Craig Darling believes the Google My Business profile, for local businesses, is more important than your website! Find out why in todays’ value-packed episode! Get ready to learn how you can build incredible engagement directly from Search, Maps, and Images. For Craig there is one feature that has trumped Websites, email marketing, customer management systems, blogging, SEO, pay per click, and social media… the Free Google My Business platform. We can confidently say EVERYONE will learn something new in this episode. Learn about the setup, benefits and mistakes small businesses make when setting up Google Business. Enjoy!
Episode: 85
Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Craig Darling, an Expert in Google and Owner of Darling Companies.
Subtitle: Optimizing your Business through Google
Final Show Link: https://lunchwithnorm.com/episodes/episode-85-google-my-business-w-craig-darling/
In this episode of Lunch With Norm…, Norman Farrar introduces Craig Darling, an Expert in Google and Owner of Darling Companies.
Craig started retail in 1977 and moved his sales experience into the www space in 1993. In this episode, he talked about the setup, benefits and mistakes small businesses make when setting up Google my Business
If you are a new listener to Lunch With Norm… we would love to hear from you. Please visit our Facebook Page and join in on episode discussion or simply let us know what you think of the episode!
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Norman 0:02
Hey everyone, it’s Norman Farrar, a.k.a The Beard Guy here and welcome to another Lunch with Norm, The Rise of the Micro Brands.
Norman 0:21
Alright. So on today’s show, we’re gonna be talking a little bit about how to optimize your Google profile and we can sell on Amazon all we want. But getting off of Amazon, and maybe setting up a Shopify store, finding your Shopify store. It’s super important. So today, I’m going to be bringing on an optimization, Google profile optimization expert and we’re going to be talking with Craig Darling, so can’t wait to get into it. Kelsey, where are you?
Kelsey 0:54
Hello. Happy Monday.
Norman 0:55
Happy Monday to you.
Kelsey 0:57
Thank you.
Norman 0:59
Yes. It’s bright and sunny.
Kelsey 1:01
Oh, it looks like we got Darwin joining us already. Welcome Darwin. Just to go over things from last week, we were still looking to get those reviews in for Apple. So if you guys are watching, you can go to this link below. This is only for Apple users. So if you’re an Android user, this doesn’t apply to you. But it’d be amazing if you guys can go to this link, fill out a review and yeah, it’d be awesome. Thanks, guys.
Norman 1:29
I need a double shot of caffeine while you’re talking.
Kelsey1:31
Very nice. Yeah, and if you’re watching right now you can hit that like button. All of our replays go directly to our YouTube channel. Youtube channel is right here and just Norman Farrar. Highlights, full Episodes, everything you need there. Hello Radd. Welcome, welcome and I think that’s it. If you guys want to join the Beard Nation, as always, you can go and sign up for our Facebook group Lunch with Norm Amazon FBA and eCommerce Collective and the link is right here. So yeah, I think that’s it for me.
Norman 2:08
Okay. Well, you have to get on to your brother, by the way, because he has to send me over the approval for the newsletter that doesn’t suck that comes out every Monday.
Kelsey 2:19
Okay. I’ll get on it.
Norman 2:20
He has one job to do. So anyways, if you are looking at other forms of content, if you want to become a better online seller, we’ve got a ton of content we put out every Monday as well in our newsletter, and like I said, it doesn’t suck. It’s good, you’re not gonna find advertising, it’s just about the industry and I think that’s probably it. If you have any questions during the episode, just go and place them in the comment section. Other than that, sit back, relax, grab that cup of coffee and enjoy the show.
Kelsey 2:59
Yarrow and Marcia and Simon are also here too. So Welcome.
Norman 3:07
All right. Fatiha is here too. Okay. Hey, how are you?
Craig 3:11
I’m great. Good morning. Happy new year.
Norman 3:13
Happy New Year to you and let’s raise a toast. There we go.
Craig 3:18
Cheers.
Norman 3:21
Cheers. All right, Craig, Brian was the person who introduced us and when I saw what you were doing, like optimizing Google profiles, it’s so important, for not only if you’ve got a website, but let’s say you’re an Amazon seller, you’ve got to make sure that people can find you and it comes down to we talked about this quite a bit, authority and trust. You can’t have a sale without authority and trust. So before we get into Google, my business and your Google profile, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Craig 3:58
Oh okay, be careful, because I’ll ramble on. So I started in automobile sales in 1976, about the time that the industry was undergoing great change, and customer satisfaction, that sort of thing. So in this movement of change in 1993, late 92, early 93, we started talking about bringing the automobile industry online and in 1997, General Motors inducted me into the Automotive Hall of Fame, for actually bringing automobile sales online. We’re selling 12 to 1500 cars a month, as a result of our online efforts. So all the things that you didn’t know about, we didn’t have email marketing. We didn’t have social media. We didn’t really we didn’t even have websites in the sense that we have them today and so anyway, so after bringing the automobile industry online, the world clapped for me in 2008, as it did for many people, and I started my own company. So, to fast forward to today, we have clients all around the globe and we simply help manage Google business profiles. We teach people to manage their own Google profiles and we have a do it yourself website where people can learn to manage their Google business profiles.
Norman 5:28
Okay and right off the top, how important is maintaining or having a Google profile?
