Strategies to drive more traffic to your profiles

As consumers go through their buying journey, they prefer to make a decision without having to visit a brand's website for further research.

This is supported by the fact that over 60% of searches are zero-click and 80% of the top five results in Google for industry keywords link to a Google profile or other third-party profile sites.

STRATEGY 1

Start by benchmarking your profile rankings and share of voice

The first step before you implement steps to improve your digital profile traffic is creating a benchmark of where your brand stands today.

Begin by identifying how accurate your information is for core fields (name, address, website link, phone number and hours) in major profile sites like Google, Bing, Facebook, Yelp & Apple. An additional third-step would be to identify your average rating across profiles and compare this against your competition to identify opportunities.

The end result of this exercise will give you a benchmark of where you stand today, what are areas of concern you should be focusing on and will enable you to track progress as you continue optimizing your profiles.

STRATEGY 2

Optimize for depth of information in profiles

PRO TIP:
Automate and Monitor All Your Google Business Profiles with Synup

Bulk add UTM parameters to the web URL for all your Google Business Profiles using the automation recipe in Synup Automation to track via Google Analytics.

STRATEGY 3

Monitor and respond back to reviews

Reviews have gradually become a major ranking factor across digital profile sites. According to a BrightLocal Survey in done in 2020, a profile with a well rounded reviews strategy  is likely to have a 13% edge when it comes to ranking in the top results.

STRATEGY 4

Acquiring new reviews
is especially important

PRO TIP:
Recycle happy customer reviews to increase conversions

One technique we have seen working is to automatically add any happy customer reviews on your website and share them on social media profiles. Nothing beats social proof when it comes to driving conversions.

STRATEGY 5

Diversify to focus on other
critical sources

Your quality and quantity of what Google considers to be citations is a factor that drives rankings in their algorithm. Outside of this, it's also important to specifically optimize other high value traffic sources.

BONUS:
Get a bird's eye view of your current business listings with our free scan tool.

You can scan your business listings now:

STRATEGY 6

Indexing your profiles matter

When it comes to many of the digital profiles that you create and manage one key element that is often ignored is getting them indexed successfully in the primary search engines. If your profiles aren't indexed, they are likely to never be found by consumers or by the search engines to improve your profile rankings.

Indexing your profile can often lead to better results from any optimization effort. So, beyond getting your profiles published and completed, focus on the below tips to impact your digital marketing.

STRATEGY 7

Benefit from your user
generated content

PRO TIP:
Encourage customers to post media on top of reviews

If you are actively encouraging customers to post positive reviews, reward them if they also include a photo or video as part of the review. These show up prominently on profiles.

STRATEGY 8

Optimize your profiles for voice search

Here's an interesting fact: 50% of all searches today are voice searches. Consumers are using voice search for recommendations, directions, and more important answers.

The key difference between how you are optimized for voice search and how you are optimized for traditional search is the long and short tail keywords. Consumers are conditioned to search with phrases like "Pizza opened near me", unlike when they are using voice search and speaking more naturally, "what restaurants are still open around me?".  Below are couple of things that you should do to optimize for voice search.

Some tips to convert more of your profile traffic

Improving rankings and driving more traffic is one thing, but all of this has no impact on your  ROI if you are unable to convert these profile views into your desired conversion (website visit, store visit or phone lead).

In this section, we will cover strategies you can employ to improve conversions on your profile.

TIP 1

Implement tracking for all your profile conversion activities

1. Tag your website links using Urchin Tracking Module (UTM):

One common mistake we see with brands is that they do not utilize UTM parameters on the website link they publish within profiles. This makes it extremely hard if not impossible to attribute conversions that happened as a result of a profile visitor. In the case of one Fin-Serve customers of ours, we noticed that after implementing UTM tracking, their profiles became their top conversion channel (it was previously fifth highest).

2. Invest in a call tracking solution:

While one conversion path for profile visitors is clicking on the website link, we notice that several other industries are extremely call heavy (example: beauty services). If your brand falls into that category, it is highly recommended that you invest in a call tracking solution. Not only will this give you visibility into conversion challenges, but it will also allow you to remarket back to prospects who didn't convert during the call.

3. Take control of all other links from your profiles:

While one conversion path for profile visitors is clicking on the website link, we notice that several other industries are extremely call heavy (example: beauty services). If your brand falls into that category, it is highly recommended that you invest in a call tracking solution. Not only will this give you visibility into conversion challenges, but it will also allow you to remarket back to prospects who didn't convert during the call.

