Local digital marketing made easy.

In this episode, I dive into the importance of keeping your Google Business Profile active to boost local client traffic. I share quick, actionable tips on weekly, monthly, and quarterly tasks that take just minutes but deliver big results. Tune in for strategies to help your business rank higher and attract more local clients.

Thanks for listening to this episode of "Designing Success: From Study to Studio"! Connect with me on social media for more business tips, and a real look behind the scenes of my own practicing design business.

Grab more insights and updates:

Follow me on Instagram: https://instagram.com/oleander_and_finch
Like Oleander & Finch on Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/oleanderandfinch

For more FREE resources, templates, guides and information, visit the Designer Resource Hub on my website ; https://oleanderandfinch.com/

Ready to take your interior design business to the next level? Check out my online course, "The Framework," designed to provide you with everything they don’t teach you in design school and to give you high touch mentorship essential to having a successful new business in the industry. Check it out now and start designing YOUR own success
(waitlist now open) https://oleanderandfinch.com/first-year-framework/

Remember to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. Your feedback helps me continue providing valuable content to aspiring interior designers. Stay tuned for more episodes filled with actionable insights and inspiring conversations.

Thank you for yo...

Transcript

0:12

Welcome to Designing Success from Study to Studio. I'm your host, Rhiannon Lee, founder of the Oleander Finch Design Studio. I've lived the transformation from study to studio and then stripped it bare and wrote down the framework so you don't have to overthink it. In this podcast, you could expect real talk with industry friends, community, connection, and actionable tips to help you conquer whatever's holding you back. Now let's get designing your own success. If you haven't already, and many of you will have already done this, it is time to set up your Google business profile. So I feel like so many designers that I speak to do this as one of the very, very early activities in their business. And they're like, great, I have a Google profile next. And they never go back to it. They might occasionally reply to a review, but they literally are not Using it the way that it can benefit your business. Part of what's important about a Google business profile it is your digital marketing strategy for local area marketing. Everyone who lives in and around your area should be typing in interior design. Macedon ranges and up comes Oleander and Finch. Interior design. Every time top ranking, go test it. No, don't really But one of the ways that I. I am able to keep that ranking so high is through having a focus so it wasn't a set and forget situation where I opened the business profile and then went, yep, everything's good. There are a few key things that you can be doing to make sure that Google recognizes that you are an active business owner, that you take SEO seriously, and that you want to work with them to get your business ranked higher every single time somebody is Googling interior design anywhere near you. So my tips for today are very quick. They're very easy. They are going to include a little bit more work on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis, but the tasks are so minimal. They should not take you more than five minutes. And I think you'd be crazy not to put five minutes of effort in every week, every month and every quarter in order to see enormous digital growth and focus. So here we go. Let's get into it. On today's podcast episode, I want to talk about something that I think so many emerging designers can be guilty of. And that is a bit of set and forget when it comes to setting up your Google business profile. Most people think that's all you need to do. You need to verify your Google, business, and then that's it. And it's really simple. Really not. I, in terms of search engine optimization, one of the best things that you can actually do for your business is keep your Google profile relevant and keep it updated. And now I am not about adding more and more things to your to do list that I don't think will give you a result, but something that I actually have been having conversations about lately is a lot of designers who are saying, I'm spending so much time on Instagram, And I'm building this strategy and this portfolio of work and this amazing Instagram presence. However, 90 percent of the people I work with come from word of mouth, or they are here in my local area. How do I get better at targeting people in and around where I live? Because I want to do full service design and work on renovations and other things. It's quite difficult to attract that client via Instagram and just be like, hashtag I live three streets over from you and would love to be part of this project. It's not impossible. It's just a lot more difficult. So when we put some focus into something like Google, my business or the Google business profile, we're obviously trying to target anybody who's searching for an interior designer in and around where you are located. So today I want to talk about a few. Ways that we can optimize your Google My Business profile. If you've set it up and you've let it sit