Google Business Profile Management Services: How To Offer To Your Clients?
Nikola Bojkov
Managing Google Business Profile for local businesses is one of the undermined opportunities for growth.
Businesses are too busy to invest their time and resources in growing on Instagram or TikTok and completely ignore the huge potential to gain many local GBP users.
In this post, we explore how you, as an agency, can convince more and more small businesses to optimize their Google business profiles, attract more customers, and outrank their competition.
Start offering Google Business Profile management services
Get access to Google Business API, automatically collect, respond, and manage reviews to multi-location profiles with ease.
Google Business Profile, formerly known as Google My Business, is a business listing for companies with physical locations and online businesses to create a presence on Google Maps or Google Search. It is part of the entire Google ecosystem for businesses and gives them lots of possibilities to establish an online presence that will help them to be discovered by local customers. Additionally, companies can create their Google Ads and reach more local customers by having a Google business profile.
A Google Business Profile also helps in engaging potential customers by providing a better shopping experience and building brand loyalty.
Google business profile management (formerly GMB management services or Google My Business management) is a service that includes a range of activities, starting with creating and verifying a GMB listing, optimizing the profile for better visibility, collecting and responding to customer reviews, or publishing Google posts to promote or inform about the company’s latest updates.
Google Business Profile Manager
It is like social media management specifically dedicated to managing the presence on Google services like Maps and Search.
What Google Business Profile Management Services you can offer?
In our experience, agencies combine their current services and introduce the GBP management service in bundles.
Still, some services are unique, especially if your agency has not yet established expertise in reputation management. That said, we divided the list of services into services that are native to managing Google business profiles and services that you can offer in bundles.
Offering these services can help attract more customers by increasing conversions, reaching a wider audience, and enhancing local search visibility.
Provide unique GBP services for large companies.
If you manage large companies with multiple locations, creating a more specific service for multi-location companies is better. For this purpose, you can select some of the following GBP services:
If you manage large companies with multiple locations, creating a more specific service for multi-location companies is better. For this purpose, you can select some of the following GBP services:
GBP business listing management
GMB listing management includes adding the listings in relevant business categories, updating profiles, business hours, and new menus, and uploading photos and videos for each client’s business location.
Google reviews management
Reviews management can be a robust service, especially if you manage a popular brand in multiple locations. It will require setting up notifications and aggregating the Google reviews in one place to achieve efficient monitoring, responding, categorizing, etc.
Google reviews collection
This is a very specific service for GBP management. It requires a strategy for contacting customers and requesting reviews via email, SMS, or other methods, such as Google reviews NFC cards, QR codes printed on menus, or Google reviews collected through website buttons or badges.
Google reviews widgets
You can provide Google reviews widgets, badges, or review collect forms for your clients’ websites that they can use to show trust and build confidence.
GBP post scheduling
GBP publishing and post scheduling include services like creating content plans to post updates, events, or offers on all your client locations. This can be a truly time-saving activity if you use a Google post scheduler that will help when you need to post on all locations simultaneously.
GBP analytics
This service includes specific Local marketing analytics for each business location on Google Maps. The GBP analytics provides an overview of the total visits of the profiles, local search queries, and traffic that a particular website receives from the GBP dashboard.
Google reviews insights
Google reviews reports and insights is a service that includes regular reporting about the status of the overall Google rating, new reviews, whether positive or negative and recommendations for handling potentially harmful reviews in the future.
Google My Business API Access
Utilize the Google My Business API for streamlined management, including role management without granting multiple access permissions, advanced post scheduling, and bulk review responses.
Multi-location clients can benefit from native GBP services
Here are some ideas for clients that can benefit much from these services:
restaurant chains
multi-location brands
multi-brand companies
Provide GBP services in a bundle for SMEs
Offering bundled Google My Business management services might be easier if you need to build up your expertise. Also, if your clients are small businesses with up to 5 locations, it makes much more sense to upsell the GBP management service in bundles you already offer. Here are some ideas for bundle services that can include Google business management service as well:
GBP management as part of social media management and monitoring
For agencies already providing Instagram monitoring or monitoring of mentions on other social media networks, you can upsell and provide Google reviews monitoring, setting up alerts to get notifications each time the customer gets a new review.