Craig 5:39
Well, it’s extremely important and there’s good news for the people that are selling on Amazon or have online stores. For about a year now, Google has allowed online only premises or online only operations, to have Google business profiles. This includes the serial entrepreneurs out there that need to have their name known. So a Google business profile is simply a knowledge panel, where we may or may not all be familiar with what a Google knowledge panel is. But the idea is to make your knowledge panel trigger as many times as possible, or gain relevancy for people searching, hence the optimization of their profiles.
Norman 6:22
Okay, so let’s talk about, and they’ve changed their name a few times here. So Google My Business. Let’s talk a little bit about that. What is Google My Business?
Craig 6:35
Google My Business is a knowledge panel that reflects all of the features of your business. A Google business panel that is properly optimized and properly structured, it’s a rudimentary mimicking of your website, if you will. What’s happened and everybody should take this to know, Google is concerned with customer satisfaction and how do they get customer satisfaction? By giving positive search results, giving the search results where we don’t need to search two or three times, we search once the content is there. To that end, Google has developed a number of Google tools, these tools are free to anyone that holds a Gmail account. But these Google tools are all designed to index content directly to search and if you’re indexing content directly to search, and that content is anchored by the URL which anchors your Google business profile, it increases the relevancy of two spots. It increases the relevancy of your website, even if you’re on Amazon and it increases the relevancy of your Google business profile.
Norman 7:45
Oh, just a sec. I didn’t get that. You can optimize your Amazon store through Google My Business?
Craig 7:57
Yes, you can.
Norman 8:00
Really?
Craig 8:01
Yes. Simply by having your at your store, have your Google business profile created, and then have the anchor URL for your Google business profile be your Amazon store. It’s really that simple.
Norman 8:16
I had no idea. I’m gonna have to check into that and obviously, by anchoring that URL, you’re going to be anchoring or getting better relevance for the keywords that you put up for your product?
Craig 8:30
That’s correct.
Norman 8:32
Okay. Does this affect Google Shopping as well?
Craig 8:37
Yes, it does.
Norman 8:38
Wow. So it really is full circle.
Craig 8:43
It is. so just to go here, so what Google is determined is that people like clickless searches, right. That’s why Google Shopping, right? Google products, Google sells. At any rate, so these clickless searches, and that is when you or I search for something, and the content or the product that we want is included in the search result, the search return includes our product, and all they have to do is click to buy, or click to subscribe or whatever the result is, whatever the call to action is, right? So you keep these all on your Google business profile. The average Google business profile has seven portals for conversion. Now, let’s compare that to a pay per click ad, it has one portal for conversion, and it costs you money. If your Google business profile is relevant, at the same time your Google Pay Per Click ads are relevant, people are going to click on your Google profile and not the ad. So it actually in a sense, can save you money in that respect. But there’s only one place a Google business profile is returned in a search result and that is the number one spot. It’s never number two, it’s never on a second page. It’s only number one. So the idea is to create that relevancy, and have a micro website directly on search, which is a Google business profile that makes your ratings go way up. We do have clients to get an excess of 350,000 views a month in their Google profiles.
Norman 10:23
Wow and we have to remember, you hear that we talk about Amazon being the largest product search engine, and a lot of Amazon sellers, including myself, you don’t really think, Oh, I have to be on Google. I might think of it a little bit differently, too. But like, for all my products, especially when you said the Amazon store had no idea about that. But we just talked about it very briefly. Amazon is really going to provide the authority and the trust that you need as a seller or as a buyer to initiate that sale and many of us think about going over to Amazon and making that sell. But if they don’t know you, this is called the rise of the micro brands. So it’s for that private label seller who just launched something or has a product selling on Amazon and Do people really trust you. So where do they go, they go over to Google and then if Google gives a thumbs up, usually, if you see brand consistency, and Google gives you the thumbs up, you go back and you buy it. So 350,000 extra views would be a pretty nice increase in exposure and we’re always talking about that now on Amazon, like right now people are talking, how do I increase external traffic?
Craig 11:52
Right.
Norman 11:53
There’s one solution.
Craig 11:55
There’s something that’s even better. When you have a Google profile that’s optimized and active, there’s a platform for you to put your products in. So you can have a feature of your products. It’s a list that goes across on a regular computer, it goes down on a mobile, but you can have your products there, and people can click to buy right there. So if it’s the link, if the buy link is an Amazon link, they’ve just bought the product on Amazon, directly from Google, they don’t have to go to Amazon. They don’t have to pick anything, they just buy the darn thing. It’s a little more detailed than that. But it’s essentially from search to one click to purchase and that’s really what we want the amount of clicks to get in the delivery, my Amazon Gabi here in a minute.
Norman 12:49
So let’s talk about the different types of features or content that you can put on to the profile.
Craig 12:57
Sure.
Norman 12:58
Oh, by the way, just before we get into that, we are having a giveaway today and Kelsey, if you want to come on, tell us a little bit about the giveaway.
Kelsey 13:08
Well, actually Craig, do you want to explain exactly what the consultation is?
Norman 13:13
I feel like he always passes the buck.
Craig 13:16
That’s okay. The buck stops here.
Norman 13:19
Yeah, there we go.
Craig 13:21
So if anyone would like to go to my website, it’s www.darlingdigital.us, I have a number of them. But this one specifically deals with Google darlingdigital.us and the very first button that you see is grab one on one time with Craig. So if you’d like to do that, if you’d like to visit that website, grab the one on one time, there’s a calendar there, schedule it out, I’m more than happy to spend a half hour of my time with you analyzing your digital footprint, specifically your Google footprint and there’s no fee for that. I’ll give you five to 10 actionable ideas that you can take immediately and increase your visibility.
