Travel Masters Podcast
Founded by travel goddess and CEO of Small World Big Fun, Cindy Minor and sales training expert Morris Sims, The Travel Masters Learning Community (click the link and join us there too) is here to help you grow in the world of travel and achieve greatness!
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Travel Masters Podcast
Boost Your Business by using your Google Business Profile
Unlock the secrets to skyrocketing your local business visibility with insights from our special guest, Marilyn Jenkins, the mastermind behind the "Google Business Profile Training Guide." Ever wondered how Google Business Profiles can outshine traditional social media in boosting your business's reach? Marilyn joins us to unravel this digital marketing mystery, highlighting the indispensable "map pack" and sharing strategies to secure that coveted first-page search result spot. Her expertise promises to transform your understanding of digital footprints and enhance customer attraction through strategic use of these powerful tools.
Turning the spotlight to travel advisors, we dive into actionable strategies for maximizing your Google Business Profile to its fullest potential. Discover the critical importance of profile accuracy and timely updates, and hear compelling success stories of businesses that experienced immediate uplift in customer interaction. Explore tactics like leveraging online directories, building backlink networks, and encouraging customer reviews to elevate your online credibility. Join us as we navigate the roadmap to digital prominence, ensuring your business information stays consistent and compelling across all platforms to effectively capture and retain local clientele.
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Welcome to the Travel Masters podcast. We're here to help travel advisors and travel agency owners get what they really want from their business. I'm Morris Sims and I'm going to be your host for our podcast. I'm an ex-chemical engineer turned life insurance agent. I got to tell you selling life insurance was a lot more fun for me than being an engineer. After a few years, they asked me to teach other people how to do what I was doing. And well, long story short, we wound up in New York City for 20 years. That was quite a change for a young Alabama boy. I retired after 20 years as the vice president and chief learning officer, where my team and I trained over 12,000 agents and their managers to be independent business owners and sales professionals. Now I'm not one to stop working, so I started my own business and I was blessed to find a sweet spot with travel professionals that I was able to help. Now I've got several travel agency consulting clients and I'm the co-founder of the Travel Masters Learning Community, where we provide opportunities for travel professionals to become more effective, efficient and to get what they want from their business.
Speaker 1:On this podcast, I'm going to be interviewing guests that I believe are going to have a message that can be of help to you. Our travel professional community and I'll do some solo episodes as well with some other stuff that I really think can help you in your business. So, with all that said, hey, let's get this party started with today's episode. What do you say? Welcome to the Travel Masters Podcast. I'm Morris Simms and today our guest is Marilyn Jenkins. Now I got to tell you Marilyn is going to be teaching me as much today as she will be you or anybody else, because I'll tell you I don't know the first thing about this subject, but Marilyn does know the first thing about this subject. But Marilyn does. She's written a book about the Google Business Profile. It is the Google Business Profile Training Guide and it's on Amazon and available. If you'd like to go, do that. But she does consulting as well and is a digital strategist. Marilyn, welcome to the show. We're glad to have you on Travel Masters.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1:Tell us a little bit about how you got into doing what you do here and how you became an author, and then we'll talk about something, hopefully, that's going to be a real value to our audience.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well. I've been in digital marketing or in IT since the late 90s, so I've seen a lot of changes, started with helping some people do websites because they knew they needed them but didn't really know why, so then help them start getting traffic for their website. So over the course of years I've seen a lot of changes in Google, the search engines, how it works, and you know it's just through referrals and business. I've been able to grow a great team and work with hundreds of local businesses to improve their, their digital footprint, gain customers through that and with the Google, my business and the Google bits and changes to the Google business profile. It's such an incredible tool that Google gives a business for free and I just have to tell people about it, and I wrote a book for the people who aren't ready to outsource their marketing, which is one of the things I do, and so that's what we're doing. We're just helping people get more business by using a tool Google provides for free.
Speaker 1:Jim Barrow, as you were describing that, it struck why would? Why is this important compared to all the social media stuff that's out there? I mean, I can, I got a profile on LinkedIn, I've got a profile on Facebook, I got, I got all this stuff. What makes this special?
Speaker 2:so Google is the number one search engine in the world. Right, trillions of searches are done on. The reason they're the largest search engine is because they give a good user experience. People search. They get their answers right.
Speaker 2:So Google Places started many years ago I think eight or 10 years ago and it was like imagine if you remember a phone book, imagine taking that phone book, importing it in and making all those businesses a free business listing. So now, when people search, google is giving them their answers. So the whole thing is a user experience providing them, you know, like a one-click answer to what they want. So what we do, what you're doing, is your Google business profile is similar to, if you think the way it works, like a social media. Right, right, you need to interact with it. You need to give all the information you possibly can. Everything you put on there, you're telling google what searches you are relevant for so they can put you in the map pack. Now you want to know what the google business profile is wait a minute, I'll put you into what the map pack.