Publishing on GBP as part of social media publishing
If you provide Instagram, TikTok, or LinkedIn publishing services, you can add Google post scheduling as an extension of your current services.
Local SEO as part of broad SEO services
This service is perfect for any local business with tons of nearby competition – like restaurants, real estate offices, hotels, etc. You can offer it as part of current SEO activities and be specific to providing services such as competitor review keywords analysis and Schema codes for star ratings in local search results.
Local SEO can help engage potential customers by driving traffic to the website, helping them find the business locally, and providing a better shopping experience.
Website review widgets as part of web design services
providing the ability to design and embed Google review widgets for your client websites can help extend your current web design services and also differentiate your offering from the competition.
GBP accounts analytics as part of social media analytics
Suppose you already provide services like social media analytics. In that case, you can extend this and provide analytics of the visits and traffic that your clients’ websites get from their Google business profiles.
How to start offering Google My Business management service
Here’s a structured guide to help you get started and expand on your current capabilities:
As we mentioned, for existing digital marketing agencies, it is most probably the easiest to integrate Google Business Profile services with other digital marketing strategies. And, of course, to start offering these services, you will need to gain experience in setting up and using the Google business profile manager.
Leverage existing skills: Adapting to GBP reviews should be manageable if your team is already monitoring and responding to comments on other social media platforms. Develop a review policy that includes strategies for handling both positive and negative feedback effectively.
Training and resources: Familiarize yourself with the setup and management of Google Business Profiles. Here are some key resources to get you started:
2. Pitch the benefits of GBP services + email included
Once you gain some expertise and knowledge in managing GBP profiles, you can start by learning the benefits of having an optimized Google business profile and pitching these benefits to your most loyal clients. Here are the main benefits that usually resonate with clients with multiple locations:
Subject:
Let’s increase your local visibility
Let’s get you more local clients
Hi [Client Name],
We are excited to introduce our new Google Business Profile (GBP) management services!
As you know, maintaining a strong online presence is crucial for attracting local customers.
With our expertise, we can optimize your GBP to ensure you stand out in local search results and on Google Maps. Benefits of our GBP management services include:
Managing consistent branding across all locations.
Boost local search visibility by up to 50%.
Efficiently manage reviews and customer inquiries.
Increase website traffic and bookings.
Access detailed performance analytics for better decision-making.
Get a competitive advantage with star ratings in search results.
Increase sales by up to 15% on your website with Google Reviews Widgets.
We already secured a professional GBP management software that has direct access to Google business API that will help us all save time and be very efficient.
Let’s schedule a call to discuss how we can tailor our services to meet your needs and help your business grow. Please let me know a convenient time for you.
Best regards,
[Your Name]
Example pitch email for GBP services
3. Get access to clients’ Google business profile manager access
Finally, once a client is committed to trying their service, you will need to get access to their account. This is probably one of the main steps in determining their seriousness, and getting a big foot through the door is needed to prove yourself.
Secure GBP access: Explain the process to your clients and provide clear instructions on how they can grant you access to their GBP. You can use the Google Maps app to set up this access on your mobile device. This step is crucial, especially if the client has multiple listings, and you will also need to define the role management within your team internally, such as providing a dedicated account manager for each location.
Onboarding process: Develop an onboarding checklist to ensure you gather all necessary information from the client. This might include business information, business photos (exterior and interior), and any existing reviews needing attention.
Offer Google My business services with GBP management software
To offer Google business management services, one of the best ways is to start using a GBP platform with all the functionalities needed to make your life easier. Most of the professional software for GBP management has already established official Google Business API integration, which is a huge benefit to large companies that have lots of data.
One example of GBP software is EmbedSocial, which you can try today. Here are the features provided:
Access to Google Business API
Google reviews aggregation for multiple locations.
Sub-accounts for better GBP accounts and role management on multiple locations
Google posts publishing and scheduling at scale with AI generator for post ideas
