GMB Listing Features Temporarily Suspended

As the current global health pandemic unfolds, Google is making changes to their listings to ensure that essential businesses have their listings updated promptly with critical information and non-essential businesses have a fair chance at responding to customers.

The following features have been temporarily removed:

– New Reviews
– Review Replies
– Q & A

The following features have been temporarily limited:

– Open/Closed
– Special Hours
– Business Descriptions
– Google Posts
– User-generated Content

NEW Features Added:

Google has added a new feature on March 25th to mark a business “Temporarily Closed”. This measure is to limit the burden on businesses who are likely to be inundated with updated information from health & government officials.

Roberts Marketing is currently “fully functional” and working from our home offices, helping our clients keep the lines of communication with their customers open in various ways.
Read our blog post below to explore how we’re helping our clients to “Keep Conversations Going with Customers”

Right now is a trying time for many people and businesses. No one is exempt from the impacts of COVID-19 and the effects of safety measures being taken.

As people begin to work from home, take time off to care for their children, and self isolate, we have seen traffic to some of our clients websites INCREASE.

People are taking advantage of their time at home, away from the “busy-ness” of regular, everyday life. They are researching products and services, planning renovations, and contacting businesses to get their questions answered.

Now is the time to keep conversations going, find alternatives to retail store visits, and help customers feel confident in making purchases in new ways.

Here are some ideas that iZON Digital can assist your business with to connect with customers and keep the conversations going:

Video:   Video chat can be used for Design Consultation, Product Consultation, Showroom Tours
Best Apps: Whats App, Facebook Messenger, Facetime, Skype, Google Hangouts

Chat: Text chat can be used to share photos, and have a conversation with a customer that they can pause and pick up when it’s convenient for them. Note that this type of conversation requires organization and followup, especially when you’re fielding more than one customer at a time.
Best Apps: Email, What’s App, Facebook Messenger, Instagram Messenger, Skype

Limited Contact Sample Delivery: If your business is a retail business, you can deliver samples with limited contact to customers through mail shipping and local delivery. Please note that municipalities may put restrictions on this as the situation evolves.

Take this opportunity to show customers your business will go the extra mile to keep their projects on schedule, or to allow them to continue with their plans through various modes of communication. You may even find these alternative channels are worth keeping open when things return to normal!

If you would like help putting together an alternate communication action plan, and messaging on your digital assets directs customers to your “new” way of shopping during the COVID-19 restrictions, please email us, text us or give us a call and we can talk it through.

Contact Us today and let’s talk about how you can keep conversations going with customers.

Google Business Listings – Get on top of Pre-Site Branding

It’s time to take the role of “stocking” your online store as seriously as you do your bricks-and-mortar operation.

We all know that social media platforms enhance your company’s profile and increase market share. The common ones are Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube. But you may have been ignoring a very powerful social media platform: Google Business Listings.

Google rules the world of online searches so it only makes sense that you give them as much information about your business as you can. When you do, your Google Business Listing can act as a mini-website – and it will be your businesses’ best friend. (And not just any friend, the popular friend. The one who gets invited to all the parties and stays for days at a time at other peoples’ Muskoka cottages.)

This is what we call Pre-Site Branding. Google does an amazing job of helping businesses get found online and as a result many customers are visiting and calling them through Google Business search listings, without ever getting as far as the business website.

It’s time to update your Google listing and ensure you create regular posts, add new photos and ask your customers to leave all-important Google Reviews. Do these things and you will see a sizable uptick in customer contacts.

Of course if you don’t have time – we can help.

There was a time when advertising was a matter of whoever spent the most money gained the largest market share. Today that’s no longer true, and may never be again. Yes, a healthy advertising budget will take you further than a meager one, but in this highly saturated media world, you have to engage your customer.

Social Media – Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest et al are time-consuming endeavors and can appear frivolous when a business is focused on productivity, sales, customer service and administration. But it isn’t a waste of time or resources, social media is important to earning trust and future customers. The key is knowing how much to say, when to say it, and to whom. The goal is to get people to ask questions, reach out to you, talk about your business to their friends:  this is what social media helps you do.

Media Partnerships – Often overlooked as a tool for increasing your brand awareness and making campaigns and sales promotions stand out, partnering with a media outlet can make your advertising more effective and increase your Return On Investment/ROI. Radio, television and print have all embraced the internet and often have some of the best used, and most liked, websites in the community. Radio especially encourages their talent to be consistently active on social media in order to engage their listeners when the radio isn’t on. Working with the promotions departments of various media outlets, Roberts Marketing has created interesting, fun, exciting and well-received contests and cross-promotions that take regular advertising up a notch by tapping into the relationship the media companies have with their listeners/viewers/readers. The customer is no longer passively receiving an advertisement, instead they are actively engaging in a feel-good scenario with your company attached to it.

Content Marketing – This is the term commonly used for the stuff you put on your website. Make sure you have content that teaches, illuminates, entices, inspires, attracts visitors to your website and keeps them there. Anything on your site that solves someone’s problem, answers their questions or makes you the authority in your field accomplishes two things. First, you are seen as professional and trustworthy. Second, search engines will also see you this way and will show your website above others resulting in positive Search Engine Optimization/SEO. That’s a double whammy!

Contact Us today and let’s talk about how to engage your customer.