Speaker 2:Now let me ask you a question. When you're a consumer, you're out for the afternoon with your wife and she decides she wants a pizza, so you're going to pull out your phone. You look up pizza near me. First thing that comes up you got some ads right in the middle. Is this really colorful map? And then there's three listings right that mor that.
Speaker 2:Morris, is your map pack, okay. Okay, Now, if you click in there, you can see more people that are on page two, three, four, whatever, depending on how many pizza places you have near you.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But the key is to be found on page one, because where is the best place to hide a dead body?
Speaker 1:Page two I've got to remember best place to hide a dead body is on page two. Good idea.
Speaker 2:Yep. So think about it Now. Even Google says, looking at you on your phone, 60 to 80% of searches click on the map pack. They don't go below it, they don't type on the ad, they don't click on the ads, they click in the map. Now, in the Google business profile, they change the layout so it is much more colorful, so it attracts your attention right. You can get directions, you can make a phone call, you can go to the website. You can do all of these interactions with that Google business. Okay, so that's what the the profile is, is you're. You're wanting to be found when people search for whatever. You are near me, and that's your Google business profile.
Speaker 1:Interesting, interesting. I never understood that. But I don't guess there's anybody in the United States today that knows how to turn on a computer who doesn't use Google on a daily, if not hourly, basis. I mean, it's like no matter what, I'm gonna Google something, even it's terrible. But my wife and I'll be sitting watching a TV show and she'll say, or I'll say, I wonder what that actor has been in before. He looks familiar. And within two minutes we now know every show that guy has ever done or every movie he's ever made. And it's all within. You know, boom, just right, like that.
Speaker 2:Well you go to Google because you get the information you want. That's that user experience. So Google rewards people that give them enough information, or more and more information, to make their users have a better user experience.
Speaker 1:That's an important point. It rewards people who give it more information.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, like people would probably remember and recognize Google my Business and it's where you sent people to give you reviews, right? So that's all people really thought it was. It's a place to store reviews.
Speaker 2:That is actually the previous iteration of Google business profile so the most important thing is your name, you're at your street address and your phone number. Okay, those are those things have to be. Then you need to put in your categories. So everything that we're going to talk about gives Google more information, so it knows what searches for you to show up in the map pack.
Speaker 1:Okay, Marilyn, let's kind of start from the beginning. Where do I find my Google profile? I have no idea.
Speaker 2:Googlecom slash business. I told you I didn't know what we were talking about today. There's two ways you could do it. You can just type in your company name and if there's a Google, if there's a Google business profile for your business, there'll be a little link on there. It'll show up on the right hand side of your screen and there's a link that says claim this business or own this business. Okay, if you don't see one like say, you're a relatively new business and there just isn't one, you can go to googlecom slash business and start the process of creating one okay okay, you have to if.
Speaker 2:If it's already there, you can claim it, and then you verify it and you verify like a video. There's very various ways of verifying to google that this is you and your business, okay, and once you have that, you start filling it out so you get a. There's this really nice management portal. That's very simple and they show you literally how many steps it is to get your basic information up and then what more information you can provide. You can have photos. You can have videos. You know, use your logo. You put your hours of operation. You can have photos. You can have videos. You know, use your logo. You put your hours of operation. You can choose up to seven categories. Sometimes they change it, but you start with your most important service first and that's your first category. So you choose your categories as much as you possibly can in priority order.
Speaker 1:Super. So what are some categories that are out there that one might think of? I need to define that in my head, I guess.
Speaker 2:So it would be like a restaurant. Maybe it's an Italian restaurant. If you're a travel agent, it could be travel agency. It could be travel agent. It could be both of those, so you would choose both of those.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, and just to have different, one category might be travel advisor, another one might be travel agency owner, another one might be travel advisor, travel specialist.
Speaker 2:And if you don't have fully seven, put it like I said, the most important one first. But I would check back periodically and see if they've added more, because they have it used to be. You had three categories. Now there's in many places there's seven.
Speaker 1:Do I fill out the category in free form or is there a drop-down box?
Speaker 2:No, there's a drop-down box. It's predetermined. They have a list. That's why I said periodic. If you don't have seven that relate to you, you probably want to check back every couple months and just see if it's changed. But you know there's. What they didn't have before is there's also question and answer. So what's really great about that is most businesses think, oh, there's no questions for me to answer, so I don't have to worry about that. Well, why don't you ask questions that all your customers have, right? Every business has FAQs.
Speaker 1:I was going to say didn't we call that FAQs?
Speaker 2:Exactly. Yeah, so you would do that. You would ask the question and answer it using your keywords and your city. So what you're telling Google every time you do something on your Google Business Profile? This is what I'm relevant for.
