December 18, 2023 • 22 mins
Join hosts Henry and Ajay in this festive Christmas edition as they share invaluable marketing strategies and tips for small business owners during the holiday season. Packed with real-life stories and practical advice, this episode is a treasure trove for those looking to boost their holiday marketing efforts. 🎅📈
🔹 In This Episode:
Personal Holiday Experiences: Discover how Henry and Ajay's holiday experiences can impact your business strategies.
Holiday Checklist for Businesses: Essential preparation tips for a successful holiday season.
Optimizing Digital Presence: Learn how to refine your website and social media for the holidays.
Google Business Profile & Local Directories: The importance of accurate holiday hours and business information.
E-commerce & Paid Advertising Insights: Strategies to attract and retain customers during the holiday peak.
Leverage Email Marketing: Uncover effective email marketing tactics for the festive season.
Google Business Buzz Podcast
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
You have to lead them to the form fills.
You have to lead them to thephone calls or the email button
or the or the direction requestbutton.
You can't just assume becauseyou have a website up, people
are going to take actions, musicplaying.
(00:22):
Welcome to another GoogleBusiness Buzz.
We've got a special one for you.
It's Henry and Ej again, andtoday we've got the Christmas
edition, so let's get it going.
Ej.
Good to see you again, my man,how you doing.
Good to see you, henry.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I feel great.
I hope everyone watching andlistening feels great as well.
As you can see, Henry andmyself are very much in holiday
mode.
We've got the holiday attirefor you.
So feeling well, feeling goodhere to address an important
topic today.
Henry, what have we got instore for him today?
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Well, we know how important the holiday season is
for everyone.
It's a really big time forpeople to get together to get
acquainted again with theirfamily and their friends.
Many times we don't see themfor months and months on end.
And with that comes a lot ofpreparation as well, because, as
(01:21):
a regular person, you have tothink about Christmas presents,
about Hanukkah presents, aboutwhat are you going to do for the
dinner for new years, what areyou going to do with all of
these events coming up.
And as a business owner, youhave to prepare as well.
And, yeah, I think that thisparticular podcast is going to
(01:47):
be very valuable for that smallbusiness owner that needs to
understand what they have totake care of.
We have a checklist of thingsthat we want to give that small
business owner, the localbusiness, so that they can
really mark off the list and getready for that holiday season.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
And even before we get into that list, I think the
most powerful way to set thisoff is going to be going over
stories of real life experiencesthat Henry and I had around the
holidays that we want to avoidfor your businesses.
So, without further ado, I'llstart with my story, so to those
listening and watching, justfor context, I have a big family
(02:28):
right, a lot of kids, and afterone of my last baby was born,
we get all get in the minivanright and we go to get a
rotisserie chicken.
My wife was tired, she couldn'tcook that day, obviously, we
just had a kid and so we go toget our favorite rotisserie
chicken from this health foodstore.
So it's a pretty long drive.
It's about 30 or 30, 35 minutes.
(02:51):
So we drive all the way therein the cold this is Midwest
Michigan winter and the snow inthe ice, all the kids in the car
Just to find out that the storehad not updated their Google
business profiles holiday hours.
And so we drove all that way fornothing.
There was no chicken vegetarian, sorry, there was no chicken,
(03:12):
and you know we were obviouslydisappointed.
So that is a real life exampleof the power of making sure your
hours and other propertiesonline are appropriately updated
.
In this case, we would havegotten the chicken and we
wouldn't have left with anegative experience about the
store.
So, henry, what are yourthoughts?
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Oh man, that gives me so much to think about, right,
how bad of an experience thatyou had there, right?
And what consequences couldthat bad experience have for the
business that didn't updatetheir holiday hours?
And it's such an easy thing todo you just go into Google, go
(03:49):
into Apple, go into the platformof your choice and update those
holiday hours with whatever youare going to do.
But now, since Jay didn't gethis rotisserie chicken, he might
have left a bad review, right.
And then the business is nowhaving to deal with an upset.
Potential customer, now nolonger going to be a customer,
(04:13):
probably will not return, andnot only that, they left their
bad experience for everyone tosee on their profile.
So it's essential to have theaccurate information on all of
those platforms to avoid badexperiences.
And that's basically how Googleand all of these big companies
(04:38):
Facebook, meta, amazon, applehave done business, and their
business model is based aroundexceptional user experience, the
best of the best, making surethat their end users can be
happy with the usage of theplatform.
(04:59):
Think about Amazon.
How easy do they make it toreturn items that you don't want
?
It's very simple you can takeit back to Whole Foods.
You can take it to Kohl's andsend it back and get something
new.
They refund you right away.
The user experience istop-notch.
