The Google Business Profile mistakes I see on Warwick Road every week
Walk the length of Warwick Road, from the clock tower down towards Abbey Fields, and search each business you pass on Google Maps as you go. I did this on a Tuesday morning with a coffee. It took forty minutes and it was more useful than most marketing courses.
Here is what I kept finding. None of it is hard to fix. All of it costs customers.
One: the wrong primary category
Google gives every business one primary category and it carries more weight than anything else on the profile. A café listed as “Restaurant” will lose the “coffee near me” search to the café next door that picked “Coffee shop”. A hair salon listed as “Beauty salon” loses “hairdresser Kenilworth” to the salon that chose “Hair salon”. Check yours. If it is even slightly generic, change it.
Two: opening hours that lie
Behavioural science has a term for this: the cost of a broken promise is far higher than the value of a kept one. A profile that says you open at nine when you open at ten does not cost you the customer who arrives at nine. It costs you that customer’s next six visits and the review they leave. Set your hours, set your special hours for bank holidays, and set them again every time they change.
Three: no photos taken in the last year
Google shows the newest photos first, and customers read a profile with three-year-old photos the way they read a shop with a faded sign. Take ten photos on your phone this week: the front of the shop, the inside, the product, the people. Upload them. Do it again next quarter.
Four: reviews with no replies
A review nobody replied to looks unstaffed. A one-star review nobody replied to looks true. Reply to every review, including the good ones, within a week. Two sentences is plenty. Use the customer’s name and, where it fits, the name of the town, because that text is indexed too.
Five: nothing in the Products or Services section
This is the section almost every Kenilworth business leaves empty, and it is the one that lets you appear for searches you never thought about. A dog groomer who lists “puppy first groom” as a service starts showing for it. A pub that lists “Sunday roast” as a product starts showing for it. Fill it in. Add prices if you can bear to; profiles with prices get more clicks because the biggest question is already answered.
What this is really about
Most marketing does not fail because the business is bad. It fails because buying from it takes too much effort. Every one of the five mistakes above adds a small piece of friction between someone searching on their phone and someone walking through your door. Remove the friction and the customers you are already close to will come the rest of the way.
If you want me to check your profile, send me the name of the business and I will come back with the fix list. It takes me twenty minutes and it is free. Book a free call, or read about my local SEO services.