Josh (00:00:04) - Hey there, thoughtful listener. Would you like consistent and predictable sales activity with no spam and no ads? I'll teach you step by step how to do this, particularly if you're an agency owner, consultant, coach, or B2B service provider. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create more than $10 million in revenue. Just head to up my influence. Com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. You can even chat with me live and I'll see and reply to your messages. Also, don't forget the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for guests. Go to up my influence. Com and click on podcast. We'd love to have you. With us right now, Marilyn Jenkins. Marilyn, you are the CEO of MJ media Group and you're found on the web at maximize your g b p.com. We're going to talk about exactly what that is. Marilyn, thank you so much for joining us.

Marilyn (00:01:15) - Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

Marilyn (00:01:17) - I really enjoy your podcast and I'm just delighted to be here.

Josh (00:01:20) - Well, it's great to have you. so what's GDP.

Marilyn (00:01:25) - Google business profile. That's the one free source that Google makes available to all business owners.

Josh (00:01:33) - Yeah. Can you start with just some stats on explaining what Google Business pages are? How many? I mean, if there's any feel for what percentage of businesses either have a profile or are actually using their profile, and then we'll kind of get into the percentage of business owners which are maximizing their GDP, which I don't think is very high right now.

Marilyn (00:01:56) - Exactly. People might remember the Google My business. It was out a few years ago. Yeah. Google made some updates to it. Change the branding to Google Business Profile. So if you think about, you know, one of those really thick yellow pages that we all had around in days gone past and they like imported it all in. So every business has a business license. In essence, a Google business profile was created for most people.

Marilyn (00:02:19) - Think of it as a place to store their reviews, and they don't really go any further than that. so and it's so much more. And so there is a majority of businesses out there that haven't taken the time to claim it, verify it, and then make sure that it's up to date.

Josh (00:02:36) - All right. Well, Marilyn, if you wouldn't mind, I'd love to kind of just talk a little bit more about, you know, kind of the scope of, you know, again, and as you mentioned, Google loves to change names. they love to change brand names. And they also change things from time to time pretty frequently. So as of we're recording this, you know, kind of getting at the tail end of the first quarter of 2024, what is generally contained within the scope of, you know, all these different aspects of your Google business page that you could be using.

Marilyn (00:03:11) - The interesting part is you need to have your name, email, and phone number exactly the same as you'd have it on your website so you can connect your website to it, which is an absolute first thing.

Marilyn (00:03:19) - You have to put your phone number on it. And one of the important things is your category. So you can choose multiple categories. So say there's a business that specializes in one thing, but they do 2 or 3 other things. So you prioritize your categories right. So you say you're a plumber and Hvac so you wouldn't want to choose plumber, only you would want to choose both. If your primary business is Hvac, then you choose Hvac. You know those kinds of things. So you want to make sure that Google has a thing that they're doing now called a zero click search. And you might have noticed it when you ask any question. And the first result is the answer to your question. So instead of you clicking to go somewhere to get the data, what Google wants to do is give you the information there. So you want to make sure on your Google business profile, you list everything that any someone that's coming to you to look for you or searches for your type of business in your local search.

Marilyn (00:04:12) - You give them those answers. So it's almost like there's like a post where you can do like blogs and articles that talk about your business or talk about the things people might be interested in. There's also the Q&A function where you can put all the FAQs that your customers would like. So photos, videos, it's it's very much a website, if you will, without being a Google website.

Josh (00:04:37) - and I asked you about this before we hit record, and I don't know if anyone else has been confused by this as well. Speaking of, you know, Google's many and varied brands and, you know, it's kind of like the shell game with Google, like sometimes with their products. But, you know, it wasn't last week that my CEO said, oh, Google announced the closure of Google Business Profiles. We need to blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, update our all our stuff. And I just I asked you about that before we started recording. You're like, oh no. Would you mind if anyone else has heard this kind of what they actually are doing?

Marilyn (00:05:13) - Absolutely.