Norman 14:05
So that is for how many people Craig?
Craig 14:11
Well, the calendar will shut them off if they overwhelm me, so.
Norman 14:15
Alright. It’s not even a contest today or giveaway. It’s just to go to the site and that’s darling.us?
Craig 14:22
darlingdigital.us
Norman 14:26
All right, so you’re gonna be overwhelmed because I know that listening to what you’re going to be talking about, and just what you’ve already talked about. People will be going over there to grab 30 minutes of your time and look at this is really cool stuff. We’re going to get into the features now. So what are they?
Craig 14:46
Well, first off, for those of you that are selling the micro branding. It’s really cool when your brand can be featured directly on search results. So all of your products can be listed individually along with the buy, sell, etc. In addition to that you can have podcasts like this can be marketed or advertised as regional events or national events. It’s actually amazing what Google does is that they take all of this content, whether it’s your services, your products, your events, just your reminiscence right? They will take all of this content and deliver it to people that their algorithms have decided, Okay, are most likely to do business with you. It’s really amazing for me to see, for example, we had a local guy, he was the number one search result with his Google profile last month, 55,618 times, he has inventory, right? Yes, products to sell, he got over a million clicks on his products. Right and this is not an aberration. This is happening and as I get more into this, now we’re in our fifth year of managing Google profiles and my four and five year clients are seeing unbelievable numbers, right and the fees are not very much money at all. We have an automobile dealer for example, in Cheyenne, Wyoming. I’m the only marketing he’s doing now, other than personal one on one marketing to salespeople they’re doing, but just the overall digital presence, my company is the only thing that they’re doing. So they’ve gone from spending $55,000 a month to spending well under 1000 a month. That’s pretty incredible and by the way, they happen to be the largest dealership in their state.
Norman 16:57
I really didn’t understand the power of it and then if you take a look at what you just said, so you’re out there and let’s say it’s these gnomes. So we’re selling off the Norm the Gnome and you create your Google profile. One of the things that we talked about is content as well, right? If you’re publishing a really good press release, if you’re publishing ongoing, high quality content onto your eCommerce site or your blog, and you’re adding this to it, it’s like a 123 punch.
Craig 17:37
Right. So this is called a blended algorithm. That’s what Google calls it. Right? Your Google business profile is motivated by the authority of your primary website, which if you’re Amazon slash anything, you’ve got plenty of authority there. Right? Your press releases, your blog posts, I’m sorry about that.
Norman 18:03
Oh, you can take it.
Craig 18:04
No. Your press releases and your blog posts, etc, you can post those directly to Google profiles. Your landing pages, etc, you can duplicate in Google Drive and make them public. I mean, there is the amount of tools, the amount of different ways that you can publish your content directly to search, right and this is important. It’s published directly to search. If I do something on your website, put a new product on your website or on your Amazon site or what have you. If I do that, then Google has to take 30 to 60 to 90 days to crawl it even if I go to my Google console and say, Hey, crawl my website today, right? They may or may not do it. But when you’re utilizing the Google tools to publish your content, it is indexed to Google search in seconds. Right, literally in seconds. 18.2 seconds is the fastest I’ve ever posted anything from my computer to the number one search result on Google. Alright, so this is just fabulous and by the way, I could go into that. It’s a great story, but it’s how the business got started is when I accidentally did that. But at any rate, by creating a Google business profile that’s relevant, and you’re utilizing your website in a fashion that’s appropriate, especially with Amazon’s rules and everything. You’re just going to be a really good player going forward and you can be the number one search result. Whether even if it’s only 5000 times in a month, is going to change your life. As far as financial goes, right? You just can’t be seen by that many people every month and not have business as a result.
Norman 20:02
It’s basically free. I mean, there is a fee associated if you go through what you’re doing. But if you’re doing it on your own, it’s a free service. Correct?
Craig 20:10
Right. Well, it’s free in a certain respect. So this is actually how I make my living. It’s free, except it takes about 10 minutes a day. Right? You have to have 10 minutes a day to manage your Google profile every single day. Right and so if you can do that, you can have the rewards, you can have the success that come from it, because Google will reward you and you do not have to be a technology wizard either, because Google will actually take your content, and they’ll search it around keyword or not, and serve it up to the people that they believe are most likely to do business with you and that’s probably the biggest thing. That’s why we’re seeing on the average Google profile, we’re seeing over 10% conversion.
Norman 20:59
Nice. When you say content, what types of content?
Craig 21:04
So let’s say that you have your blog post. You can publish that to your Google business profile.
Norman 21:10
Really?
Craig 21:11
Oh, yeah. Right. Let’s say that you have a special, you can publish that to Google business profile. In fact, you can click the little special offer and Google will go, Oh great, you got an offer, tell us the details. You fill out all the details on it, and they push it. Alright, perhaps what I should have done for your show this morning is make a special Google business offer and had you share that link but you could do that as well. I mean, this is unbelievable, then when you put your Google content out there, Google gives you the opportunity to click Share, and send it to LinkedIn, send it to Facebook, send it to other social media profiles and if you’re managing your Google business profile on a cell phone, all of a sudden, WhatsApp, Snapchat, all of these other businesses become places you don’t have to have an account on, but they can still connect with you through the Google business profile. So it’s really really strong stuff.