So that's another thing that wehave to think about when we're
(05:20):
thinking about the holidayseason, because in this
particular season, people aregoing to have a different
mentality.
They're going to be morepositive, they're going to be
more willing to open up theirwallets and spend, and that is
something that small businessesneed to take advantage of by,
(05:41):
first off, showing accurateinformation.
It's happened to me too, jay.
I've been in the situationwhere you've been.
I've been going to a partywanting to stop by a bakery to
pick up something nice to taketo that party.
Turns out that bakery mapmarker is not correct, and now
I'm spending my time doingU-turns looking for this place
(06:07):
and I really hate thatexperience.
So what do I do?
I as a user, as a power user?
I consider myself a Google Maps.
I'll go in there and actuallysuggest to edit and move that
map marker to the correct place.
I do that on Apple Maps, too,to improve others' experiences
(06:27):
Like after me.
Hopefully it doesn't happenagain to that other person, but
even that situation canpotentially give you, as a
business owner, a bad review andit's something that you should
be on top of the map marker, thecorrect address, the correct
phone number, the correctwebsite URL and the hours of
(06:51):
operation.
You know, everybody has afamily and everybody has things
to do on Christmas Eve orChristmas Day, or maybe even New
Year's, even New Year's Day,and if you're not able to pick
up the phone because you weredoing something, then you need
to put in that in thoseparticular days, those
particular hours, you are notavailable and Google will
(07:14):
appreciate that, because that isthe truth.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Just because we're nice guys, it doesn't make
Henry's point any less true,right?
Just out of curious, in caseanyone's curious.
No, I didn't leave a bad reviewthat time, but I get it right.
I work in the industry.
It's the holidays, I didn'ttake it personally.
They're a small store, butnormal customers are not as
forgiving guys.
So all about the positive userexperience, like Henry said.
So, speaking of which, what dowe do on every platform?
(07:39):
We just gave you a Google Mapsexample, and it gets a lot
deeper than just Google BusinessProfile, as Henry will point
out soon.
But I want to start, Henry,with the heart of a business's
presence online, and it can beargued that that heart is either
the Google Business Profile orthe website.
I think both are suitableanswers to the question and
they're both equally important,as we've discussed in previous
podcasts.
Let's start with the website.
(08:01):
We had a good analogy goingabout, you know, walking into a
store.
Why don't we break down?
Why keeping your websitefriendly to users during the
holidays is even more importantthan it is normally?
It's already a critical thing,but it's even more important now
.
So let's go into that.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
For sure, for sure.
Thanks for bringing that up.
Like, let's think about howpopular and how much foot
traffic mall gets during theholiday season.
Right, it increasesexponentially.
There's so many people justdoing window shopping, choosing
where to spend their money right, and it really depends on the
(08:41):
display, on how well or invitingthat display is.
That gets the foot traffic inthe door.
Now, that's the same reasoningwith web traffic.
On a search right, you canthink about a search engine
results page, just like a mall,a bustling mall, and each result
(09:03):
is a store window.
Right, so when a user clicksinto that website, that is
similar to foot traffic.
Right, it's user traffic goinginto a website.
And now think about what astore has to do to get that foot
traffic to actually spend moneyin that store.
(09:24):
Like, what do they have to doit?
Speaker 2 (09:26):
j well, you gotta be friendly and courteous.
You gotta welcome your thefolks who enter your store.
You gotta be helpful but not topushy.
You gotta make sure you'requick with it, right that you
don't let them Browse a littlebit, walk away without them ever
getting the help.
So the analogy here to everyonelistening with the website
would be making sure the pagesmobile, responsive, is quick,
that your images aren't crashing, they're loading quickly enough
(09:48):
, that you know you've got yourbanners, it's colorful and that
the website overall has bestpractices apply to it for how to
function and run well in twenty, twenty three and beyond, both
on a mobile and on a desktop,especially on a mobile right,
right, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
So.
You have to think about thingslike the layout of your website,
right, how?
How is that formatted?
Do you need to maybe update thebackground to have like a more
holiday friendly theme?
Is that, will you know,inevitably affect how the user
reacts to your website and whatthey choose to do within that
(10:24):
website?
You have to lead them to theform fields.
You have to lead them to thephone calls or the email, but
not the or the direction requestbutton.
You can't just assume becauseyou have a website up, people
are gonna take actions withinthat website, similar to a store
.
You walk into a store, you caneither take action or walk out
without spending money, right,and that's what happens with the
(10:47):
website.
So, in my view, you need todefinitely take a lot more time
to think about how you want todisplay for the holiday season.
Are you doing a Braffle?
Are you doing a giveaway?
