Optimizing Google Business Profile and Voice Search

Lance Hood (FranPro) 0:00

Hi everyone . Today I'd like you to meet Kelly Banish , the VP of strategic partner of Ubera for ll , kelly , welcome .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 0:08

Hey Lance , hi everyone , how are you Lance ?

Lance Hood (FranPro) 0:11

I'm doing great , great since last time , so I wanted to just take a second and can we just touch base again on uber all and what you guys do so people can have a have that before we get started .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 0:25

Yeah , absolutely so . We make franchises really findable on the web and apps , local to social search , major social media sites and GPS and navigation systems , and we also garner new audiences for those franchisees . We're accessing audiences through new ways of communication like voice search and making sure that they're optimized for voice search , and then there's also an engagement layer there , so we do social postings at mass scale and then pull reviews all into one place . So it's really a multi-use platform that is in the cloud and it has different permissions levels depending on how many locations you manage , and it can go from one to 50,000 .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 1:22

The one thing that you say that I just don't hear people say is about voice search . I mean , that just sticks out in my head is like you think about . When people are , you say googling it , you know they're typing in a search and they get , like you know , a bunch of results . They get 10 per page . You know people say you got to be in the top three , right , but you say voice search and that's like I'm on my phone and I'm like , hey , I don't want to say it because I don't want to like have my phone start talking .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 1:48

But hey , you know , yeah , find me this right , and then you get one result that comes up , one , and so it's so essential for you to have that maximized and not a lot of people you know really are focused on digging deep and constantly adding that value . But how much of that voice search is out there ? What's the percent of it now ?

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 2:11

yeah , so there's . There was a stat , I think , in 2018 that there were 33 million connected voice search enabled devices in North America alone . A lot of it , too , has to do with adoption rate , right ? So when we I know you're in Canada , lance , when we talk about the Canadian market , right ? Only 12% of French Canadians use voice search . Do you know why ? That is because the algorithm isn't catered to their accents , their lilts , their different intentions behind the intent behind their voice , and voice search hasn't really caught up to different languages and different dialects , and so that's something that is being perfected over time . We find , too , there is a study done by Mindstream Canada in 2019 , and that's the study that says there's 12% only 12% of French Canadian searchers are searching through voice search . So as the adoption increases there , the algorithm becomes more catered to their voice , and the more we use voice search , the more it knows the inflection and the intent behind our search , based on proximity . It looks at different recommendations on behaviors and it studies us over time . So it's a learned algorithm .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 3:35

The more you use it , the more refined it becomes for your voice right and do we have any stats on the US , like the adoption right usage there ?

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 3:45

yeah . So I think from 2018 to 2019 in the US there was a 32% increase in voice search users . That's incredible when you think about it and now , too , when you look at the data who's using voice search ? It typically skews younger , gen Z , gen Y , the millennials , elder millennials and it's very intent driven . You want what you want and you want it now . So it's all about accessibility and convenience . Sometimes , if my hands are dirty and I'm in the kitchen and I'm making something and I want a recipe , or if I burn something and I say , alexa , where's the closest bakery to me ? It's , it's all intents and purposes . Or can I have a new recipe for this banana bread , for instance ?

Lance Hood (FranPro) 4:39

it's all about convenience and driving that search direction directly to what the searcher is looking for right and and you guys bring it all together , so all that stuff that people would need for getting found . I think it works really well for retail . People can get directions right to a store and I think you even had some stats on what people are looking they .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 5:07

They do research before they buy , even either before going to the store or at the store yeah , and nine out of ten searches end in an action , whether it's a click , a call , a driving direction being generated to that location . The , the consumer now is more educated . They like to educate themselves before they go in store . They're looking for price , they're looking for convenience . They're also looking for inventory . So if that particular TV isn't at that best buy location , why are they going to go there when they can ? Order it online directly to their house .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 5:43