idle. Yes, you're missing out on driving more local traffic and connecting yourself with your ideal clients, but it is not a disaster. So today I'm going to show you some practical steps that you could be doing regularly and semi regularly just to ensure that your profile is working hard for your business and that it is in fact a local area marketing tool, bit, a digital marketing tool. So here we go. Firstly, I hope you have a Google Business profile. If not certainly there are directions in the framework for emerging designers, but if you're really unsure or you need any advice on that, please come and chat to me. I'd be super happy. I've got lots of PDFs and directions that I can point in your direction to help you make sure that you have verified that properly, that you are showing up, that you have a profile. Having a Google Business profile is going to help you. Rank in the search Engine. So in simple terms, if somebody, as I say, searches interior design in your area, you want to pop up and the better you are at maintaining your Google profile, the better, or more often you will rank higher in Google and Google will reward you for, loving Google profile instead of setting it up and never looking at it again. An easy way you can go about keeping your Google profile fresh and up to date is to upload photographs. We are a visual, we're visual creatures. If you're using AI like mid journey or any of that, you can turn out these beautiful interior designs really quickly and uploading new project photos or new team photos or a behind the scenes shot, a new flat lay. This will just keep your profile fresh and engaging. And it keeps reminding Google that you're there. I would not again want you to get stuck thinking this is a task you have to do all of the time. You could actually just put up an image one a week or schedule it into your diary so that you're putting Two up whenever you do marketing Monday, for example, something like that, just nice and easy. Don't put extra pressure on yourself, but new images do help you appear more frequently in search results, attract more clicks. Also, they spark the interest of people. You start to get a bit of a library or a visual portfolio up on your Google, my business platform, not just your logo that you set up. So if you haven't done that, please try to schedule in some time for fresh content. Another thing you can regularly post or update in your profile is update your offers, talk about your services. You've probably changed them since you first started. You can Upload new blog posts or special offers, upcoming events. If you're running a webinar, if you're running something, go pop it on your Google business profile, even tips related to interior design. So again, blogging, that sort of stuff. Don't put heaps of pressure on yourself. Just if you've got something that you've already got that you haven't used please repurpose it over on your platform. It helps you to rank higher with Google. It also sends a memo to Silicon Valley to be like, I am active. My business is active and I am active in the Google profile world. So don't deactivate me or like they tend to favor that you're not a bot. It's not a closed down business. They can see that you are actively engaging with Google, the platform, and they will reward you for that. But upload a picture, one or two if you can change and point to a couple of things that you might already have in existence, some blogs, some special offers, a flyer, an image, anything that you're doing over on Instagram, choose one or two of those things to also feature. And then lastly, but most importantly, You need to respond to reviews. So Google reviews are so important. And I have throughout all of my template emails inside of the framework, there's always a link to gather Google reviews. I've got some really great directives on how to encourage people to do that because asking once is not enough. People are very time poor. It is almost guaranteed to just be a case that they got busy. So they really loved your work. They wanted to give you a review. They just don't have time. And you're the same, I'm sure. Like the last time we ate out at a restaurant recently and I said to my husband, I really must go and pop a review on the Google profile because they were so great with the kids. We always struggled to find a kid friendly restaurant in this local area. And now that I've nailed it and I don't have to go to one with a. Big indoor play center. And yeah, I really wanted to give that feedback. And again, I've just reminded myself I actually haven't, and it's not through intent and it's not because I don't want to drive that new ownership in that business and give them great feedback. It's just that my life is busy and I've forgotten to leave the review. So part of the review. process that I teach in the framework is it's three strikes. You're out, three contact points of asking for the Google review and then you can leave them alone because it then becomes borderline stalking. But if somebody does respond to your review, it's really important that you take the time to reply. Firstly, thank you so much for your five star review of Oleander and Finch interior design, because those are all keywords. Oleander and Finch interior design, keywords, five star review, keywords, all of that sort of stuff. And just making sure. that you don't leave reviews unreplied, even negative ones. It's unlikely that you're going to get a