Are you doing some offers, anevent that can be added to the
(11:09):
website, a banner pop up, sometype of email collection
strategy On the website thathelps users understand that
you're doing something for theholiday season, and that's when
you get engagement and returnbusiness.
Another thing that just came upand this is like this is totally
off script.
Here I saw this, this youinstagram real, where it's
(11:34):
genius, where they show how acode helps a price go from 200
to like $10, right.
And I went to the website.
I tried the code and it worked.
But it's genius because it'sthat website created it.
Like that website created thisand made it like look like
(11:57):
somebody's just hacking in,trying to type in whatever code
and then it works.
It's still working.
It's out and about.
I'm sure if you just Google ityou'll find it, but it's a ploy
to get people to do that andlike oh snap, look, this jewelry
went from $200 to $10, I'mgonna order it right now, when
(12:18):
in reality it could have alwayscost $10.
It probably cost less.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Famous trick of retail, famous trick of retail.
So, in addition to making yourstorefront appealing guys, to
making it fast, responsive, safe, you also wanna start thinking
about beyond the website.
What is probably an equallyimportant thing is the Google
business profile.
Like Henry was saying, in theexample that we were going
through, we talked about thehours being off and how that
(12:46):
affected my whole family'schicken experience.
But it goes a lot deeper thanjust Google business profile.
Whenever we're talking localorganic search, we're also
talking other directory networks, right?
Not just Google businessprofile.
There are Apple maps toconsider Yelp, bing, yahoo and,
as we've detailed and these arejust some guys, it's not an
(13:09):
exhaustive list, as we'vediscussed previously, there's a
network of these localdirectories and we wanna make
sure that not only do we updateour holiday hours on Google
business profile, that we alsoupdate our holiday hours where
Henry, on Apple maps, I'm sureyou've got a much better list
Bing, on Yelp, on Yahoo, on allof the different online
(13:31):
directories possible and thewebsite.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
You have to make sure that the website hours are also
aligned with what you have offpage on all of those different
profiles.
In that same sense, you gottathink about your social media,
because those can also bethought of as directories.
They do have businessinformation, such as hours of
operation, and if you don'tupdate those for the holidays,
(13:59):
people may find you and thinkthat you're open, start reaching
out, which can cause a bad userexperience.
Another reason to do that andI'm sure everybody has seen this
before on when they do searcheson a holiday Veterans Day might
affect the business hours,right?
(14:19):
Or Thanksgiving might affectthese business hours.
That happens and that's becauseGoogle isn't sure if this
business is open or not.
There's a setting there, on theback end of the Google business
profile, which allows businessesto effectively and accurately
set these holidays hours formonths, months in advance, even
(14:40):
years, and if you don't set itaccurately, google, since it
doesn't know, it will show asmall snippet of text on the
Google business profile thatstates that the holiday may
affect these business hours andthat gives a user the sense of
Should I call?
Should I not call?
Are they even open?
(15:00):
Like maybe they're not open,I'm just not gonna call, like
that's, that's what goes rightinto my head and if I didn't
know any better, you know, Iwould just think they're.
They're closed.
So there's a lot of reasons,and that happens on the Apple,
that happens on Yelp.
You really should takeadvantage of these platforms to
give users the correctinformation, not just the search
(15:21):
engines 100%.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
And if you're using a , a marketing company like us,
and they're doing a great job onyour local listings, you know,
you're gonna know that yourGoogle business profiles covered
, that your Apple Maps iscovered, so the Apple users
aren't gonna go to your store atthe wrong hours.
That yell being.
All these places are up to date.
So it's a small detail when youthink about it, but if you, if
(15:42):
you put some thought into it,you'll realize it's a lot bigger
than it seems.
Now We've covered websites andthe criticality of that.
We've covered a, you know, aportion of local organic search.
I want to talk about paid ads.
So we don't encounter theseissues here much at OMG National
because we're so good atgetting ahead of it.
But if you're a plumbingbusiness or a An HVAC business,
(16:06):
right, the same deal as withorganics.
We want to make sure that, hey,when are you running on these
big Holidays?
On Christmas, on Thanksgiving,on Christmas Eve, new Year's?
So what are we doing here?
And so what we, what we like todo, is make sure that we
schedule these pauses andunpauses well in advance and
make sure that they are, that,that they are adhered to, so For
(16:27):
you guys at home trying it onyour own.
Whoever is responsible formaking sure that your campaigns
are either running or notrunning, please make sure that
they have some sort of systemset up on there and to make sure
that you are stopped and notgetting traffic when you're
supposed to, when you'resupposed to be stopped and
running when you obviously youwant customers.
Otherwise, you could encounterthe very awkward Situation in
(16:48):
which your campaign is leftrunning and here you are at
Christmas.