Norman 22:12
The address that you provide, so if it’s regional, or if it’s national, let’s say that you have multiple brands. So you’ve got brand A, and it’s @sweet342. Brand B, you’re using a PO Box, Brand B @sweet342. Brand C, @sweet342. Does that cause a problem with Google saying these three brands, they’re probably at a upmsp PO Box. Should each brand have a different address? Or is that okay?
Craig 22:45
First off, you can’t use a PO Box. Okay? Second off, you should use your personal address, but you can hide it. Alright, so it’s not visible. This is particular for online stores only. Right? You’re not going to utilize the map feature that local businesses use the maps feature. So when you click, Hey, my address, nobody can come to my house for business, your address is secret. You can go back to the backend and you can say, Hey, I want to target Boise or I want to target Washington DC, I want to target whatever city that you want or you can target an area, right? Or you can target a state or a country. I’ve got a realtor in Scottsdale that likes investment and so we put his market area in Madrid and Prague, you can actually do that and so all of a sudden his content starts showing up in Prague or Madrid, where he’s looking for people with money that want to invest in the United States. I get that. Right. So there’s all kinds of different strategies going on. But the bottom line is, the more you use Google, the happier Google is going to be with you and serve you up more often. So it’s part of that blended algorithm blended authority, if you will.
Norman 24:09
So again, let’s say you have three, four or five brands, and they all have the exact same address, not PO Box, your physical address. Is that a problem?
Craig 24:26
It’s not a problem for me. I’ve got 23 Google profiles that are registered at my personal address right here.
Norman 24:32
Okay. Because I do know in the older this goes way back, I’ll age myself but back earlier in the late 90s, early 2000s, you’d be penalised with the same address, right?
Craig 24:50
Because they used to only do brick and mortar stores.
Norman 24:53
Got it. I got it now. Okay and the mud is clearing away I can see the water. Allright. So Kelsey, do we have any questions?
Kelsey 25:03
We sure do. Let’s see from Laurie, can you use the Google search term optimization if you only have a landing page?
Craig 25:10
Yes.
Norman 25:13
That was simple.
Kelsey 25:15
This is from Marcia, we work hard to get Google reviews. Any suggestions on how to get more?
Craig 25:21
Yeah. So what I would do is I would take your Google review link, and I would embed it in every single email that you send. I would have it be as a footer and you just can’t have that out and the other thing you could do is in that same email, you could also embed your Google business profile. Right? So Google actually gives you the links to do that and most of my emails have the Google business profiles embedded in them.
Norman 25:49
I got a question about the content that you’re providing and publishing, can you associate that with the Google answer box?
Craig 26:03
One more time with the question.
Norman 26:05
Okay, so you’re posting content, lots of content. I want to get into that Google answer box, you know where they have all the questions? We can do that usually with very good quality, well written articles. Can that be associated? Can anybody basically just say, Hey, I’m going to put my content on my profile and it’s going to be indexed quicker but could it be associated with the answer box better than if you were just to do it yourself?
Craig 26:37
Well, yes, and no. It depends, because the answer has to have certain qualifications from Google. Right and so I would actually have to look at each individual posting to answer that, The bottom line is, most of us don’t have the expertise to get the answer but that’s going to actually happen accidentally for most of us, all right. But you can publish your content at any time, and you can create your own answers on the Google profile. You can ask and answer your own questions and that will create answers in another fashion, which Google again rewards.
Norman 27:19
Fantastic. Alright Kels.
Kelsey 27:22
From Tony, Hi guys. Craig, what are your top two guerilla marketing techniques for 2021?
Craig 27:29
Oh gosh. I don’t actually do any marketing for myself anymore if that’s the question. For businesses, I simply manage their Google profiles on a daily basis, I really haven’t changed anything. Probably the most important thing that I could tell you that we need all of us to do is to optimize our photos before we post them. Right? Embedding keywords and key phrases into photos is probably the number one thing that any one of us can do, utilizing Google or not, to increase our visibility on search. So I don’t know if that answers your question, Tony. But I hope that you at least optimize a photo or two.
Norman 28:19
Okay, let’s talk about that for a bit. So changing the photo name, the file name, to have the keyword in it is one way. Actually having the keyword in the photo itself, like if you do an infographic or.
Craig 28:33
Right. Well, there are a number of pieces of software out there now where you can actually embed photos with keywords and key phrases. Right?
Norman 28:45
Can you give us one?
Craig 28:49
Well, what’s it called? Local Viking is one of them.
Norman 28:58
Local Viking, right. Okay.
Craig 29:00
That also allows you to add keywords and key phrases to your profile that allows you to put keywords in that are checked weekly, every other weekly, monthly by Google for relevancy. So when anyone who takes advantage of that one on one with Craig, we’ll talk about that in depth.
Norman 29:31
One other thing, Craig. So I always thought that Google My Business or getting that profile is important. This a little bit off topic, but getting other citations going to these companies that will set up local citations for you and get you into all these different directories. Is that still important?