I think you're absolutely right , because you know what word people say nowadays all the time if you ask them how they're doing Busy , busy , everybody's busy . Busy is like I'm accomplishing something right . Busy , busy , busy . Well , we are . So that's why we want to make sure I don't want to drive around town looking for something that's not there . That seems like a waste of time . They're going to look and see if they can find it , or see if you're open , or see what your reviews are , because who wants to go try out a restaurant now without any positive reviews ? So if people want to see it , so all that reputation , all that search so important .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 6:22

Absolutely . And thinking about the convenience that , like a door dash or a toast tab has brought us for postmates , right , you can bring anything to you . You can bring food to you , you can bring objects to you , items from stores . So we truly are a society of convenience . I found it during COVID . Actually , I brought COVID home from Spain with me . It was an unfortunate souvenir , but I remember falling asleep on my couch the moment I got home and I thought I was jet lagged and then my COVID test told me otherwise . But I remember ordering $200 worth of door dash that week because all I could do was get up off the couch , feed myself , go back to bed and at the end of that week my credit card capital one I got a notification Did you just spend $200 on door dash ? Well , I guess I did .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 7:14

I can see that , well , this is , this is good perspective and it was a crazy time for everybody , so it's always funny . What do you think would be one of the most valuable things if we're going to share your insights , things that you've learned and people could put into practice and learn from ? What do you think would be one of the most valuable things we can share today ?

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 7:36

Oh yeah , optimize your Google business profile . It's just the tip of the iceberg , but it does account for a long or large aspect of search . So Google business profile signals are one of the most valued signals in local search and it takes nothing to optimize it . You just have to have the right data making information more accessible to your consumers or your searchers .

Optimizing Google Business Listings and Reviews

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 8:08

So think like consumer . For instance , if you're a restaurant franchise , make sure your menu is accessible online through that Google business page , your reservation links and your ordering online links .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 8:21

Think of all the metrics that you cater to as the particular business vertical you're in . For instance , if you are a service area business let's just say you are a rotorouter franchise and you have a booking link or a free estimate link Make sure that's out there on the Google page , because you're going to garner a larger audience . Also , making sure hours of operation are correct , especially with holidays coming up . And also , if it's a place that consumers actually come to and visit , it's a brick and mortar location , make sure that your rooftop pin is in the right place , because that is what constitutes driving directions to that location .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 9:07

So it's all about the era of convenience making sure that reviews are findable , that you have plenty of reviews out there on the Google page and if not , there's a right way and a wrong way to do it . But asking happy customers to leave reviews is the best possible way to make sure that they're speaking for you . 72% of strangers trust reviews from total strangers . So I wouldn't trust a stranger to cook a meal for me , necessarily , but I wouldn't go to a stranger's house instead of their table and eat a meal . But yet I'm really trusting their review as their word . So it's an interesting time to be alive .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 9:55

You know , a lot of the stuff you just said I totally agree with and I've experienced just in the last couple days I don't know how many Google business listings that we've checked just to make sure the hours were there and then we Wanted to pick out a restaurant because my daughter or husband were leaving town and we wanted to go out to a place to eat and so we wanted to check out the menu first .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 10:16

So we're checking out business hours on the website , for if they're open , we're checking the menu to see if the menu has anything that I want , and looking at the reviews . I mean , that's all like everything you're saying . I'm actually doing that right now , and so if you guys are Helping people to keep track of this and organize this , I think you're 100% right . I think that stuff is so important and collecting those reviews because you know if they , if they don't Ask for them , they're just not gonna get the ones that people the people who are most motivated to leave one are usually people are frustrated . So you have to ask people and they're happy for sure .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 10:56

Absolutely , and there's sort of a level to that when you look at the reviews . So Google , yelp and others have this element of personalization for Google . I have to have a Gmail account in order for me to leave a review at a local business and Google audits that information Every single year . So if I have , if I just created a Gmail account to leave a review and I just leave one review I have no photo , no profile to my person and it's just that one review . Google will then consider that a fraudulent review and close it down over the course of that year .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 11:29

Because I didn't take part in emailing , I didn't actively engage with that account , I didn't leave additional reviews , so it's automatically in the spammy bucket . If you look at a review that's left out of business and it's a seller review , or if it seems fake even and there's other negative reviews below it , you can click on that person's profile and see what other businesses they reviewed and you can look for things like if they're in Texas , did they review a window place there and then the next day a dog walking place in Chicago or a HVAC Specialists in the UK ? That's where you can tell if it's a fraudulent review or not . But also looking at that profile of that person , it makes it that much more personal and you can see like okay , they're actively reviewing businesses in my area . I trust them . This is great that there's this personalization element behind the reviews that are being left .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 12:37

So with you guys , then you have a system to where it asks people to leave one , and then you kind of collect all this data . You collect all the what do you say ? All the things needed to perform these functions under one dashboard , right ?