You're not working today, butyou're getting tons of calls
about people who need an AC or,excuse me, a heat, a new heater,
right.
So that is a simple example forservice, a spit, service-based
businesses.
But I want you to also thinkabout Google, about the ads
umbrella as a broader umbrella.
Now, that's an example thatcould have maybe apply for local
(17:08):
services ads and even for aclick to call and search for
Google ads.
But think about e-commerce andshopping.
Now that's a completelydifferent ballgame.
Whereas maybe a plumber, aplumber may be stopped during
the holidays, if you're runninga huge sale, a holiday sale, you
want your campaigns up and youcertainly want them optimized.
You want To plan before, notafter.
(17:30):
So think about it like thisChristmas campaigns must start
the day after Thanksgiving.
You want to get ahead of itguys, not not be late to the
party, right, literally,figuratively in this case.
So also think about your, likeHenry said, your business hours,
think about specials You'rerunning, how to promote that.
Obviously, your advertisingschedule We've covered that, and
consumer behavior changes andhow you can account for those in
(17:52):
your campaigns.
So, now that we've covered paidads, we've covered local,
organic, we've card, the websiteWe've covered, even touched on
social media.
Henry, what have you got nextfor us?
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Well, you were talking about e-commerce,
something came to mind and Ithink it's really important.
A lot of times, especiallyduring the holiday seasons, I
find myself extremely busy,right, and I'll start a search,
I'll even start a checkoutprocess, but I might bounce off
because somebody called myattention and I forgot all about
it, so it stays there.
(18:21):
That's when it's reallyimportant to have your your
email marketing campaigns Turnedon and be able to send me an
email or the users like me anemail.
Be like hey, we noticed you.
You have some things in yourshopping cart.
You might want to just check itout before you lose out on this
special promotion or here's 5%off, because we noticed that you
(18:41):
didn't move forward with thecheckout process.
You know there's so much to bedone For the holiday season, for
these e-commerce and and foryou know, regular brick and
mortars if they choose to beopen During those those times,
but you know there's so muchthat we really could talk about
(19:03):
as far as getting ready for theholiday season.
We can make this a three hourpodcast if we wanted to, just
giving information aboutmarketing and advertising for
the holiday season.
So I think we shouldn't do that.
We'll probably lose out on allof our followers and listeners
and I don't want to put themthrough that.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
It's high level.
Just make sure that you know,think of a spiderweb strategy.
Make sure that you're online,engaging with your customers and
potential customers.
You got to think of the lens.
Think through the lens of howthey're going to view you and
engage with your businessthrough the holidays and make
sure that strategy is firmed up.
Write it down Five bulletpoints.
Hey, on my GBP, I'm going to dothis.
Henry and AJ said I shouldchange my holiday hours to not
(19:46):
confuse my users and give themmore confidence on my website.
I should probably, you know,add a pop up, change my banners,
make sure my hours are updated.
I should probably check in onmy Apple Maps and at least a few
of my other directories.
If I'm not having a, you know asolution from a marketing
agency where they're taking allof it for me, sure, then go in
and update them all manually.
Just make sure that it's doneat the end of the day.
(20:06):
If I'm Ecom, then you know, hey, I'm making sure that my
website is certainly excellent,as that's part of the ad quality
score.
I'm making sure that mycampaigns are tailored towards,
obviously, what I'm trying to do.
And other than that, guys, thelast note I want to leave.
There is probably emailmarketing.
Email marketing is and we'vecovered, we've touched on it,
but we haven't gone into it isone of the most positive ROI
(20:30):
propositions in our industry, ifyou think about it.
On Google ads, a click is aclick that's going to cost you
money.
On LSA, a call is a call Onorganic.
Obviously that traction is free, but you got to keep doing
things consistently to buildthat traction and doing them
correctly.
Email marketing it's right there, it's in your face and people
are in there email multipletimes a day.
Sometimes You're capturing youruser on the phone, on the go,
(20:53):
on the tablet.
So think about towardsimplementing email marketing as
well.
What types of emails do youwant to send out in and around
the holidays?
What types of promotions do youwant to offer?
What sort of campaigns do youwant to run through your email?
It's just another way toapproach your users at a very
low cost.
That is something to where, ifyou maybe you can't budget it in
(21:13):
throughout the year, at leastconsider it in during the
holidays, when you could benefitfrom that high of return on
your investment.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
That's such a good point.
Right now I'm looking at myemails and I'm flooded with
emails from companies that I didbusiness with last year or the
year prior.
Toast T-O-U-S is a businessthat I've purchased jewelry from
in the past for my wife, and Iget re-marketed and also email
(21:44):
marketing from them all the time, and it works, especially
during this time of year.
