None of these tactics will work if you don’t focus on one thing, and that’s making sure you’re providing an exceptional product or service. In most cases, exceptional customer service is enough to encourage your customers to write a review. Or if nothing else, they will certainly spread the word around.

The post 12 Proven Ways to Encourage Customers to Write Reviews (According to 100+ Marketers) appeared first on Databox.

New Integration: Monitor Your Overall Search Presence with Google My Business

Tamara Omerovic — Mon, 10 Jun 2019 16:30:20 +0000

Hi there, Google My Business users

Today, we’re happy to announce our new integration with Google My Business, allowing you to track and visualize the volume of searches your business receives by source, listing, or type of action as well as your overall search presence alongside all of the other KPIs that are important to your business.

At launch, there are 20 default Google My Business metrics available. This means that there are 20 pre-built visualizations for some of the most popular metrics available in Google My Business.

There are also 3 calculated metrics available, too. These are custom metrics that are commonly created by Google My Business users that we’ve created using Data Calculations. These are also pre-built, meaning all you need to do is drag-and-drop them into your dashboard to visualize your performance.

No code or design necessary.

Also, in addition to having the ability to quickly drag-and-drop your most important Google My Business metrics, you can just as easily customize your dashboards to include data from other integrations that your business relies on, too.

I’ll show you how to do all of that below.

First, let me show you how to quickly get started via a pre-built Google My Business template.

Getting started with a Google My Business template

Want a quick way to monitor your overall search presence from Google My Business?

First, download this Google My Business Insights template.

Next, you’ll be prompted to connect your Google My Business account.

Then, voila! Watch as your dashboard automatically populates.

How to create custom dashboards with Google My Business

In the dashboard designer, search for the Google My Business integration on the left side menu.

From there, you’ll be prompted to connect your Google My Business account.

Now, you’ll see a menu consisting of 20 default Google My Business metrics as well as 3 calculated metrics (these are custom metrics commonly used by Google My Business users that were created using Data Calculations) available to drag-and-drop directly into your dashboard.

Drag-and-drop the desired metric anywhere you’d like in your dashboard. You can resize these Datablocks or even rearrange them once you’ve added more.

Then, your Google My Business data will automatically populate.

Now, if you’d like to add KPIs from other tools into this dashboard in order to create a comprehensive view of marketing and sales, simply click back into the left side menu to search for the desired integrations you’d like to pull from.

Getting started with Google My Business + Databox

Existing users can view all of the available Google My Business metrics here or download the Google My Business Insights dashboard here.

New to Databox? You can create a free account here.

The post New Integration: Monitor Your Overall Search Presence with Google My Business appeared first on Databox.