negative review. But even if you feel as though, Oh, they've only given me three stars or four stars, just remember everybody is different. Some people, it's just like teachers, everybody marks the essay differently. And some of them used to be more favorable and some would be like, Oh, he's a tough marker or she's a tough marker or whatnot. And you knew that inside of Humans are like that too. That Just because you get a four star review doesn't mean they hated you. They just might not be free and fast with their five stars. Don't, whatever you don't come back off I think it's really important for us to understand how a business handles negative reviews. I think I learned so much more from how a business handles negative reviews than the negative review itself. So if I see someone who's gone on there and said you see this all the time with Airbnb when I'm doing research for holidays and things, and I'll see someone be like, Oh, it was this, it was that. And we hated this and that. And when the owner or the homeowner comes back at Airbnb and says actually you left messy and starts fighting with them or whatever. It's Oh no, I'm not touching that. We're not staying there. But if the Homeowner comes back and says, look, I really appreciate your thoughts. I'd love to take this offline and have a proper conversation. See if we can come to a resolution. I'm really open to your feedback. If we can change anything, that would be great. Here's my contact details or, here's my email address. Get in touch and I will give you a call. Yes, that kind of person is going to not bother me that because some people live to give bad reviews. So I'm never going to judge a business by a single bad review, but I will judge them by how they respond to that review. So if you're getting. reviews and you should be asking for them all of the time, making sure that you are replying both positive and negative reviews with a response that showcases your professionalism. Here's a couple of monthly tasks you can do to make sure your Google business profile is up to date. Review and update your business hours, your services, your contact information. Just when I said before about set and forget the amount of people that I've worked with that are established designers like, yeah, I've got it. And I'm like, okay, cool. And then I go in and I'm like, Oh, are you still working? Seven days a week, that's on your Google business profile. Would you prefer people actually don't contact you on the weekends? Can we hold stronger boundaries in that way? Or cause sometimes when you start, you're like, yes, you can contact me 24 seven. You just don't know to put office hours in things like that. So this is something that I would like to see you just quickly run your eyes over monthly, update the business information and make sure that it's not. It's a really gross customer experience to when there is inaccuracies in your Google profile. I do it all the time. I'm like, yes. Okay. There's still open drive there and they don't open Mondays, but I've driven all the way. We live pretty regional, so I drive 45 minutes to get to somewhere with a lot more shops and that tile shop just has not updated their Google profile and I get so, so frustrated. So I can say from experience, try to keep that business information up to date. There's also a Q& A section of your Google profile so it can be really great to add a few FAQs. If you find that you get a few common questions like in every discovery call, like I wasn't sure if you did color consultations or anything like that, you could do that. Kind of start to beef those FAQs out and that can help you manage your information and let people self qualify a little bit. If they're looking for something, you can let them know that you do that, or if there's something that you really don't want to do, you can add that to the FAQs. I mentioned blogs earlier in weekly, but I honestly think we all just have so much going on. If you're not writing blogs or doing anything, it'd be quite fine if you moved uploading new blog content into a monthly task. I just think so many of us just upload no content that it's good to go. Okay. What will I do weekly? What will I do monthly? If you're linking blog posts to your Google profile as well, it can just help you drive traffic to your website. It makes all of your SEO efforts feel more. aligned. And so they're being made across the board and Google just loves it. Okay, now this one is quarterly tasks to keep your Google profile sharp. Don't worry too much about this, but I would love to see you if you are doing quarterly planning, one of the things I would love you to do quarterly is to look at your Google Profile Insights. So looking at how people are finding and interacting with your profile and looking at the data, how many web visits did you get, how many phone calls did you get, like all that data exists. Inside of the insights and I think it's really great that we quarterly at least track that to see Oh, since I've been posting photos and blogs, I'm getting a real uplift to a visit. So the SEO is working. So making sure what you're doing is giving you a result. Okay. You guys know that every single time there's a new, this Strategy or thing that you need to employ inside of your business. The one thing that we scream from the rooftops is consistency. Google will reward consistency as well. It's just one of those things that it would love to have. So it's really