This is when people want to getreminded of those types of
purchases so that they can dothem again.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Best type of customer is a repeat customer and who
builds that loyalty with you.
On that note, everyone we hereat OMG National we're wishing
you obviously a very safe,peaceful and happy holidays.
We hope you guys get into justa little bit of the holiday
spirit, if not with us, at leaston your own and with your
family.
So please be safe, take care,have fun out there.
We'll see you guys on the nextone.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Happy holidays, god Bless.
You have to lead them to the form fills.
You have to lead them to thephone calls or the email button
or the or the direction requestbutton.
You can't just assume becauseyou have a website up, people
are going to take actions, musicplaying.
(00:22):
Welcome to another GoogleBusiness Buzz.
We've got a special one for you.
It's Henry and Ej again, andtoday we've got the Christmas
edition, so let's get it going.
Ej.
Good to see you again, my man,how you doing.
Good to see you, henry.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I feel great.
I hope everyone watching andlistening feels great as well.
As you can see, Henry andmyself are very much in holiday
mode.
We've got the holiday attirefor you.
So feeling well, feeling goodhere to address an important
topic today.
Henry, what have we got instore for him today?
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Well, we know how important the holiday season is
for everyone.
It's a really big time forpeople to get together to get
acquainted again with theirfamily and their friends.
Many times we don't see themfor months and months on end.
And with that comes a lot ofpreparation as well, because, as
(01:21):
a regular person, you have tothink about Christmas presents,
about Hanukkah presents, aboutwhat are you going to do for the
dinner for new years, what areyou going to do with all of
these events coming up.
And as a business owner, youhave to prepare as well.
And, yeah, I think that thisparticular podcast is going to
(01:47):
be very valuable for that smallbusiness owner that needs to
understand what they have totake care of.
We have a checklist of thingsthat we want to give that small
business owner, the localbusiness, so that they can
really mark off the list and getready for that holiday season.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
And even before we get into that list, I think the
most powerful way to set thisoff is going to be going over
stories of real life experiencesthat Henry and I had around the
holidays that we want to avoidfor your businesses.
So, without further ado, I'llstart with my story, so to those
listening and watching, justfor context, I have a big family
(02:28):
right, a lot of kids, and afterone of my last baby was born,
we get all get in the minivanright and we go to get a
rotisserie chicken.
My wife was tired, she couldn'tcook that day, obviously, we
just had a kid and so we go toget our favorite rotisserie
chicken from this health foodstore.
So it's a pretty long drive.
It's about 30 or 30, 35 minutes.
(02:51):
So we drive all the way therein the cold this is Midwest
Michigan winter and the snow inthe ice, all the kids in the car
Just to find out that the storehad not updated their Google
business profiles holiday hours.
And so we drove all that way fornothing.
There was no chicken vegetarian, sorry, there was no chicken,
(03:12):
and you know we were obviouslydisappointed.
So that is a real life exampleof the power of making sure your
hours and other propertiesonline are appropriately updated
.
In this case, we would havegotten the chicken and we
wouldn't have left with anegative experience about the
store.
So, henry, what are yourthoughts?
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Oh man, that gives me so much to think about, right,
how bad of an experience thatyou had there, right?
And what consequences couldthat bad experience have for the
business that didn't updatetheir holiday hours?
And it's such an easy thing todo you just go into Google, go
(03:49):
into Apple, go into the platformof your choice and update those
holiday hours with whatever youare going to do.
But now, since Jay didn't gethis rotisserie chicken, he might
have left a bad review, right.
And then the business is nowhaving to deal with an upset.
Potential customer, now nolonger going to be a customer,
(04:13):
probably will not return, andnot only that, they left their
bad experience for everyone tosee on their profile.
So it's essential to have theaccurate information on all of
those platforms to avoid badexperiences.
And that's basically how Googleand all of these big companies
(04:38):
Facebook, meta, amazon, applehave done business, and their
business model is based aroundexceptional user experience, the
best of the best, making surethat their end users can be
happy with the usage of theplatform.
(04:59):
Think about Amazon.
How easy do they make it toreturn items that you don't want
?
It's very simple you can takeit back to Whole Foods.
You can take it to Kohl's andsend it back and get something
new.
They refund you right away.
The user experience istop-notch.
So that's another thing that wehave to think about when we're
(05:20):
thinking about the holidayseason, because in this
particular season, people aregoing to have a different
mentality.
They're going to be morepositive, they're going to be
more willing to open up theirwallets and spend, and that is
something that small businessesneed to take advantage of by,
(05:41):
first off, showing accurateinformation.
It's happened to me too, jay.
I've been in the situationwhere you've been.
I've been going to a partywanting to stop by a bakery to
pick up something nice to taketo that party.
