Episode Transcript
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Hey, what’s up everybody? Welcome to the Marine Marketing Podcast. I’m your host, Harry Casimir. This podcast is all about marketing your marine business, whether you are a boat dealer, boat builder, boat club, all in between. If you want to get more leads, more sales, and marketing that actually works, you are in the right place.
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And every episode we break down what’s working right now in the marine marketing space. There is no fluff, no generic advice, just real tactics you can take home and grow your business. This podcast is brought to you by Boat Marketing Pros, where we help marine businesses grow through digital marketing. Learn more at boatmarketingpros.com. All right, let’s get into it.
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Google Business Profile masteries for boat dealers and other local marine businesses. Your Google Business Profile is often the first thing potential customers see. Most marine businesses have incomplete or poorly optimized profiles. This episode, we cover exactly how to optimize your profile for more clicks, more calls, and more showroom visits and more memberships. So let’s get started on what we’re gonna cover.
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On this episode, we are going to cover why Google Business Profile matters to your business. We are going to cover the foundation, get these things done and get them right first. How the optimization strategy that you can apply for your Google Business to make sure your business stand out when people search. Google post strategy, what are some of the things that you should be aware of or need to know and need to do. And of course, questions and answer section within their Google Business Profile.
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I don’t know if you knew that you could do that information, how you can get that presented. Let’s get started on why this matters. Google captures almost 80% of all online reviews as we speak today. That is huge. And customers rely now on reviews to determine whether they want to do business with you or not.
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And as we speak today, Google holds about almost 90% of the search engine market share in North America. Think about that.
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8 out of 10 people go to Google, almost 90, 9 of 10 go to Google to find information that they are looking for when it comes to specific information. Now that’s from a search engine perspective. We’re not going to talk about AI on this one, but let’s focus on search engine. Your Google Business Profile, when you do a search, you will see it on what they call the local packs result, which is often before you see your website or any of your competitors’ website. The first thing you see up there, there are usually 3 of them next to the map, is what we call the local pack.
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And there’s a lot of factors and different filters that apply before you could get to be shown on that 3 spots. For your business to show on that 3 spots, there are things that you need to do, and we are going to cover them piece by piece here today. This is free marketing most dealers are leaving on the table. I mean, you do not pay for Google Business Profile. Well, you could pay for someone to manage it for you, but you don’t pay to actually be on Google for you to have your business inside Google Business Profile.
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And you will see the difference between you managing it versus someone managing it for you and what you need to know. First, let’s go over the foundation, how to get these basic fundamentals right the first time. So the first thing you want to do, if you have not done so yet, is claim and identify your business profile. And this is crucial. It’s very, very important that you claim your business profile as soon as possible if you have not done so.
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And if you have already, congrats, that is awesome. But here are some of the things that you need to make sure you have on your Google Business Profile. This is very, very, very important. First thing is the exact name as it appears on your building and on your website. I will give an example.
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If your business is ABC123 Marine LLC, that’s the legal government name of your business. However, your brand name, what you market with, is ABC123 Marine Business. Then don’t put the LLC on your website and then put the LLC on Google. You don’t do that. You want to make sure that name matches everywhere.
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So I’m not saying for you not to put LLC if you want to, although you don’t really have to, but if you want to put LLC at the end of your business name or Inc. or whatever that might be, you can. You just want to be consistent across the board. So if you use LLC and the business name once, you want to use that across the board. Again, the LLC, Inc., or something like that would be the corporation slash the legal state and government name. Whereas your business would actually be known as ABC123 Marine Business, right?
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So you want that name on your building, that name on your address, that name on Google Business Profile, and that’s the same name that should be on your website. You also want a correct address with suite number if applicable. This is very, very important. Don’t just put the address, a random address, but suite number, especially if you have a suite number. Obviously there are businesses, a lot of businesses that do not have a suite number, that’s just a normal address.
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Have that, but make sure you looked at the address and add it exactly as it shows on the post office, uh, on this USPS address. This is crucial because when your business is going to verify on Google Business Profile, you want that information to match. The second piece is the phone number that someone would actually answer on the business. That is very, very crucial, and you will see why. And then update the hours, include seasonal changes, especially if you live in the Northeast, Midwest, where the weather change, season change, sometimes you close down completely.