important that we just make it a regular part of your digital marketing journey. routine. So if you do marketing Mondays, great. Every Monday, you're going to upload one image. That's it. Weekly. Another thing that is a best practice when it comes to dealing with Google is trying to always put relevant keywords into your posts, into your descriptions, into your business updates, without overstuffing it, you don't just want to put 26 keywords at the end of a sentence. But if you can Write your paragraph that you want to put in your descriptions or your service offering or whatnot, and then take it over to chat GPT and say, Hey, this is for a Google profile, can you optimize the keywords in this, keeping it natural, keeping the tone as per attached, but just making sure that it is full of SEO. Keywords and can you highlight those keywords to me? So chat GPT will amend the paragraph, spit it back out to you and show you where all the keywords are. So you can be sure that yes, actually I am using them and that's how you move back and forth to get it optimized. Okay. So nice and quick one for me today. Just to recap, the key points from today is that Google is not something that you just set up once and then never do again. What I would love to see is you trying to put a little bit more routine around it, especially if you would like to attract more local clients, which so many designers actually do want to do. This is a really simple way to do it. So weekly tasks, making sure that you are uploading some new photos. On the weekly. So maybe that's just one a week. Maybe it's two a week. I don't mind. Just make sure that every week you are putting something new onto your Google profile. Google also loves you to post updates. So can you bring a new blog post once a month? Can you, if you have a special offer, if you do something great on Instagram, if you have an upcoming event or tips related to design, Go and upload them into your Google profile as well as put them on whatever social media platform you're putting them on. You're already doing it anyway. I am not asking you to make changes. Use the same Canva tile if you want. All I would say is if you're going to put a description underneath, make sure that you're focusing on keywords rather than like storytelling or any of the things that you might put on a social media platform. And then a monthly task for you just to make sure that your Google profile is optimized is to update your business information. Keep your eyes across the hours, the services, contact information, phone numbers, make sure everything is up to date. So just put your eyes across it. You shouldn't have to do much at all except go. Yep. Yep. Yep. That's all good. And then you want to monitor and answer any Q and a. So if you want to add some FAQs, that'd be a monthly task. Maybe do two questions a month until you've got a beautiful library in there. and uploading new blog content. So if you have a new case study, a before and after, all of the things, like the best thing you've done for the month, find Two of the best things you've done on any other platform from the month and add them to your Google Business Profile with SEO optimized keywords attached to it. And then quarterly tasks to keep on top of things is just to check your insights. How many website visits did I get? What's going on? You might not have a website at this stage, in which case the Google Profile is so important because it's going acting as a website. So you can put anything you want on there. I hope that's been a nice little reminder for you guys. If you do have a Google business profile, but you've done nothing with it, that it's actually really great for making sure that your business ranks really highly on Google. And it's a really low impact, low effort. big result kind of change that you can make in your business. A couple of photos weekly, a blog monthly, check all your details, add any questions if need be, look for keywords, and then quarterly check your data. Okay. That's it for me today. I have a big surprise for you on Thursday. My interview on Thursday is with my husband, Aiden. And now we have done this previously. If you go back to episode 22, we had a big conversation about what it's like to support someone through becoming an interior designer and opening a business and all of the things that we did in the beginning of my career. And then on Thursday, I thought I would touch base and check in on what things have been like lately around here. So it's very different six years into business and we've had a lot going on this year, which we will talk more to you about on Thursday, and I hope you join us then. Okay. Bye for now. That wraps up another episode of Designing Success from Study to Studio. Thanks for lending me your ears. Remember, progress over perfection is the key. If you found value in today's episode, go ahead and hit subscribe or share it with a friend. Your feedback means so much to me and it helps me improve, but it also helps this podcast reach more emerging and evolving designers. For your daily dose of design business tips and to get a closer look at what goes on behind the scenes, follow at oleander underscore and underscore finch on Instagram. You'll find tons of resources available at www. oleanderandfinch. com to support you on your journey. Remember, this is your path, your vision, your future, and your business. Now let's get out there and start designing your success.