4. Utilize short-links for any posts you do on your profiles:

Another avenue for conversions from profiles are posts (especially on Google & Facebook). We see that brands rely on the service they post on for attribution and conversion data, which can be tricky if clicks from these posts aren't tracked well. One way to solve this problem is by using short-links for any post being published on a platform. This allows brands to attribute well without having to rely on unreliable reporting from search engines and social media sites.

TIP 2

Implement tracking for all your profile conversion activities

Many brands choose to link out to their website homepage from profiles. This often leads to a poor customer experience where the user is forced to take additional steps to reach the information they are looking for.

A way to solve this problem is by creating unique pages for each branch or store on your website and using them to link out from your profiles.

On an average brands see a 20% lift in conversions (Synup internal data, 2020) when they send profile visitors to a location specific page as opposed to the brand's website homepage.

Another benefit from creating location specific pages is that they also rank very highly on organic search leading to more visibility.

TIP 3

Optimize your profiles for voice search

One trend we've seen is that brands focus on making regular posts on social media sites, while search and review sites are often ignored. It was very hard to generate posts at scale and schedule in advance in the past outside of social sites like Facebook and Instagram, but this can be solved using a tool like Synup or integrating with the endpoints offered by Google, Yelp and other profile sites.

Popular posts formats available include:
1. Information & news posts:

Every major profile site will allow you to add a post about any new information or news which may be organization-wide or specific to a brand.

2. Offers & events posts:

These post types show up prominently especially in mobile search and can be used to announce any specific deals or events happening at a local branch or store.

3. Products & services posts:

These are extremely powerful for brands that may not sell physical products, but have services that they offer. Products & services posts show up prominently above the fold on desktop and mobile searches.

TIP 4

Implement remarketing for profile visitors

Remarketing can be extremely useful to convert browsers into customers. This can be done specifically for anyone who visits your web property from a profile or calls your business (if call tracking is implemented).

Not only do retargeting ads boost your conversion rates by up to 150% (Dataxu study, 2020), but consumers also like them, with 30% reporting a positive experience, compared to 11% who feel negatively about them (eMarketer study, 2013).

TIP 5

Optimize your posts and offers to focus on events

TIP 6

Personalize profile content for buyer intent

Beyond orchestrating posts based on season, weather and location, it is also possible to show a specific message on your profile based on the keywords buyers search for.

By including a specific keyword in your posts, it is possible to show a clickable message (redirecting to your brand’s website) to improve profile conversions.

With one grocery brand we work with we noticed that a majority of their customers were looking for their offers and circulars primarily over the weekend. These customers were looking for something specific, which we could identify based on historical data, and we incorporated that into their profile strategy.

We were able to successfully show anyone searching for a circular or offer a specific page on the brand’s website. This cut down steps in the customer journey and lead to a significant increase in the number of engaged shoppers.

This lead to a significant increase in the number of engaged shoppers.

TIP 7

Integrate shopping feeds within your profiles

If your brand offers physical products, it is recommended that you publish these on shopping feeds and link them to your primary local profiles. Google, Bing & Facebook allow this type of integration.The most exciting thing about shopping feeds is that they show up prominently within profiles, and are personalized based on the keyword that the user has been searching for. While traditional posts require two clicks before a prospective customer can navigate to a brand's website, shopping feeds only require a single click that results in the searcher navigating directly to the brand website.This experience is extremely useful for potential customers, and also allows your brand to control a larger portion of the customer experi- ence (as opposed to relying on a search engine), optimizing the experience for conversions.

Key Takeaways

Traffic on Profiles via Mobile Devices Convert

Customer on average will have eight intractions with a brand before making a purchasing decision. Over 80% of these searches happen while on mobile and through third-party profiles.

Customer's Aren't Visiting Your Website

70% of searchers get to your profiles, but never to your website.

Customer's Aren't Visiting Your Website

70% of searchers get to your profiles, but never to your website.

Respond to Your Reviews

Reviews aren't just there for your customers. They are there for your rankings, reputation, and profile authority. Make sure you are actively managing this.

Indexing Your Profiles Matters

It doesn't matter how many places your are listed if you are not being indexed. Make sure Google knows to crawl your 3rd party sites.

Optimize for
Voice Search

The world is shifting rapidly to voice as a preferred channel. Don't wait to be behind the curve. Optimize for voice now.

Register for a free trial

What happens next?

  • Our brand analyst will contact you to get your instance of Synup setup
  • Through a personalized product demo, our solutions consultant will show you how our product can simplify profile marketing for your business
  • You will get takeaways on how to convert more customers from your online profiles
With Synup, have your brand be Found, Trusted, Chosen Always
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