All these time, you might be taking Google Posts for granted, not knowing its full potential to meet your brand goals. You might have already come across Google Posts, especially if you’ve been trying to optimize your business locally. Google Posts is a feature of Google Business Profile, and not a lot of business owners know how fascinating it can be. A lot of people already think that it can have an impact on local search rankings but is that all there is to it? Or can Google Posts contribute something more for your business?
Google Posts For Boosting Bookings
If your business is focused more on providing services than actual products, you might need to have your clients making appointments with you. Obviously, since you want your business to flourish, you would also want to increase the number of bookings you get for your services. Google already has several products that you can use in making appointment creation a breeze for you and your customers. It might surprise you, but Google Posts can help in making bookings easier for you and your clients. If you use Google Posts for scheduling, you won’t have to go through all the trouble associated with Maps Booking API found in other Google Products more commonly used by business owners to make appointments.
When you use Google Posts to prompt bookings, it is best to use simple colors for your image background. This helps in making your text more visible and eye-catching. Experts who have experimented and tested Google Posts for booking purposes found that images that did not appear busy and includes actionable text work best in increasing the booking rate. In most cases, the click-through rate even doubled for posts with this type of images. What experts advise is using an image with a 750×750 size and a 48-point font for the text. It is important to note that Google Posts mostly crop the images once posted, and it can get uneven. Hence, if you plan to use similar types of images, make sure the text is right at the center of it.
What Happens When You Use Google Posts to Make Appointments
When you use Google Posts, your customers will have to click on the post if they are interested in making an appointment. They will then be redirected to the actual booking page of your website. You can also redirect your GBP users to your booking software if you have one. This is really great if you already have a booking system in place that can automatically sync the appointments to your electronic calendar.
If you plan to use Google Posts for your scheduling, it is also important to remember that Google Posts expire after seven days. Of course, you can simply create a new post weekly. A good way to do this would be by creating various image templates for the images that you plan to use on Google Posts. You can reuse these image templates and even mix them up for variety.
Increase Appointments Through Google Posts
Experts recommend tracking your progress through clicks from listings off Google using UTM parameters. This can then help in tracking the authority page and the services menu of your site. This can also track the appointment URL and Posts URL that you are working on.
Experts who have tried utilizing Google Posts for scheduling appointments for various businesses have seen an initial increase in bookings of at least 8% in less than a week. After a week, the bookings even increased up to an average of 11%. You can also expect that there will be no cannibalization of your other URLs when you add Google Posts. However, there is a possibility that your services page will lose some of the clicks it normally receives, and those clicks can directly go to the appointment URLs.
You can also expect a higher click-through rate for your Make Appointment Links, so you should not ignore this area despite the success you can enjoy from Google Posts. Both are worth pursuing since Google Posts is likely attracting a different kind of user. Since Google Posts include images, we can guess that a lot of people who make bookings through posts tend to interact more with images. Using Posts as your booking method is a good strategy because it converts well and helps your other appointment URLs too.
Other Features of Google Posts You Might Want To Maximize
Google Posts is still fairly new, so despite its numerous features, not a lot of people actually use it to its maximum potential. Google Posts is very friendly for businesses. It allows business owners to include links to each post. These links can be Buy, Learn More, Order Online, Sign Up, Get Offer, and of course, Book. Obviously, for businesses that require appointment setting, the Book feature really comes in handy. However, different business types can also benefit from the other features of Google Posts through this variety of pre-set link options.
It could be interesting to explore the ‘Event’ feature of Google Posts as well. With this, you can create a post that won’t expire in just 7 days but still manages to be time-bound. Being time-bound provides a sense of urgency that can convince customers to act quickly. This feature is very useful for limited-time offers, coupon codes, and sale offers. The Events feature can be a game-changer because you can highlight your deals and offers without paying for the advertisement of your coupons.
There are other benefits that we can squeeze out of Google Posts. One of them is another way to bring traffic to your own site. With all the buttons available for you to use when you post something, you have more options for creativity in leading visitors to your Google Business Profile Page to your site pages. It’s a great way to drive traffic and to increase conversion as well. Generally, Google Posts may be considered young, but it is an incredibly promising tool for businesses and business owners. To top that off, it’s even free.