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 12:53

Yeah , and there's about 80 different attributes . We call them anything from Menu criteria , images . You always want to make sure you have a landscape image of the outside of the building If it is a brick and mortar that people are coming to , that consumers are visiting so that they could easily find the business and then it's distinctive . And then the interior photos , for instance . Let's just say you're managing 150 spas that are in a chain . You go in and what I want to see , as a someone who goes to spas , is that it's clean , it's nice , it looks . It looks like a nicer green place to go to . You want to bring the customer experience to them so that their decision is very easy to book an appointment .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 13:43

I I know that makes total sense . Any other things like can you give the customer journey from your guys' perspective and the things along the way that you think people should pay attention to ?

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 13:58

Yeah , so we power about 500 reseller partners and 2,000 brands globally and everyone's different depending on the country , depending on their footprint , everyone's different . So it just depends on the different pathways that the customer takes to find that business right . So we think about new ways to access those customers , Anything from voice search to even when we look at Bing , for instance . Bing is , I think it accounts for 2% search value in the US , but it accounts for 5% search value in Canada . And what's the value of Bing ? It depends on the audience that you're trying to attract .

Engaging Audiences and Driving Customer Loyalty

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 14:43

Bing was the default browser 20 years ago on desktop computers . Do you know who really keeps that computer nice ? My elderly aunt and she , by default by her brand affinity for Bing , still uses Bing on her new computer . It's all she knows . And the detail show and the SAP show that Bing , the Microsoft network , skews older and female . So it depends on the audience that you're trying to target . Different pathways go in different audiences and once they find that business , once they access that business through that link , they find them on a directory . It's all about engagement making it super easy for them to engage with the business . So Facebook and Google now have messaging , automated messaging that you can turn on so I , as a consumer , can message the business and that message I , as the business owner , can opt into receiving text messages to my phone to respond to that . Same thing with Google . So it's all about accessibility and many times it's the first person that completes that chain of contact with success .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 16:04

For instance , I had a hole . I just bought a new house . I had a hole in my ceiling . I had a water line first and it was miserable . Just saw the ceiling bellowing out and I wanted it fixed immediately . So it was around 6 PM at night and I needed an emergency plumber . Of course they're going to charge you an arm and a leg because it's after hours . So I was trying to find something in between someone that would come out quickly but wasn't going to charge me an arm and a leg . I did all of my research . I called all of the different numbers that I found and who did I go with ? I went with the first person to contact me back . Although I was paying them a premium , I wanted my problem fixed . So it's all about convenience , it's all about being at the tip of their fingertips and making that journey , that customer journey , super accessible every step of the way through .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 16:55

That's kind of really how you guys are able to help people drive customer loyalty then oh yeah , Because once a customer is buying from a brand , they're 32% more likely to rebuy from that brand . If a customer goes to a location and they have their heart set on a bagel and it's 8 AM and they drove out there to beat the rush hour traffic and they get there and that location is closed , what do you think happens to brand affinity ? It starts to dilute . It starts to . They lose it for that business and maybe they go to a different bagel store .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 17:33

At that point , what you talked about like 85% of brand engagement is not happening on company's websites . What is that about ?