Marilyn (00:05:13) - If you remember back, oh gosh, ten years ago, I think Google one came out and it was supposed to be, a social media platform, think Myspace, Facebook, all of that in the very beginning. Right. And that's where they offered websites. So you could set up a Google one, you could build a website on it, and that's what's going away. The Google My business has transformed into Google Business Profile. That is literally an information place for your business, and it's where Google is pulling content from. So if you have that website that's hosted on your Google one, that's not going to be available anymore, they are eliminating that. So what you want to do is make sure your Google business profile has all of your content on it, and that you're updating it like once or twice a week. Take take like ten minutes a week. Respond to any reviews. It doesn't have to take long, but by being engaged with your Google business profile, Google sees that you're engaged. So assume you and your competitor are very close together.

Marilyn (00:06:12) - You have similar numbers of reviews. Perhaps you have less, but you're more engaged on your Google business profile and you're providing Google more data, whether that's questions, answers, posts, photos, videos, Google could actually put your listing ahead of theirs in the map pack because you're more engaged than they're not.

Josh (00:06:32) - Really. Can you explain just a little bit more about the intersection between kind of like Google rankings visibility? If someone's using Google to do a search, you know, and exactly like so if you max out your profile and you're active in it, here's the benefit for you.

Marilyn (00:06:49) - The benefit is that Google likes to keep people. It's the user experience. Again, the zero click search. Everybody goes to Google to search stuff. Right. You have a question. You ask it. So when you see the results of that, you'll see the answer to your question at the top. And then underneath you'll see additional questions that people answer or also ask. So if you've asked and answered those questions in your Google business profile, you could be in on your website.

Marilyn (00:07:14) - You could be the website that is referenced in those questions, which will get you more content. And those don't cost anything. This is not like Google Ads, so you want to make sure that you're keeping everything together, you're keeping everything up to date, and you can even put a text phone number on your Google business profile and start text conversations. It's called Google Chat with people that visit your profile. So especially if you're like certain hours of service and it's outside your hours and someone wants to reach you, they can open a text conversation with you right from your Google business profile.

Josh (00:07:48) - Yeah. So how do you work? Your website is maximize your gdp.com. Marilyn, can you kind of explain your services or how you work with business leaders?

Marilyn (00:08:00) - Absolutely. So primarily my business is paid digital marketing. So we do ads like Facebook ads, Instagram and Google ads for our clients. And we do SEO services that are focused on your Google business. Profile in your website. So what I've discovered over the past few years is there's there's a lot of customers or a lot of businesses that are not yet ready for paid ads.

Marilyn (00:08:20) - so I wanted to give a resource, you know, create a resource that someone can actually grow their business with this free Google business profile. So I wrote the book, the Google Business Profile Training Guide, and that's what you can find at maximize your GDP. Com so that takes you step by step being able to claim it. Because if you don't claim and verify your Google business profile, your competition can. And that's something you don't want to do. So you know claim it, verify it and then start maximizing it with everything you can about your business.

Josh (00:08:50) - Yeah. If we are looking at our crystal ball and I don't think we really even need to look in the crystal ball, I think Google has been pretty clear about this. You had mentioned the term what was it? Zero page search results.

Speaker 3 (00:09:03) - Zero click.

Marilyn (00:09:03) - They want to keep you on Google.

Josh (00:09:05) - Yeah. Yeah. So obviously I think one trend that we are likely going to see is when you go to go to Google and you enter in whatever it is that you're looking for, Google is going to answer that question without having at least what I've heard.

Josh (00:09:22) - Right. You know, kind of what a lot of other leaders are saying. Yeah, this is this is happening is Google is just going to give you the information and you're not going to have to sort through 12, 20 different blogs to try to find the answer any more, either speculation or observations or just do some reporting. Right now on here is what Google is doing and saying.

Marilyn (00:09:42) - That's exactly what they're doing. And they've been rolling that out more and more and globally over the last year and a half. That's why the Q amp, a function of your Google business profile, is so important, as well as any FAQs or articles that you have on your website that's connected to your Google business profile. Like I said, if I ask a question, it's going to come up with the answer. That is, if it's local, it's going to be from the local search. And then below that answer they give me so I don't have to go anywhere else, are like 3 to 12 additional questions that relate to my question with a down arrow, when you touch that down or click on the question, a website comes up.