Turns out that bakery mapmarker is not correct, and now
I'm spending my time doingU-turns looking for this place
(06:07):
and I really hate thatexperience.
So what do I do?
I as a user, as a power user?
I consider myself a Google Maps.
I'll go in there and actuallysuggest to edit and move that
map marker to the correct place.
I do that on Apple Maps, too,to improve others' experiences
(06:27):
Like after me.
Hopefully it doesn't happenagain to that other person, but
even that situation canpotentially give you, as a
business owner, a bad review andit's something that you should
be on top of the map marker, thecorrect address, the correct
phone number, the correctwebsite URL and the hours of
(06:51):
operation.
You know, everybody has afamily and everybody has things
to do on Christmas Eve orChristmas Day, or maybe even New
Year's, even New Year's Day,and if you're not able to pick
up the phone because you weredoing something, then you need
to put in that in thoseparticular days, those
particular hours, you are notavailable and Google will
(07:14):
appreciate that, because that isthe truth.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Just because we're nice guys, it doesn't make
Henry's point any less true,right?
Just out of curious, in caseanyone's curious.
No, I didn't leave a bad reviewthat time, but I get it right.
I work in the industry.
It's the holidays, I didn'ttake it personally.
They're a small store, butnormal customers are not as
forgiving guys.
So all about the positive userexperience, like Henry said.
So, speaking of which, what dowe do on every platform?
(07:39):
We just gave you a Google Mapsexample, and it gets a lot
deeper than just Google BusinessProfile, as Henry will point
out soon.
But I want to start, Henry,with the heart of a business's
presence online, and it can beargued that that heart is either
the Google Business Profile orthe website.
I think both are suitableanswers to the question and
they're both equally important,as we've discussed in previous
podcasts.
Let's start with the website.
(08:01):
We had a good analogy goingabout, you know, walking into a
store.
Why don't we break down?
Why keeping your websitefriendly to users during the
holidays is even more importantthan it is normally?
It's already a critical thing,but it's even more important now
.
So let's go into that.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
For sure, for sure.
Thanks for bringing that up.
Like, let's think about howpopular and how much foot
traffic mall gets during theholiday season.
Right, it increasesexponentially.
There's so many people justdoing window shopping, choosing
where to spend their money right, and it really depends on the
(08:41):
display, on how well or invitingthat display is.
That gets the foot traffic inthe door.
Now, that's the same reasoningwith web traffic.
On a search right, you canthink about a search engine
results page, just like a mall,a bustling mall, and each result
(09:03):
is a store window.
Right, so when a user clicksinto that website, that is
similar to foot traffic.
Right, it's user traffic goinginto a website.
And now think about what astore has to do to get that foot
traffic to actually spend moneyin that store.
(09:24):
Like, what do they have to doit?
Speaker 2 (09:26):
j well, you gotta be friendly and courteous.
You gotta welcome your thefolks who enter your store.
You gotta be helpful but not topushy.
You gotta make sure you'requick with it, right that you
don't let them Browse a littlebit, walk away without them ever
getting the help.
So the analogy here to everyonelistening with the website
would be making sure the pagesmobile, responsive, is quick,
that your images aren't crashing, they're loading quickly enough
(09:48):
, that you know you've got yourbanners, it's colorful and that
the website overall has bestpractices apply to it for how to
function and run well in twenty, twenty three and beyond, both
on a mobile and on a desktop,especially on a mobile right,
right, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
So.
You have to think about thingslike the layout of your website,
right, how?
How is that formatted?
Do you need to maybe update thebackground to have like a more
holiday friendly theme?
Is that, will you know,inevitably affect how the user
reacts to your website and whatthey choose to do within that
(10:24):
website?
You have to lead them to theform fields.
You have to lead them to thephone calls or the email, but
not the or the direction requestbutton.
You can't just assume becauseyou have a website up, people
are gonna take actions withinthat website, similar to a store
.
You walk into a store, you caneither take action or walk out
without spending money, right,and that's what happens with the
(10:47):
website.
So, in my view, you need todefinitely take a lot more time
to think about how you want todisplay for the holiday season.
Are you doing a Braffle?
Are you doing a giveaway?
Are you doing some offers, anevent that can be added to the
(11:09):
website, a banner pop up, sometype of email collection
strategy On the website thathelps users understand that
you're doing something for theholiday season, and that's when
you get engagement and returnbusiness.
Another thing that just came upand this is like this is totally
off script.
Here I saw this, this youinstagram real, where it's
(11:34):
genius, where they show how acode helps a price go from 200
to like $10, right.
And I went to the website.
I tried the code and it worked.
But it's genius because it'sthat website created it.