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 17:45

So when we talk about engagement in general , it's the channels for which the business is acquiring new customers . So it's all of these different search sites out there . It's different avenues of search , like voice search .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 18:00

It's near me search right which near me search is on demand . It's based on proximity and it's based on intent I need it now and based on my location . It's all about accessibility . It's also through GPS and in car navigation systems . It's through local social signals too . Like 35% of local social search happens on Facebook . I know personally . I search events in my area on Facebook because I can see my friends are going to them . My friends are going to a concert . I want to be there . So it's all about catering to your audience and it doesn't quite happen on the website . So think of offsite citations . What we do as different roads heading into the city and the websites , the city . How are you going to get them to that website ? Then , once they're on the website , testing to make sure they don't bounce from that website and a conversion happens at the site level .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 19:08

So are people using Uber All as a way to basically interact with their traffic , or is it really helping you to manage your traffic on the way in ? Are people using it to attract traffic or just engage with and convert traffic ?

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 19:25

It's both of those things really . So in order for you to engage with audiences , you have to have audiences . So it's making sure that these businesses are in all of the places that those audiences are searching for them . But then there's all of these different layers of engagement , so it's social posting . It's making sure that they are putting offers out there . They're answering their Google questions and answers , which is like a local FAQ and of digestible information . For instance , if I'm a massage therapist in a location , I can answer frequently asked questions that I get calls for to mitigate some of that precious customer service time that , if I have one therapist there , I don't really have Right . So how much do you charge for a deep tissue massage ? What are your hours of operation ? What days are you fairly flexible ? How many therapists do you have ? And then there's those common questions that are asked . It's basically serving that information up on a silver platter to the searcher .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 20:34

And in our people . Setting up like , let's just say , would you say what percentage of your accounts go through the franchise or and what are percentage of the counselor or franchisees pursuing you directly ?

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 20:48

Yeah , we have about 2000 brands on our platform . We typically work with 49 plus locations on the direct side of our of the house and then anything under that we actually refer to our partners who provide white gloves solutions for those brands or those smaller brands , and I added the 50% of our brand customers they're asking us to to set it up for them for those white glove solutions .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 21:22

Right , so so basically to work with you directly , we're looking at around 49 or more locations . Yes exactly , and you guys are working kind of in conjunction then with like people have a CRM but you're providing the customer experience side and kind of helping to organize all that and tie it in .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 21:46

Exactly , and we have two different integration types too for brands . So we have , like a white label which we can disguise with their branding to their franchisees and franchisors . We also have an API integration , so that's for like more than 1000 locations .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 22:04

If they're going to be making a lot of changes and want a more automated solution , and then we also have a Zapier integration where Zapier is just a monthly subscription , it integrates into a lot of your other tool sets , so that's very easily where they could integrate into their CRM and see that entire customer journey all the way through inventory If they're retail specific brand , for instance and map the customer journey fully .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 22:34

From your experience of doing this and working with companies , listening to them , watching them implement the services , what are some things that you've seen kind of as commonalities with companies that are struggling or just it's harder than it needs to be ?

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 22:50

Yeah , I find a lot of times when franchisees are grouped together so you've got your corporate franchise right group , and then you have your individual franchisee wars . What we find is just getting everyone on the same page for simplicity sake can be very difficult , and a lot of times too , there's that corporate approved messaging that has to carry through all of the different franchises , and our tool really makes that an easy process . The tooling is designed to make sure there's that unanimous branding throughout all of the locations and then getting each of those franchises on board and under the same sort of like admin panel , just making sure that they optimize with similar messaging not the same , but also very localized messaging . So , in their short and long descriptions , talking about specifically the neighborhood they're in , think about how the customers are searching . Are they searching ?

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 23:52

For instance , I'm in Charlotte , North Carolina . There's 2.5 million people here and there's probably 22 different neighborhoods , right ? So how am I going to search in Charlotte for coffee near me , Coffee Charlotte ? I could have a search returned where there's a coffee shop 40 minutes away from me .

Personalized Content

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 24:14

So it's all about getting very specific in all of your content , even the website content , making sure that you refer to specific neighborhoods , for instance , and then on the opposite side , what have you seen with the companies that are , I would say , having ?

Lance Hood (FranPro) 24:35

they're growing pretty fast . They're definitely top performing companies and just something about them is taking off . What have you noticed that they do ? How do they think Stuff like that ?