Craig 29:52
It is and here’s what’s really cool. Most of the other search engines out there, mimic Google. Right? So if you’re utilizing your Google tools, a couple of things are going to happen, you’re going to be pushing your content on primary search, Google search, it’s going content, it’s also going to be indexed to Google Images, which is the third or fourth largest search engine out there and that’s actually really a key to what we do is optimization of photographs and pushing content in that fashion. But then, coming back around, what happens is we notice after about six months of what we call content brief pushings, we noticed that being an exci, and AOL and the other search engines, they’ve all started to pick up on Google’s search results, and they start to mimic. I don’t know if it’s citation so much is, I don’t mind being the number one search result on Bing, 30 or 40 times a day.
Norman 31:01
Yeah, for sure.
Craig 31:04
It’s not because I’m doing anything on Bing. It’s simply because the Google business profile, and the relevancy regimens that we have behind it are generating interest on the other bots.
Norman 31:18
Recently, I went to Microsoft bing all day last year, before COVID and it was great. What Microsoft is trying to do right now, they’re putting a lot of effort and energy into Bing. So don’t think just about Google. Bing is definitely an opportunity. So if you can get on Bing as well, why not give it a shot?
Craig 31:46
Right.
Norman 31:47
I’m sure there’s a few other questions, Kels?
Kelsey 31:51
Yes, just a second. All right, here we go. From Radd, can we do video advertisements on Google My Business?
Craig 31:59
Yes, you can. It’s really cool. I like it. When the raw video is over a minute and a half, typically, you will have to compress it. Alright. But yes, you can upload those directly to Google, you cannot use an aftermarket service to publish those to Google, you have to directly upload them to the Google profile. But yes, you can do a video advertisement. In fact, Google prefers that.
Kelsey 32:31
Okay, great. Oh, and by the way, people are taking you up on your consultation. They’ve been commenting, so you’ll be busy. From Darwin, how can I get started now creating this profile? I have an Amazon storefront and also a new Shopify website.
Craig 32:49
Darwin, if you have a Gmail account, simply log into your Gmail account, open a Google profile and type in business.google.com. Again, that’s business.google.com and it’s very easy. It’ll take you about five minutes to get started. It takes about five days to get verified, do not do the phone verification. Alright, this is really important, do the physical verification. It just works better. If you do the phone verification, sometimes your site goes into whatever they call it pending and it gets stuck in pending and you have to do email after email takes weeks. Not every time but enough of it to where it’s a concern. So just do the physical verification, and make sure that you send a card to your attention.
Norman 33:41
Does it matter where you are? Canada? US?
Craig 33:44
No. The only place where it might matter is if you’re in China.
Norman 33:48
Okay and you can target because I’m located in Toronto, but almost all of my sales are in the US.
Craig 33:55
Yeah and we have clients in Calgary, we have clients in Manitoba. Canada is good to us.
Norman 34:09
What about like, so I sell soap. Small dollar items. Does it work for small dollar items? Or should you have Is there a sweet spot where your price range should be to take this on?
Craig 34:22
I haven’t found it that specific. But I really think that we all have an advantage right now. It doesn’t matter whether we’re selling cat toys, okay or homes. Right? Google will treat it all the same as the amount of search as is different obviously for each product, but I can’t think of a better return on investment than spending a couple of minutes a day, making sure yourself is on your Google business profile and if your Google business profile is relevant for the word soap, right? How cool would it be if every time somebody wanted to buy soap, whether it was Melaleuca or Amazon or Dial or the bearded soap, right? Your Google profile comes up, right? So when a new Google profile comes up, there’s 5 or 6 or 10 or 20 different kinds of soap, that they can just click and buy right there. Right? It’s a way to clean up.
Norman 35:29
Okay, Kels. Anymore?
Kelsey 35:32
Oh, yeah. A couple more from Tony. I’ve been using the SEM rush software to update my Google profile. Is that effective?
Craig 35:40
Yes, it is. Yeah, it really is. So now, the problem is, with some of the software that’s out there, is that Google doesn’t like it very much. So Tony, you need to look and see how long have you been doing it? If you’ve been doing it for a year, and you’re not getting five to 10,000 views a month, I’d probably figure out a different way to optimize my profile. But I do have an SEM rush account. We don’t use it to manage our Google profiles. But we certainly use it to utilize, find out, discover keywords of what our clients’ competitors are using.
Norman 36:24
From Fatiha, is there an ongoing fee that Google charges to advertise?
Craig 36:29
To advertise yes, to manage your Google profile? No, there is no fee for your Google profile. There’s no fee for Gmail. Some people like me do utilize Gmail and the G Suite, which gives our Gmail the domain like Craig Darling Digital or Darling Companies, or whatever. So we do utilize the G Suite, which costs I don’t know, about 100 bucks a month because we have a lot of email profiles on it. But no, we do manage pay per clicks, which is Google’s advertising charging. I think we’re running somewhere in the neighborhood of $80,000 a month for our clients on pay per click right now.
Norman 37:15
So going back to that G Suite, or Gmail. Alright, so we’ve got our mail on a different email client. Alright, so it’s not Gmail. However, it’s easy enough to mybrand@gmail.com. I’ve also got a G Suite set up. Could I just set up 10 different brand accounts within that, like amz.club. So Brand A, Brand B, Brand C, and they can all just come to amz.club, that doesn’t have any effect or any problem?
Craig 37:53
Nope.
Norman 37:54
So it makes things really easy just to do. Okay.
Craig 37:56
Yeah, you can definitely do that. I think you’re gonna pay about $5 a month for each alias. Not a big deal.
Norman 38:03
So just alias emails?