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You want to have that information available. Once you get your business information to be accurate, which is what we call the NAP, name, address, and phone number, the next piece within the foundation is your primary category, meaning that what is the primary thing that your business does? If you’re a boat dealer, then you sell boats. Although you basically a boat repair shop, you could be a marina, you could be a boat rental space, but you want to put your primary function as a business and the primary categories. This is important.
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So let’s say, for example, you are a boat dealer that have all those different businesses I just mentioned, but you want to be known as the boat rental. The boat dealer would be a secondary. You want to put boat rental as the primary. Instead of boat dealer as the secondary. Now this is crucial because Google actually look at the primary business and give it priority.
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So this is important because locally you have 3, 4, 5, 7, 8 competitors in a world where everything is— if everything were to be equal, because if boat dealer is not your primary category, although you are a boat dealer or you have been known as a boat dealer, but you do not want boat dealer to be your primary category, then you wouldn’t be competing in the primary category anymore as a dealer, if that makes sense. So you want to make sure you have the proper category for your business. Additional category that you fit in, but they are secondary to the primary. So again, take the boat dealers as an example. Let’s say you are a boat dealer.
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There’s a good chance you are a service center. You probably do repairing for boating, you do detailing, you may you even weed planting, right? And then you may even sell marine equipment. So all of this information are secondary to your primary categories. And that is very, very, very important because Google does look at all that information to categorize you.
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So you want to get that information right. Now, again, once you have your foundation in place, Now you go to the next step, optimization strategy. This is where you really want to optimize, and this is where it becomes crucial because after the foundation, now how do we make sure our business is showing where it needs to be and we have everything that’s available to us, we can take advantage of this information hub. Google Business Profile provide you as a business for free. So the first thing you want to go in is service area definition.
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So within the service area definition, make sure you include all the locations that you are serving. So for example, let me take a big metro area that has lots of activities from a boarding perspective. Let’s stay with the Fort Lauderdale. Within Fort Lauderdale area, there are a lot, a lot of subdivision within that area, from Margate to Plantation to Coconut Creek to Davis. And I cannot name all those different subdivisions within Fort Lauderdale, but every one of them may be, may have one or two or three other businesses similar to yours.
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When you add that information, you want to present yourself as big of an area that you can. Now, obviously, sometimes there are slight restrictions, which I don’t think any of the manufacturers really kind of knocking down on this. If there is restriction in terms of geographically, regionally, how far you can broadcast your dealers, you want to make sure you not step on your associate or similar dealer to you that sell the same brand to you where you get in trouble with your manufacturers. But that’s an issue you can solve. You will know what to do, but making sure you include all the locations that you serve.
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For example, you’re a boat dealer in Fort Lauderdale and you don’t want to say you serve Orlando. That doesn’t make sense. And that can even punish you for just basically kind of lying. Unless of course you could, if you are an electrical company that could travel to Orlando. But if you are selling boats, there is a good chance you are selling it locally.
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You’re a brick-and-mortar type of business, so you want to stay within your geographically located location so that way you can get the benefits. Because the wider you spread, the less concentration you get from a visibility perspective. So you want to make sure you get the neighboring coastal community, the lakes and the waterways that you can cover. And of course, As a dealer, this is where your secondary options, your secondary categories is so important, as we mentioned in the foundation earlier, because you want to also add location that you provide a mobile service to. So for example, let’s take the same Fort Lauderdale scenario.
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You are a boat dealer in downtown Fort Lauderdale, but you will be able to provide service in West Palm Beach. Yes, that’s a very, very long distance, but because it’s mobile service and if your customers are up there, you will drive up there. That’s kind of what we’re talking about in terms of where you would be able to provide mobile service. Although that’s not the area that you selling the thing directly, but you can provide service there. That’s the service area definition because you have to define that very, very well.
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That helps. The next piece inside the optimization strategy is the attributes enabled, the attribution you add to your profile. So attribution is what are some of the things that make you unique or things that you provide and things that people can— it’s almost like the tangible items people can deal with you right away. So as a dealer, for example, You provide test ride and you test ride is available. They can come in, they just need to submit the form.
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They can come and see, trial a boat with you. Again, I’m not saying that’s what you do, but if that’s available to you, make sure you have that on your attributes. Make sure if you have certified marine technicians, make sure you have that. Make sure if you have certified fiberglass technician, you have that on your website. If you have both financing available to your consumers, make sure you have that on your website as well.