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 24:47

Yeah , they really get it . They understand their customer well . They have complete marketing plans and social media plans and have an entire 12 months of social media posts scheduled by the time we implement our solution for them . And it's just even baby steps , like as a franchisee . It doesn't have to be complicated .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 25:09

What do we know will actually occur in the next 12 months ? We know that holidays will occur . We know that's a definitive thing , right ? So scheduling that content out around those things and making sure that it's a seamless customer journey all the way through . So making sure that , independently , you set up email marketing and you're asking for reviews and when you solicit those reviews , you do it in a very best practices kind of way .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 25:37

So on Google , on Yelp , they all have best practices on their site and how to guide , definitely familiarizing themselves with that and then also making sure that you know Google's guidelines . So a lot of AI has emerged right now , with chat , gpt , for instance , and while it's super convenient , websites are getting penalized for AI driven content because it's too generic , right ? So there's tags in AI content where I know a machine has written this , and so it's all about custom content for the business , whether it's social posts , whether it's website content , it all has to be . It has to at least appear very unique to the business , and so I think a lot of these companies out there that we're working with that identify as a brand , are doing that at mass scale , and it's quality over quantity .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 26:36

I agree AI is a great tool , but you can't just use it because it's basing what it's producing off of what it's seen other people write . It's in and of itself . It's not writing something new necessarily always , and you definitely have to personalize it . One of the notes that I made when you were talking is it seems like what you're saying is people are really either very organized they know their customer , they know what they're doing , they understand marketing or they're just doing , and it's okay if you're just doing because you're making something happen , but at a certain point people have to step back and figure out what they don't know . They don't know , so they can stop just doing and really nail it .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 27:25

Exactly right and leaning on your customer base to do that . Asking them to complete a survey , having someone help them complete a survey on premise , part of what our solution provides to is sort of just a brand analysis . So , at the location level , being able to monitor those reviews , seeing the overall customer experience , if you have three locations , you basically need to have eyes in the back of your hand if you're managing all three of them . So what can you do ? There is review monitoring . So if you get three bad reviews in one week and you click into it through our platform , I can show you this manager had a bad attitude , right , and it's a way for you to determine your winning locations from your losing locations and best practices . Basically , create your own best practices fueled by that customer feedback .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 28:15

Right , and so you don't necessarily want to look at these things as something that you just have to be obligated to respond to . You want to use this as tools to constantly improve yourself , and you can see what's happening . You can decide for what's happening when you're not there by basically reading what the customers are responding to .

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 28:35

Absolutely and then copy and paste for your news stories that open even . These are the best practices that we're following . This is what really landed well in this particular locale great customer service right . So maybe it'll even look at . You'll even have an idea of who to look at to come in and train your new franchises .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 28:57

What are you seeing between people as kind of last question here , but what do you , what do you see with people that are basically either doing a broadcast type follow up , right when it's in real time and it's scheduled , or a sequential one that says day one do this , day three do this . So are people basing it off of day and system or basing it off of date on the calendar ?

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 29:25

Yeah , you could do both , sequencing those out , I think there's . If you're going to do like social postings in tandem with like review , solicitation or feedback , that's always good . I think Tuesday at 10 am is the best possible time to post on social media , specifically Facebook . But for the most part I'm seeing a lot of solicitation right after a business or a consumer visits the business because it's fresh in their mind .

Importance of Customer Engagement With UBRAWL

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 29:56

If a week goes by , for instance , and there's that pacing in between , they could forget just how phenomenal of an experience they had . Or the urgency isn't necessarily there to complicate , to compliment that amazing manager at the front or that amazing employee that gave them an awesome customer service experience that they otherwise would have responded to immediately .

Lance Hood (FranPro) 30:25

Makes sense . Well , kelly , I appreciate your time . I f you want to gather up all of these components your interaction , your customer engagement , journey and put it into one place with Uberall , you can click on the link next to here and check it out . Anything else you want to add ?

Kelly Benish (Uberall) 30:58

No thanks . So much for the opportunity , lance , and I certainly hope to work with some of your attendees . I think that would be great .