Craig 38:06
Right.
Norman 38:07
Well, that’s perfect.
Craig 38:08
Yeah. So the reason that I do that is because I want them all to come to one box.
Kelsey 38:21
Okay, this is from Peggy. What if I’m in Canada, but I sell in the States? Can this work for me?
Craig 38:27
Yes, when you’re setting up the profile, you get to pick the market area that you want to have your product marketed in. Alright, so when you create it in Canada, and it says, your marketing territory, I’ll just start typing in USA, and then click?
Norman 38:44
Can you have multiple, like, Canada, USA, Mexico?
Craig 38:48
Yes, you can have I believe it’s 20 different marketing areas, right. So we do a number of things, we create the market areas according to the Google profile, but we also create what they call geo fences. So if my clients don’t want to be seen in a particular market area, we create a fence around that area. It really, really gives tremendous results. But that’s not something the average person can do on their own. They really have to have somebody professional doing it.
Kelsey 39:28
Let’s see. Does Google My Business have to link to Amazon? Can you point to other platforms such as Shopify? Can you link to more than one destination?
Craig 39:36
You can link to two different destinations. However, there’s a caveat. The first destination is whatever website or subdomain on your website that you want to send them to. The second one is appointments. So it would work for me, it might not work for you. What I would recommend to go back on what Norman was saying is I would maybe create a different profile for the different brand. All right, there’s nothing that says that you have to have one Google profile. I have better than 20 of them.
Norman 40:10
We will too after this call. Kelsey?
Kelsey 40:17
From Dr. Koz, what about YouTube? Where does that fit into the mix?
Craig 40:20
You can link your YouTube to your Google business profile. It takes a bit, but there are plenty of YouTube videos on how to do it. But yeah, as long as you have the business profile, and you created the Google, excuse me, the YouTube account in the same email, you can link the two together and that is really, really strong and then of course, when your Google profile is relevant, what happens, there’s a link to your YouTube page also. By the way, I want to give a shout out. I just subscribed to Norm’s podcasts on YouTube.
Norman 41:03
Oh beautiful. Thank you..
Kelsey 41:05
Yeah, speaking of that, if you guys are interested in subscribing, you can go to this link right here. It’s in all the comments.
Norman 41:13
Perfect segue.
Craig 41:13
Rehearsed.
Kelsey 41:16
We planned it. It worked perfectly. Okay. When I type in keywords on Amazon EBC pictures, does that work as well for Google?
Craig 41:26
No, that doesn’t. It’s a different algorithm.
Norman 41:33
However, those keywords can be associated with your Google profile?
Craig 41:38
If you’re searching on Google, yes.
Kelsey 41:40
Okay and from Fatiha again, what kind of changes have you seen in client sales that have connected their Amazon store to this?
Craig 41:49
Oh yeah. So, I can’t tell you that I’ve worked with anyone on Amazon yet. I would like to tell you otherwise. But I’m one of those people that said, at the very least, I’m a realist, and I haven’t done it. However, the gentlemen Brian they introduced the two of us, thinks that this is digital gold, and wants to get me involved. We just haven’t put it together because the holidays were upon us.
Norman 42:17
Oh, we’re gonna talk real soon. I’m gonna beat Brian to the punch here.
Craig 42:23
Cool. I’ll definitely subscribe, somebody says. There we go.
Kelsey 42:31
Okay, and I think that’s pretty much it for all the questions. We just have a couple comments. Oh, yeah. I’ve been getting a lot of sales to my Shopify site from Bing.
Norman 42:41
Who’s that?
Kelsey 42:42
Let me see.
Kelsey 42:48
Not sure. Oh, it’s Faye.
Norman 42:51
Oh, okay. Alright. That’s great.
Kelsey 42:55
Another thing is from Marcia, so cool that you’re also in Arizona. Can I treat you to a thank you cup of coffee? I’m in Scottsdale.
Craig 43:03
I definitely drink coffee and I drive through Scottsdale, twice a week. I’m looking at my calendar, it’s blowing up over here. The reach is far and wide Norm.
Norman 43:17
I told you.
Norman 43:22
Oh, okay. Fatiha has got a?
Kelsey 43:24
Just a comment. I think I’m sure you’ll have an Amazon client soon as I’ll come to you with my business. Oh, there you go.
Craig 43:31
The ROI is so outstanding, that it just, whether you learn how to do it yourself and I have a website that allows people to do that. It’s just a series of videos behind the firewall, where they can actually look and see how to manage their profile on a daily basis and then the other thing that I liked about that particular website is that Google changes stuff all the time and they don’t say anything about it and because of the fact that I’m actually on the platform, eight to nine hours a day, I see these changes immediately and we change our focus and so what happens is on the Do It Yourself website, we change those videos so that they reflect the newest information from Google. So it’s $99 a month. I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you an insight on that. If anyone wants to go there, just send me an email and I’ll give you a coupon code where you can join for $49 a month.
Norman 44:40
Okay. Very good.
Craig 44:42
So you can opt out at any time. I mean, it won’t take you long to watch all the videos, but you might want to stick around.
Norman 44:49
Okay, so and if you are interested in that, just send your information over to Kelsey, and he will forward it over to Craig for you. What are some of the mistakes stakes that people make when they go and try to do this?
