The Google My Business Message tool lets you respond to messages from people who find your business on Google with a smartphone.
Responding to prospects can help you answer their questions and convert them into paying customers.
We had a client in the New York area say that he was getting 3 to 5 new clients per day during the busy season. They would find him on Google and then he would get a Text message on his smart with questions. He would quickly turn that into a phone call and close the deal.
How It Works
- Client searches on Google on their smart phone and finds your business.
- They click on the MESSAGE icon. (this will not show up on a computer)
3. You will get a normal Text message on your phone with their question. Start texting back right way to close the deal.
How to Set It Up
- Log into your Google My Business account at https://business.google.com.
- Click on Messaging on the left side.
- Slide “Messaging On” and enter your smartphone number and Welcome Message.
- Click Save and then test it and have a friend test it from their phone.
Joe Burnich:
Hey everybody, this is Joe Burnich with Big West Marketing, and I’m bringing you another value packed video. In this video, I want to show you how to set up Google messaging or Google text messaging on your Google My Business account. Let’s get started with that right now.
Okay. First, what I want to do is explain. I’m going to give you a little demo, so I can explain exactly what this is and how it works, and then I’ll show you exactly how you can go in and set it up on your account. Basically, I’ve got two cell phones here. I’ve got my personal cell phone, and then I’ve got our business cell phone. What I’m going to do in this little demonstration is, I’m going to use my account, Big West Marketing, so let me go over to Google. And I’m going to do a search for Big West Marketing.
Now, you’re going to see here that it pulls up my little business profile page that shows up on Google whenever somebody searches your business name. And there’s this little button here that says, “Message.” What I’m going to do is I’m going to hit that, and it opens up my text messaging program. What I’m going to do is type in, “Hi, Big West.” This is just an example. Pretend that I’m your client or a potential client right now.
“Hi, Big West. Just looking for marketing services.” Okay, boom. I’m going to send that just like a normal text message. And then, what’s going to happen is, once I have everything set up correctly and have my business phone set up, which I do, a text is going to come in. Now, it does take a little bit here, so what’s going to happen is … Let me pull my text message program up.
What’s going to happen is, I’m going to receive a text on my business phone. The reason that I created this video is because this little feature has been around for while, but we actually had one of our clients call us and tell us that he’s getting three, four, sometimes five people reach out to him through this messaging program every single day.
Now, that doesn’t mean that you’re going to get that many. You may get more, you may get less, but either way, you need to have this just set up, especially if you’re going to be using your smartphone to get business for yourself. Let’s see. Hasn’t come through yet. I’m going to put pause on the video here, and we’ll come back in a couple minutes when it does show up.
Okay, so I’m back. It did take about a minute and a half, but I did get this new text message on my business phone. It says, “Hi, Big West. Just look for marketing services.” I should’ve put “just looking.” But anyway, I hope that wasn’t too confusing, but this is the client, this is the business. The client clicked on the Google message button, sent a text message. The business got it.
What this client does that I have, he’ll turn that into a phone call. He’ll say, “I would love to answer more questions. Can we have a quick phone call?” Something like that. He’ll turn it from a text message into a phone call as quickly as possible, and then he’s been closing a high percentage of these for his service business up in the New York area.
How do we set this up? How do we get this all set up so that you can do this for your business? Let’s jump over to my computer here, and I’ll show you what you do. First, you’re going to log in to your Google My Business account. You go to business.google.com, put in your username and password, and you’re going to come to this screen. This is where you add your pictures. This is where you originally created everything that fits in to your Google My Business account.
If you don’t have a business account, you can go to google.business.com, and they’ll step you through how to set one up. Or if you’re working with us already, we’ve already done all of this for you. We’ve optimized it and put in all the little things that you need to do, and we’re doing this for SEO clients as well. What you’re going to do is click on “Messaging” along the left hand side. You’ll see this little option for messaging, so I click on that.
You’re going to see this screen here. The first thing you want to do is turn your messaging on, so make sure this little blue slider is over on the right side, and it is not gray. It’s in blue color. And then, what you can do is set up a welcome message. Now, it says, “Customers using SMS won’t see this.” There’s other types of things that will open up depending on what kind of phone they have, and some people will actually get this automatic message from you that says, “Thanks for contacting Big West Marketing. What questions can we answer today?”
I recommend that you put in a similar message, or if you have some special you’re having for back to school or Christmas or whatever, put that in there as well. But it’ll be an automatic message that goes out to some of the clients, depending on what phone they’re using. And then, what you want to do is go down here and enter your cell phone number.
I’ve got the business cell phone number right here. This is, if people want to text us or communicate over text through our smartphone, this is the phone here. That’s this phone here. That’s the one that’s the receiving phone. Your cell phone, assuming you have a cell phone that you want to communicate with clients on, you’re going to put that number there. And that’s it.
After you set that up, then I recommend you have a friend, or if you’ve got another phone, or your spouse or one of your kids, or something like that, have them do a little test. Have them search for your business on Google, click the little message icon. That little message icon, let me show you that again here real quick.
This little message icon is going to show up once you do the stuff I just showed here. Otherwise, that’s not going to show up. And like I said, it’s only going to show up on a mobile phone. If they look for Big West Marketing or your business on a desktop computer or a laptop, they’re not going to see the little message thing. It’s only for a phone.
Google’s getting more sophisticated with all this mobile stuff. As you know, mobile is where it’s at. Everything needs to be mobile friendly, mobile ready, mobile first, because most of the people now are using cell phones. In the future, I think it’s going to be 90 plus percent are going to be contacting your service based business through a phone.
That’s all I have for you today. If you have any questions, give us a call at 406-493-1881. If you want to schedule a free consultation with us, I’ll put a link down below, and you’ll be able to schedule with our marketing consultant. We’ll give you a free 30 minutes to go over whatever you want, your website, your marketing stuff. And we’ll make you an offer then at that point as well too, okay?
Like I said, I am Joe Burnich with BigWestMarketing.com. Thank you, and I will talk to you soon.