Like that website created thisand made it like look like
(11:57):
somebody's just hacking in,trying to type in whatever code
and then it works.
It's still working.
It's out and about.
I'm sure if you just Google ityou'll find it, but it's a ploy
to get people to do that andlike oh snap, look, this jewelry
went from $200 to $10, I'mgonna order it right now, when
(12:18):
in reality it could have alwayscost $10.
It probably cost less.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Famous trick of retail, famous trick of retail.
So, in addition to making yourstorefront appealing guys, to
making it fast, responsive, safe, you also wanna start thinking
about beyond the website.
What is probably an equallyimportant thing is the Google
business profile.
Like Henry was saying, in theexample that we were going
through, we talked about thehours being off and how that
(12:46):
affected my whole family'schicken experience.
But it goes a lot deeper thanjust Google business profile.
Whenever we're talking localorganic search, we're also
talking other directory networks, right?
Not just Google businessprofile.
There are Apple maps toconsider Yelp, bing, yahoo and,
as we've detailed and these arejust some guys, it's not an
(13:09):
exhaustive list, as we'vediscussed previously, there's a
network of these localdirectories and we wanna make
sure that not only do we updateour holiday hours on Google
business profile, that we alsoupdate our holiday hours where
Henry, on Apple maps, I'm sureyou've got a much better list
Bing, on Yelp, on Yahoo, on allof the different online
(13:31):
directories possible and thewebsite.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
You have to make sure that the website hours are also
aligned with what you have offpage on all of those different
profiles.
In that same sense, you gottathink about your social media,
because those can also bethought of as directories.
They do have businessinformation, such as hours of
operation, and if you don'tupdate those for the holidays,
(13:59):
people may find you and thinkthat you're open, start reaching
out, which can cause a bad userexperience.
Another reason to do that andI'm sure everybody has seen this
before on when they do searcheson a holiday Veterans Day might
affect the business hours,right?
(14:19):
Or Thanksgiving might affectthese business hours.
That happens and that's becauseGoogle isn't sure if this
business is open or not.
There's a setting there, on theback end of the Google business
profile, which allows businessesto effectively and accurately
set these holidays hours formonths, months in advance, even
(14:40):
years, and if you don't set itaccurately, google, since it
doesn't know, it will show asmall snippet of text on the
Google business profile thatstates that the holiday may
affect these business hours andthat gives a user the sense of
Should I call?
Should I not call?
Are they even open?
(15:00):
Like maybe they're not open,I'm just not gonna call, like
that's, that's what goes rightinto my head and if I didn't
know any better, you know, Iwould just think they're.
They're closed.
So there's a lot of reasons,and that happens on the Apple,
that happens on Yelp.
You really should takeadvantage of these platforms to
give users the correctinformation, not just the search
(15:21):
engines 100%.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
And if you're using a , a marketing company like us,
and they're doing a great job onyour local listings, you know,
you're gonna know that yourGoogle business profiles covered
, that your Apple Maps iscovered, so the Apple users
aren't gonna go to your store atthe wrong hours.
That yell being.
All these places are up to date.
So it's a small detail when youthink about it, but if you, if
(15:42):
you put some thought into it,you'll realize it's a lot bigger
than it seems.
Now We've covered websites andthe criticality of that.
We've covered a, you know, aportion of local organic search.
I want to talk about paid ads.
So we don't encounter theseissues here much at OMG National
because we're so good atgetting ahead of it.
But if you're a plumbingbusiness or a An HVAC business,
(16:06):
right, the same deal as withorganics.
We want to make sure that, hey,when are you running on these
big Holidays?
On Christmas, on Thanksgiving,on Christmas Eve, new Year's?
So what are we doing here?
And so what we, what we like todo, is make sure that we
schedule these pauses andunpauses well in advance and
make sure that they are, that,that they are adhered to, so For
(16:27):
you guys at home trying it onyour own.
Whoever is responsible formaking sure that your campaigns
are either running or notrunning, please make sure that
they have some sort of systemset up on there and to make sure
that you are stopped and notgetting traffic when you're
supposed to, when you'resupposed to be stopped and
running when you obviously youwant customers.
Otherwise, you could encounterthe very awkward Situation in
(16:48):
which your campaign is leftrunning and here you are at
Christmas.
You're not working today, butyou're getting tons of calls
about people who need an AC or,excuse me, a heat, a new heater,
right.
So that is a simple example forservice, a spit, service-based
businesses.
But I want you to also thinkabout Google, about the ads
umbrella as a broader umbrella.
Now, that's an example thatcould have maybe apply for local
(17:08):
services ads and even for aclick to call and search for
Google ads.
But think about e-commerce andshopping.
Now that's a completelydifferent ballgame.
