Tips, tools and more to drive agency productivity and growth.

Stay up to speed on everything your customers value.

Today’s innovations and tomorrow’s breakthroughs.

Fun and creative ways to juggle home and office.

Let’s see what we can build together.

Grow

Use Google to Grow Your Business

  • Posted by Matt Collister | 2 min read

Google My Business (GMB) is a free platform, created by Google, to help you manage your agency’s listing for the site’s local search results. Being proactive with your GMB listing can help improve how you appear in these results, and may help you attract more business to your agency. And expert partners, such as DAC, can help.

How is your agency doing in local search?

Try this: Search “insurance agents near me” on Google. Hopefully, your agency is listed somewhere in the results (but if it’s not, please keep reading, because you’ll learn how to get listed).

Now, click on that listing and take a closer look. Is the contact information correct? Is your office location highlighted on the provided local map? Does your listing include a variety of photos of your agency and other information that potential customers might want to see? Does your listing show customer reviews, and is anyone in your agency responding to them?

Why does your local search listing matter?

Managing your agency’s information on Google may have a major impact on how it appears in these search results. And that can have an impact on your business.

According to DAC, a digital marketing consultancy and Progressive partner, agencies that actively manage how they appear in Google search results often see 100-plus calls per month thanks to their efforts. Agencies that don’t, typically get fewer than 10 calls per month related to Google searches.

Manage your agency’s presence in Google search and maps

Now that you know where your agency comes up in a Google search, you can take the first step toward managing your presence in those results. You’ll do that by accessing your GMB account (or creating one if none exists) and claiming ownership of your listing. In that listing you can include essentials like your address, phone number, office hours, photos of your agency and more.

The good news? Whether your account still needs to be created, or the login credentials for your existing account have long since disappeared, it’s relatively easy to gain control of your agency in GMB.

“Normally, agencies have GMB accounts, and their listings have been claimed,” says Kelly Dougherty of DAC. “The issue that we more often see is that the agency principals and other personnel don’t know how to access their account. Maybe it’s because a former employee claimed it years ago and never documented the login credentials, or the agency once had an SEO service claim it. It’s imperative that agents interact with and update their GMB account on a regular basis.”

Here’s a Google My Business worksheet to get started.

If you don’t want to manage your GMB account yourself, you can save yourself time and effort by having an expert handle GMB for you. While GMB is fairly easy to set up and use, it can be time consuming to maintain for optimal results. When small businesses are successful on the platform, it’s typically a result of regular monitoring and maintenance.

Matt is a freelance writer and editor who has done work for multiple industries, including insurance, banking, energy, manufacturing, and print and packaging. Outside of all that writing, Matt is a father of two who enjoys Crossfit and obstacle course racing with his wife.