Speaker 1:I like that, I like that. So what do you recommend I do? Okay, so I go to go to this thing. I find my business, or I create it in Google and I put in I can, I can put it on my basic data and choose some categories. What do I do to make it special, Merrill, what do you suggest we do next Once you get all the basics done? Then what do you do? What do you suggest we do next Once you get all the basics done? Then what do you do? How do you make this work for you?
Speaker 2:Yep. So, like I said, everything, you want to keep adding data to it. So there is now a products and services section so you can have in your services there's photos, videos and text. So think about writing a little article, like a two or three paragraphs, about the service that you do and you use your keywords, right. So pizzas, we do pizza and we're an Italian restaurant in this city. Come on by and grab a pizza. I mean, you know I'm just being silly, but you know, be descriptive of your service or your product, right. There's no limit to them. You can add more, and so what I would do is I would do one a week. I would do one thing a week you want to add. There's also now they have posts. So think about blog articles. It's exactly what the posts are. If you write an article for a magazine, for your website, I would put it on your Google business profile as well, because in that post, you're telling Google exactly the things that you do and you're adding more content.
Speaker 1:Is this one of the places where you can throw up a video or an audio file? You can. Would one want to put their podcast on there, or just to link to Spotify or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would probably do a link to Spotify or Apple, to iTunes, if you're doing something like that, and that would be on a blog post. But that's more information about you. Now also, you know that Google owns YouTube and that's the second largest search engine in the world. So, depending on where you're publishing your podcast you can use YouTube now connects with an XML file, so you can say a category is a podcast and it will pull it from, say, buzzsprout or something like that, automatically. And if you put your podcast up like that, it gets you more traction on YouTube. Then what I do on mine is I have a separate playlist that says podcast video and all the videos from my podcast go there. So now YouTube and Google are getting my podcast twice Interesting.
Speaker 2:So if you wanted to, then link it to your Google business profile. You could.
Speaker 1:Our podcast that we're on right now is mainly audio. Uh, we haven't jumped into video yet, so we're still. We're still doing the audio thing, but, uh, I tend to believe podcasts were created for audio and that still is a great medium to use and, frankly, I hope all our our users out there they're listening to us today are listening while they work out, while they ride their bike, while they drive their car, while they do whatever they do every day, and they've got Marilyn and Morris in their ear.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's how I enjoy my podcasts. But you know, some people enjoy watching the videos and it's just content, so I put it on on youtube and, uh, you know we get traction from that. But every little thing you put in your google business profile and you link it to other things that's within your business, you're giving google more information about you how do you distinguish this from your actual website, Marilyn?
Speaker 2:It's more important Now. You want your website because there's a button for it right On your Google business profile. You've got telephone website directions, chat. So you've got a choice of all those little buttons under there and you want to make sure you put something in every one of those so that you give Google again more information about your business. It is important to have a website. That way you can put even more information about your business and Google will spider that, which means they go and read it and they learn more about you. Cool, but your Google Business Profile if you're a local business, depending on local people to find you to do business with you, you are doing your business a disservice by not working on your Google business profile.
Speaker 1:Most travel agents. I say most. I'm making a big assumption there, but a number of travel agents that I work with tend to do business with people all over the United States, as well as people down the street. Is this going to help me with people all over the world or just with folks down the street?
Speaker 2:It's mostly just for the local maps. If I search for Morris' travel agency and I'm not in your area, then your website would come up, so you're still giving information to Google. Your Google business profile probably would not come up unless I'm very near you, because the maps only shows me things that's within like 50 miles of where I am.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right, that sounds interesting for sure. And yet that too is still for our audience, a lot of our audience. A lot of travel advisors out there in the world do tend to do a lot of business with people in their local area, because that's where their connections are and where their network is. Their live personal network is actually, you know, obviously down the street, so that makes sense. It sounds like this would be very important for a travel advisor who's running their own business, wouldn't you agree?
Speaker 2:Exactly, and especially if you've got an office.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You've got a location, you've got your address, you can easily verify it and you want people to be able to find you, and this is one way. The map pack is something that Google provides for their users to give a good user experience. So you want to be found there, and here's here's how important it is. I had a client that all of a sudden, on Tuesdays, had no walk in traffic. Was it a pet store? And it we're like what do you?
Speaker 2:mean you there's nobody coming in on Tuesday. So we got to looking and somehow don't know how, don't know exactly who made the change it was. His google business profile showed it was closed on tuesday. Wow, so corrected that and literally the following tuesday he had walked in traffic incredible, but it's just interesting like that.