Whereas maybe a plumber, aplumber may be stopped during
the holidays, if you're runninga huge sale, a holiday sale, you
want your campaigns up and youcertainly want them optimized.
You want To plan before, notafter.
(17:30):
So think about it like thisChristmas campaigns must start
the day after Thanksgiving.
You want to get ahead of itguys, not not be late to the
party, right, literally,figuratively in this case.
So also think about your, likeHenry said, your business hours,
think about specials You'rerunning, how to promote that.
Obviously, your advertisingschedule We've covered that, and
consumer behavior changes andhow you can account for those in
(17:52):
your campaigns.
So, now that we've covered paidads, we've covered local,
organic, we've card, the websiteWe've covered, even touched on
social media.
Henry, what have you got nextfor us?
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Well, you were talking about e-commerce,
something came to mind and Ithink it's really important.
A lot of times, especiallyduring the holiday seasons, I
find myself extremely busy,right, and I'll start a search,
I'll even start a checkoutprocess, but I might bounce off
because somebody called myattention and I forgot all about
it, so it stays there.
(18:21):
That's when it's reallyimportant to have your your
email marketing campaigns Turnedon and be able to send me an
email or the users like me anemail.
Be like hey, we noticed you.
You have some things in yourshopping cart.
You might want to just check itout before you lose out on this
special promotion or here's 5%off, because we noticed that you
(18:41):
didn't move forward with thecheckout process.
You know there's so much to bedone For the holiday season, for
these e-commerce and and foryou know, regular brick and
mortars if they choose to beopen During those those times,
but you know there's so muchthat we really could talk about
(19:03):
as far as getting ready for theholiday season.
We can make this a three hourpodcast if we wanted to, just
giving information aboutmarketing and advertising for
the holiday season.
So I think we shouldn't do that.
We'll probably lose out on allof our followers and listeners
and I don't want to put themthrough that.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
It's high level.
Just make sure that you know,think of a spiderweb strategy.
Make sure that you're online,engaging with your customers and
potential customers.
You got to think of the lens.
Think through the lens of howthey're going to view you and
engage with your businessthrough the holidays and make
sure that strategy is firmed up.
Write it down Five bulletpoints.
Hey, on my GBP, I'm going to dothis.
Henry and AJ said I shouldchange my holiday hours to not
(19:46):
confuse my users and give themmore confidence on my website.
I should probably, you know,add a pop up, change my banners,
make sure my hours are updated.
I should probably check in onmy Apple Maps and at least a few
of my other directories.
If I'm not having a, you know asolution from a marketing
agency where they're taking allof it for me, sure, then go in
and update them all manually.
Just make sure that it's doneat the end of the day.
(20:06):
If I'm Ecom, then you know, hey, I'm making sure that my
website is certainly excellent,as that's part of the ad quality
score.
I'm making sure that mycampaigns are tailored towards,
obviously, what I'm trying to do.
And other than that, guys, thelast note I want to leave.
There is probably emailmarketing.
Email marketing is and we'vecovered, we've touched on it,
but we haven't gone into it isone of the most positive ROI
(20:30):
propositions in our industry, ifyou think about it.
On Google ads, a click is aclick that's going to cost you
money.
On LSA, a call is a call Onorganic.
Obviously that traction is free, but you got to keep doing
things consistently to buildthat traction and doing them
correctly.
Email marketing it's right there, it's in your face and people
are in there email multipletimes a day.
Sometimes You're capturing youruser on the phone, on the go,
(20:53):
on the tablet.
So think about towardsimplementing email marketing as
well.
What types of emails do youwant to send out in and around
the holidays?
What types of promotions do youwant to offer?
What sort of campaigns do youwant to run through your email?
It's just another way toapproach your users at a very
low cost.
That is something to where, ifyou maybe you can't budget it in
(21:13):
throughout the year, at leastconsider it in during the
holidays, when you could benefitfrom that high of return on
your investment.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
That's such a good point.
Right now I'm looking at myemails and I'm flooded with
emails from companies that I didbusiness with last year or the
year prior.
Toast T-O-U-S is a businessthat I've purchased jewelry from
in the past for my wife, and Iget re-marketed and also email
(21:44):
marketing from them all the time, and it works, especially
during this time of year.
This is when people want to getreminded of those types of
purchases so that they can dothem again.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Best type of customer is a repeat customer and who
builds that loyalty with you.
On that note, everyone we hereat OMG National we're wishing
you obviously a very safe,peaceful and happy holidays.
We hope you guys get into justa little bit of the holiday
spirit, if not with us, at leaston your own and with your
family.
So please be safe, take care,have fun out there.
We'll see you guys on the nextone.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Happy holidays, god Bless.
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