(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Getty Images
Google has quietly added a feature to its business profiles that can give any business, regardless of size, a powerful CRM feature. And it costs nothing.
First, let’s make sure you know your Google Business Profile. This is where you can set up information about your business so that when people search for you, that information appears on the right side of the search results. I’m sure you’ve seen this before with other companies you’ve searched for.
For example, if you search for my business (The Marks Group), you will see our address (we are a virtual business, it’s a PO box), opening hours, health and safety information (our PO box is very clean) as well as the our phone number and reviews (mostly good). There are also links to our website, directions to our location (in case you want to meet in front of our mailbox) and the opportunity for visitors to call us directly from the profile webpage of the company. Good material. Every business should have this. If you don’t, you can set up a business profile for your company here.
But let’s move on to customer relationship management. When you buy a mainstream CRM system, you’ll want to integrate it with your website so you can capture leads. You may also want to set up chat functionality to answer questions. Better yet, you might want to leverage AI so that standard or common questions are automatically answered, saving everyone a lot of time. This is standard CRM stuff and if you’re not doing it, you should be.
But now Google offers a new feature that will help you accomplish these tasks, even if you don’t have a CRM system. The company has quietly expanded its Q&A capabilities to its business profile.
According to the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) publication. Land of seekersthis was noticed by an SEO professional Stefan Somborac. The feature will allow you to create up to ten FAQs with questions of up to 40 characters and answers of up to 500 characters. You can also include links to your website.
This is a powerful CRM feature… and it’s free. By setting up your questions, you can capture visitors searching for you on Google and direct them where you want them to go. Not only do you provide useful and immediate answers to potential customers, but if you structure your answers in the right way, you can also capture their potential information by offering them some kind of call to action on your website, such as a document white paper, a brochure or other type of asset. . And once the prospect has given up their contact information on your website, you can (hopefully) have your CRM set up to capture that data as well. Even if you don’t have a CRM application, you can receive this information by email.
To enable automated FAQs for your Google Business Profile, Search Engine Land’s Matt G. Southern says you should follow these steps:
-Search “my business” on Google in a web browser.
-Click on Customers and then on Messages.
-Click Menu, then Message Settings, then Manage FAQs.
-Click +Add a question
I am using this CRM feature right now. You should too. Happy hunting!