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You have a part department, you make sure you have those part departments, and depending on how elaborate your part department is— some part departments is that they only sell just the part and done with, whereas some of them actually can ship the part, some of them can actually customize the part, so make sure you put the correct attributes for that section.
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The third piece inside the optimization strategy we’re gonna go over is the photos and video and some content. Make sure within your Google Business Profile you do have your high-quality image of your showroom. I highly, highly recommend if possible do a quick run-through video. It doesn’t have to be professional, high-quality stuff, but it needs to be good enough where the information makes sense and it’s very easy to understand, and a user can watch that video and have a good sense of all the brands, all the inventory that you have, the one that you want to show them. But of course, within the high-quality showroom image, you also want to have an image that shows different boat inventories that you carry.
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It’s really, really helpful if you can, if you are able to, to have your team photos in there because Google Business Profile is really, really embracing love, authenticity, and providing your team photos shows that you guys are a real company, a real team. You have the things that need, that is needed to be a true company and you are local. Of course, the service department images. So show your technician working on engines or doing detailing on a boat, things like that make a big difference. And you will see why that’s very, very important when you go to a business profile on Google that is very, very well optimized.
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Those guys usually number one on Google 3-pack, and 87% of the time those guys get clicked before you do because they are number one, they are on top. So the fourth piece on this, we’re gonna go over the Google post strategy. What does that really mean to you from a business perspective? What posting on Google Business Profile looks like. So the first thing you want to do is making sure you have a schedule.
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We highly recommend that if you can, to have a post really on a weekly basis about your inventory, about the team, about events, always have a post ready. And if you think about it, if you’re a boat dealer or even like a boat rental, you can have a post once a week. There’s a lot of things you can actually talk about in a post. Boat dealer is easy because you just post a new model just came out. You don’t put 3, 4, 5 models at once.
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Maybe you schedule them every week, you drip them. Almost like a drip campaign, one at a time. Or if you have news both coming in and post at least once a week or couple times a week, you can have one or two posts a week on Google for strategy, very easy. And of course, one of the things that I feel a lot of businesses neglect and missing out on is posting upcoming events boat shows. If you are a boat dealer, there is a good chance you participate in some boat shows, at least the most successful one.
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That show is very, very well published on Google, but Google also looking for content that is unique for a specific location. For example, let’s say you are a boat dealer in Orlando, you will be participating in in the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, big show, and maybe you will have a booth there, right? So what you want to do is inside your business profile, you will create an event in the boat show that will be coming in, put as much detail as possible. Why that matters? When someone search in Orlando area, upcoming boat shows or upcoming boat dealer events or whatever that search is, there’s a good chance you’ll be the one that’s showing for la, la, la, and then our show, both shows within that search result page.
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There’s a good chance you will be number one because of your locality, proximity, and relevancy of the search. And of course, inside the Google post strategy, highlight service special as well. All businesses run special every now and then. Well, some don’t, but if you do, make sure you highlight your service special. So whether it’s a free oil change, free engine tune-up, you pick what you want to offer as a special service and make sure it gets posted on Google Business Profile.
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Just so you know, most posts in Google Business Profile expired after 7 days. So that’s why consistency matters so much. You cannot post once a month and be okay with it because in 7 days, this post is not relevant anymore. This is why you want to keep up with Google Business Profile as much as you would keep up with your website, actually any other social media. Google Business Profile, you can consider almost like a social media but strictly focus on business search results.
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Number 5, questions and answers section. So within the Google Business Profile, you can actually create frequently asked questions and proactively answer those questions right in there. So for example, you can say, do you offer financing? Yes, we offer financing. If you want to add more information, what brand do you carry?
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We are a proud dealer or proud distribution of the following brands, pom pom pom. Of course, you can monitor for new questions that come in often and then answer those questions and then turn them into question and answer within the Google Business Profile. So that way when someone search for that specific questions based on proximity locations, you have the answer for them. And then when they click for more information, guess where they’re going? To your company website, to your Google Business Profile and company website.
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So this is why it’s so important to optimize your Google Business Profile. All right, hope this helps. See you soon.
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That’s it for this episode. Please don’t forget to subscribe and share it with anyone in the marine space that needs to hear it. And we would love to hear from you, so drop us your questions or topics you would like us to cover in future episodes. And of course, if you need help implementing any of the tactics we talk about, head on to Boat Marketing Pros We would love to help you grow. I’m Harry Casimir.
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Thanks for listening. Now let’s get out there and make some waves.