Craig 45:04
Oh gosh, some of the mistakes that they make? Well, the primary one is they try to utilize a post office box or a private mailbox. Google will never approve that. Right. Another mistake that they will tend to make is they’ll try to use a cloned website. Alright, and let me let me explain that. If you’re a Melaleuca distributor or some other multi level marketing distributor, and you’ve been given a What do they call it affiliate link? Okay, Google doesn’t like affiliate links. Right. So somebody earlier asked about a landing page. So if you’ve got an affiliate link for whatever it is, I don’t care what it is, go ahead and take the five minutes or 20 minutes or however long your technology allows to build a actual website or a landing page, so that you can put a real URL in the Google profile, and that’ll that will give you a serious amount of boost, as opposed to utilizing one of those affiliates, which can’t be optimized. Those affiliate links, they can’t be optimized. Did that answer your question Norm?
Norman 46:31
Yeah, I didn’t know if there was anything else that people might mess up when they’re putting it together.
Craig 46:36
No, you know what, it’s really simple. It’s like five or six steps to create the profile and once the profile is created, you can start manipulating it. Are there mistakes that can be made there? Yes. Right. But the cool thing is, is that you get to see it, as soon as you look at the dashboard, you can see if you’ve made a mistake or not, because Google gives you green ink or red ink. Green ink means Hey, I’m doing this right. Red ink means Oh, I gotta change something.
Norman 47:07
Okay, let’s talk about that for a sec. Quantifying or reporting. So what are the reports? Where can you find these reports?
Craig 47:17
When you have your Google business profile dashboard, there’s a click that says Google insights or maybe it says insights alone. So when you click on the insights, it tells you the keywords that are triggering your Google profiles relevancy. That’s the first thing that you see. The second thing that you see is your performance on search, whether it’s direct search, branded search, or excuse me, direct search, its branded search or discovery and we like to see those discovery numbers go way up. Because when it’s a direct search, somebody’s searching for Lunch with Norm. They know that they’re looking for Lunch with Norm, right? But if they’re talking about micro branding, and your profile comes up, that’s a discovery. Right? That’s a type of search results that we want. So that’s the second. The third one is the performance, it shows you how many times you were the number one search result on search. How many times you’re the number one search results on maps. How many times your photos entries got clicked or viewed by unique eyes, by the way, and all of the Google insight and phone calls as well. So a lot of my clients measure how many phone calls they get, it’s an important thing to track. So all of these things you track, I can tell how busy you are, what days your website gets busy. It’s really amazing, all of the insights that Google sends, now the drawback, it’s not really a drawback. But if Google sends people to your website, you can no longer track what happens on your Google profile.
Norman 48:59
Okay, but then you’ve got a pixel or you’ve got something on your website that’s tracking it.
Craig 49:06
Correct. So I can track the phone calls, I can track how many people went to your website, how many times here are the number one search result? How many times were you viewed and searched. So that’s actually a confusing number. So let’s say that you were the number one search result 5000 times, but you got 10,000 views. How does that work? Okay. Well, the 10,000 views is simply because your content was featured on the first page, aside from your Google business profile. So there’s a regimen we do that generates content that’s applicable to search as well and so those two things are primary and then the very third thing, or the very last thing that it measures is your overall performance and that I really like to look out because that’s the green ink and the red ink. So when you look at your performance icon, it says up 22%, 12%, 4%, or down 3%, 7%, or 6% and it measures your web traffic. It measures your phone traffic. If you’re a retail location, it measures your floor traffic. It measures how many times your product was clicked on. Okay and that’s probably the most important for people like you and me. How many times was my product clicked on? My product or websites, people signing up for my website and your product is people subscribing or listening to your podcast or perhaps buying your soap.
Norman 50:41
I’m hoping.
Craig 50:41
Right.
Norman 50:44
Okay. Kels, I guess that’s it. Well, I guess we’re winding down the podcast. We’re at about 50 minutes. Anybody have any other questions? Anybody want to come on live and ask Craig any questions, just put it into the comments, and we’ll get you on. Any other things that you could talk about with the profile? Oh, Craig. Can you hear me?
Craig 51:13
Yeah.
Norman 51:14
Okaay. Is there anything else that you’d like to talk about the Google profile?
Craig 51:22
No, we pretty much covered it all. I think we’re pretty in depth, it’s actually a very, very simple thing to do. You do not need to have a lot of technology chops. I’ve been around the internet game since 1993. Leading edges, we moved into this digital age. But this Google business profile, it actually levels the playing field for all of us, right? So you’re big companies that you’re competing with, you’re selling soaps, or maybe you’re competing with Procter and Gamble, right? Your Google business profile is active, and you’re going to appear in search more than Procter and Gamble and that’s just a fact. Because they’re not utilizing their Google profile and here’s one more thing and this is the biggest reason that the ROI is so extreme for all of us that are doing this. Only about 4% of the businesses in the world are using their Google business profiles.
Norman 52:21
I believe it, but I didn’t know it was that important. I wish I could come on here and say, Hey, I’ve been doing this forever. I’ve set up my Google profile in the past. I had no idea that you could get this type of exposure and I didn’t know with doing 10 minutes a day basically, and maintenance, that you can increase your sales, increase your traffic. So I am going to be spending some time, Kelsey is going to be spending the time so Kelsey, get ready. Also, in case you’ve joined us late, Craig is offering an incredible special offer to you guys. Everyone, not just a one time winner. It’s everyone. If you want to go over to his site, he is booking a 30 minute call with you gonna have about 10 actionable steps and the site is called darlingdigital.us. Is that correct?