Speaker 2:Another I had a family law attorney in Florida. For some reason her phone stopped ringing. She's getting pretty consistent phone calls here and there and we made a couple of changes to her Google business profile, corrected some things, and she doesn't know how they got changed, but her phone started ringing again. Wow. So it's crazy. And it's like right now. So we're getting ready to head into the holiday season. So will your hours of operation change on certain days? Okay, if they do, then you want to go in and make those adjustments to the hours of operation in your Google business profile, because here's a new thing that Google is doing If I search for a travel agent near me and say two or three, come up four I don't know how many would be near me and one of them says updated yesterday and the others don't and especially if I'm in a holiday period.
Speaker 2:I want to know how many times have you looked at the hours of operation and then gone to a business and it's closed?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's no fun yeah.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, absolutely incredible. Marilyn, what else would you tell a travel agent who came to you for help? Where would you suggest they spend their time and focus their time and attention? Google profile, what else? Anything else? Yeah?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would do directories Right? There's tons and tons of free directories, so find every directory you can list in. If you're a member of your Chamber of commerce, ask for a listing on their website. They probably have an open membership listing. Make sure they have a link back to your website. Right? You wanna make sure that you get asked for reviews. Put that as part of your business process, ask for reviews and then, every time you get a review, reply to it, whether it's good or bad. But what you want is you want external links linking back to your website, and your website link into your Google business profile. So the more things you can get pointed back, the better. So you can go to BBB, you can go to Yellow Pages, yelp all of these different places and get links. Make sure they have identical name, address and phone number as your Google Business Profile, because that's what ranks, that's what gives it more relevancy.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Marilyn, this is super. This is a week's worth of work for me right here, and I hope everybody else will find this to be very, very helpful and very useful. Travel Masters Podcast is here to provide value to you, to help you with your business, and this one topic might be able to help you improve your traffic coming into you, be it by your telephone or your email, or walking into your front door, if that's an opportunity, so give this a shot. It's worth your time and effort, that's for sure, marilyn. If somebody really wanted to get into this deeper and get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Speaker 2:You can reach me on LinkedIn. You can also. I'm going to give you a copy of the link to my book on Amazon, and you can learn more about our M Pack at mapspowerboostcom.
Speaker 1:Mapspowerboostcom. That sounds like the best place in the world, right there, I got to write that down Mapspowerboostcom. Got it All right. I told you I was going to learn as much as anybody else would today, because I know this.
Speaker 2:It's exciting. I mean it's to know how important it is to local business and and it's a secret that most people don't know about or they don't understand how powerful it is.
Speaker 1:It's certainly not something I've ever experienced or encountered, except to see it pop up on Google and not realize what the heck it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're using it for that business. That's helpful. Yeah, so my book, because I do marketing services for local businesses and I have many that weren't ready to outsource yet, so that's why I wrote the training guide. The Google Business Profile Training Guide walks you through the whole process and all the little pieces.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic and that's obviously available on Amazon. I'm sure, yes, everything's available on Amazon, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Seems like it, huh.
Speaker 1:I can't find anything that doesn't show up when I look on Amazon. It's incredible. It's like, how do I do fill in the blank? It's on YouTube somewhere. It's on YouTube somewhere and that's just absolutely incredible. My son-in-law and I were working on his car and we couldn't get to this one part. We Googled how do you replace this? On that, on this car, pops up a video and the guy says first thing you have to do is remove this plate. There are four screws. They're here, here and here. Pop that plate off and you could get right to what we were trying to get to, that he and I had been working on for about an hour. Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 2:It is, isn't that?
Speaker 1:amazing. There is stuff out there and we need to be out there and be visible in that stuff. And this is another way to be visible, exactly Because it's only when you're visible that it's going to work. A good friend of mine, dr Richard Kay, says you know it's going to work. Good friend of mine, dr Richard Kay, says you know it's not really who you know, it's who knows you and nobody's going to know you unless you're visible and you're out there making yourself visible to the world. And this is just another wonderful way to be visible to the world, because it is about who knows you much more than who do you, who you know so, and it's free okay, there you go.
Speaker 1:I mean so many times we don't value things that are free, but this one seems to be a win-win for everybody. It's a win for google because they make a great experience for their clients, for their, for their. It's a win for their advertisers because they get to show up rapidly in a Google search. It's a win for everybody and a great service that we need to take advantage of.
Speaker 2:I agree.
Speaker 1:Marilyn, thank you so much for being here today on the Travel Masters podcast.
Speaker 2:Morris, thank you so much, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1:It has, it really has. We'll have to do this again sometime.
Speaker 2:Of course.
Speaker 1:All right, have a great day, enjoy and everybody out there. Y'all go out and meet somebody new. Go find somebody when you're standing in line, introduce yourself and talk to them about your business, because that's what we do we grow businesses, and the only way to do that is by being more visible. So go talk to somebody and make yourself visible. This week, it'll make all the difference in the world. Until next time, I'm Maurice Sims and I look forward to seeing you right here on the Travel Masters podcast.