Marilyn (00:10:20) - That could be your website. If you have the answers to all these questions on your website. So that's an extra snippet of content that Google will pull to provide to their users. So these users don't have to leave google.com in order to get the answer to their questions, unless they want to go further.

Josh (00:10:38) - Man. Yeah, it's just like the social media platforms that, generally discourage off, you know, off platform links. You know, they'd rather you just kind of keep all of your followers, just right there in Facebook or right there in Twitter X or LinkedIn. So, yeah, that's the way the platforms work. Well, okay, so you mentioned, you know, certainly claiming your business profile, if you were, let's say someone's claimed it. they say, okay, well, I've got our hours up there. The information is correct. I did the postcard thing. Yes. You know, it's all kind of fully verified and claimed aside from just kind of the basic like, yeah, just kind of step through the prompts and go ahead and take care of that.

Josh (00:11:22) - You know, if you were to say, you know, listen, here's 2 or 3 things that I think, you know, kind of next step you should absolutely be doing. what would you say would be some of the most important activity in regards to, you know, all of what's available to us in, in the GBP platform?

Marilyn (00:11:39) - I think what's super important is adding photos and videos and doing that over a period of time. The other thing is products and services you can put if you sell specific services, you can list each service and talk about that. You can list products if you're selling categories of products. So what it is, is giving more information to Google about what you offer so that they can more easily direct traffic to you and show you on the map when it comes up. Q and A are huge asking questions and answering questions. So if you know you've got 3 to 7 questions that every customer asks at some point through your your customer process, put those up there and don't do them all at one time.

Marilyn (00:12:18) - You know, do one today, one tomorrow, you know, just so that you're consistently adding content. So those are the big things that's most important is keeping those up there with photos. If you've got, say, a service that has a truck or delivery, then start taking pictures of the truck on location. What that tells Google if you've got your location services turned on, that tells Google that you're relevant further afield than your address. So that's the you know, you're giving it more and more information about you, and you also want to respond to every review you get, including bad ones, but respond professionally.

Josh (00:12:54) - Excellent. All right. Your website maximise your GBP. Com when somebody goes there I know you've got an e-book. Do you want to maybe share just a bit about that or what resources are available on on your site.

Marilyn (00:13:08) - Absolutely. So the book is 120 pages that walks you through visually how to claim, verify, and then maximize your Google business profile. I do have a coupon for your reader or your listeners today, and that'll be the number five and the word thoughtful.

Marilyn (00:13:22) - And then additionally, if you have a team of people that say you'd rather just hand this off to someone else, I've created a set of standard operating procedures. So SOPs that you can give them and know that they will take step by step visually and actually get this done for you. And I would just suggest, you know, again, take ten minutes a week, do something on your Google business profile. And but starting with the beginning, my my book will walk you through all of that. And for your listeners, like I said, it's only five bucks.

Josh (00:13:51) - Nice. And again, what was the coupon code? The website. Maximize your GBP. Com what was the coupon code one more time.

Marilyn (00:13:58) - The number five. And the word thoughtful five.

Josh (00:14:02) - Thoughtful. Yes. Well, great. Marilynne Jenkins again founder of MJ medium. Your website maximize your GBP. Com Marilyn, it's been a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us.

Marilyn (00:14:13) - Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it.

Josh (00:14:21) - Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit up my influence. Comment. Guest. If you're a listener, I'd love to shout out your business to our whole audience for free. You can do that by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or join our Listener Facebook group. Just search for the Thoughtful Entrepreneur and Facebook. I'd love, even if you just stop by to say hi, I'd love to meet you. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful entrepreneurs. Hit subscribe so that tomorrow morning. That's right. Seven days a week you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed. I promise to bring positivity and inspiration to you for around 15.

Speaker 3 (00:15:23) - Minutes each.

Josh (00:15:24) - Day. Thanks for listening and thank you for being a part of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur movement.