Craig 53:20
Yep.
Norman 53:22
Okay, perfect. See, I’m not that old.
Craig 53:23
No. You’re good. I’m sitting here looking and I’ve got a really big computer screen over here and it’s full.
Norman 53:32
Perfect.
Craig 53:36
It’s a lot of fun.
Norman 53:38
Oh, that’s super. So I think that’s probably it. Unless there’s anything else you’d like to say? Oh, we’ve got one more question.
Kelsey 53:45
Yeah, if we could just. I would love to look into the training Craig provides to get some basic understanding. Is this available on the website you mentioned?
Craig 53:53
Oh, that’s a different website. It’s TVI, it’s The Visibility Institute. tvi.education.
Norman 54:04
Oh, three letters. Must have paid a bit for that.
Craig 54:10
tvi.education. You have to spell out.
Norman 54:16
Oh education? I thought it was edu. Okay. I was gonna say you got a great domain name.
Craig 54:25
That would be cool with it. It’s available, but I can’t afford it.
Norman 54:28
That is normally around $99. I don’t make any affiliates. Okay. I just want to be clear, but Craig just said on the call that if you want you can get that for 49 bucks. So, if you want to check it out and check out the training, go ahead and do that.
Craig 54:45
I don’t know if I got time to give you the website where they can just go ahead and get that?
Norman 54:51
Yeah, sure. Go ahead.
Craig 54:53
It’s tvi.education/inside-edition.
Norman 55:00
Okay. Kels, if you want to type that out
Keley 55:04
Can you say that one more time?
Craig 55:06
Yeah, it is tvi.education/inside-edition.
Kelsey 55:17
Okay, perfect. Okay, I’ll put that into the comments.
Kelsey 55:19
Just a second. There was a mistake.
Norman 55:36
Inside hyphen edition. Perfect. Oh Kels it’s wrong. It’s tvi.
Norman 55:50
That’s my son. He doesn’t listen.
Norman 55:58
So while we’ve got this going on. Craig, I just wanted to thank you for coming on. We’re gonna have you on again, this is really fantastic information. I think everybody learned something today and again, you’re probably gonna be filled up because nobody is really taking advantage of Google profiles. So we’re gonna be talking probably right after the call. But thanks, again for being on the podcast.
Craig 56:24
Thank you so very much. I truly appreciate it and I wish everyone out there a very Happy New Year and let’s go out and get some prosperity that’s all within reach. Thank you so very much.
Norman 56:39
Alright. Thanks again. All right, Kelsey. I think that’s it for today’s podcast.
Kelsey 56:46
Thank you everyone.
Norman 56:47
Wow, that was really good.
Kelsey 56:48
Yeah, tons of information.
Norman 56:51
Yeah and we are going to get that information going. Because how valuable is that? I bet you everybody that’s on the call right now. I don’t know, probably no one is doing this or they’re not doing it to the extent they should be and so this is kind of cool. This is one of those podcasts that I really didn’t have any idea how powerful it was going to be. I thought it would be cool to talk about. But anyways, guys, I hope you enjoy the podcast today. We’re going to have this live and with all the different content and other pieces of video clips on my profile page, which is Norman Farrar a.k.a The Beard Guy and if you want to watch us on YouTube, you can go over to Norman Farrar, our YouTube station or channel and Kelsey does it all over there. He publishes the whole episode. He makes the thumbnails.
Kelsey 57:53
We got brand new thumbnails, so go check them out if you haven’t seen them yet and we’re kind of revamping everything too. So yeah, look out for that. But I wanted to share just a review. So if you guys write us a review, we’re going to say it on air. So today’s review that I want to read is from Pedro Santos. This is a top notch podcast, no bias, straight to the point and legit discussions around micro brands, subjects long term view, no Lamborghinis and easy to make money theories. Norm is super charismatic and makes us feel very comfortable. Keep up the great work, guys. Pedro.
Norman 58:30
Thanks, Pedro. That’s when Norm is not stumbling over his words. Alright, so that’s cool. Thank you and yes, Dr. Koz, great to see on the show again. Yeah, on Wednesday, we’ve got another one. So we’ve got a marketing advisor, Kenny Harper that’s going to be on and we’re going to be talking about quick, five quick and effective strategies to increase your business profits. So stay tuned for that one and I think that is it. Join us every Monday, Wednesday, Friday at noon, Eastern Standard Time and thank you for watching. Enjoy the rest of your day and thank you for the engagement and the help building our community.
Kelsey 59:16
Yes, thank you. Oh, we just got a couple more comments coming in. Thank you, Melanie. The thing you like the thumbnails. Simon, let’s make 2021 not suck. I agree. Marina, thank you and join the Beard Nation if you haven’t already. It’s always great to see. Oh, where can I write a review? I don’t have an iPhone. If you don’t have an iPhone or not an iPhone user, you can go to just our Facebook page. It’s Norman Farrar a.k.a The Beard Guy and you can write us a review there. So that’s a great alternative if you don’t have an Apple phone.
Norman 59:55
Or watermelon. It was a bad joke. I’ll just be quiet. Alright everybody.
Norman 1:00:04
You hit the button.
Kelsey 1:00:06
Okay.
Norman 1:00:08
Hit the button. Alright. See you later everybody. Thanks.
