Entries by Darren Stevens

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Why Your Google Business Listing is an Essential Marketing Tool

Now more than ever when your online presence is absolutely crucial, your Google Business listing is one of the most powerful (and under rated) marketing tools at your disposal. It’s more than just a simple directory listing—it’s a gateway for potential customers to find, learn about, and engage with your business. Here’s why maintaining an optimised Google Business profile is essential, what you can do to enhance your profile and how it can significantly impact your business’s growth.

Even if you never created a profile, Google or a customer may have already created a basic listing for your business. To take control, search for your business name on Google Search or Maps. If a profile appears, look for a link that says ‘Own this business?’ or ‘Claim this business.’ Click it and follow the verification steps to gain full administrative access. Claiming your profile is the only way to edit information, respond to reviews, and post updates.

Getting Started: How to Create Your Google Business Profile

If you’re starting from scratch, the process is straightforward. First, go to the Google Business Profile Manager and sign in with the Google account you want to associate with your business. Then, follow the on-screen prompts to enter your business name, category, location, and contact information. This initial setup is the foundation of your online presence. The process should be straightforward, but if you get stuck, we can always help.

Verifying Your Business: The Key to Going Live

After you’ve entered your initial business details, Google needs to verify that your business is legitimate and located where you say it is. This is a crucial step to prevent fraud and ensures your profile will be visible to the public. Common verification methods include receiving a postcard with a code at your business address, a phone call or text, or a live video verification (hopefully not the video route as this can sometimes be tricky, particularly in rural locations where there are no road signs). The available options depend on your business type and location, so be prepared for any of these.

1. Be Easily Found by Your Target Audience

One of the biggest advantages of having a Google Business listing is its ability to make your business easily discoverable. When someone searches for products or services related to your business on Google, your listing can appear in the search results and on Google Maps. This visibility is particularly important for local businesses, as most consumers tend to search for businesses “near me” when they’re ready to make a purchase. By appearing in these local searches, your business is put directly in front of potential customers who are in your area and actively seeking what you offer.

2. Boosting Local SEO

Google Business listings are integral to local search engine optimization (SEO). Google uses the information in your profile—such as your business name, location, and category—to determine when and where your business should appear in local search results. The more complete and accurate your profile, the better your chances of ranking higher in these searches. This is especially important for small businesses that rely on local customers.

3. Stand Out from the Competition

In a crowded marketplace, standing out is key. Your Google Business listing allows you to differentiate your business from competitors. A complete and well-maintained profile presents a professional image and builds trust with potential customers. It provides essential information at a glance, including your business hours, contact details, and customer reviews.

4. Showcasing Your Unique Offerings

Google Business listings also let you highlight what makes your business unique. Through the description, attributes, updates, and categories, you can showcase your specialities and the value you bring to your customers. This is where you can make a compelling case for why someone should choose your business over others.

5. Drive Traffic to Your Website

Your Google Business listing is a powerful tool for driving traffic to your website. The listing includes a direct link to your site, making it easy for potential customers to learn more about your business and what you offer (and the insights will tell you how many people are clicking on this link). The more information you provide in your Google Business profile, the more likely users are to click through to your website.

6. Trackable Insights

Google provides analytics for your business listing, showing how many people viewed your profile, visited your website, requested directions, or called your business. These insights allow you to understand how well your listing is performing and where there may be opportunities for improvement. These shouldn’t be confused with the analytics for your website itself.

7. Make It Easy for Customers to Contact You

Your Google Business listing makes it easy for customers to contact you. With just one click, they can call your business, visit your website, or get directions to your location. This ease of access is crucial, especially in the age of mobile devices, where users expect quick and easy ways to connect with businesses.

8. Increase Engagement with Messaging

Google Business also offers a messaging feature that allows customers to send you messages directly from your listing. This feature is a great way to engage with potential customers in real-time, answer their questions, and guide them toward making a purchase.

9. The Importance of a Complete Profile

A complete profile is a trusted profile. Google’s algorithm favours listings that are rich with information because they provide a better user experience. Go beyond the basics and fill out every relevant section. Key areas to focus on include:

Detailed Service/Product Descriptions: List your offerings with prices and descriptions to attract qualified customers.

Primary and Secondary Categories: Help Google understand exactly what you do. We use the Chrome extension GMB Everywhere to assess this for our clients.

Service Area: Define your geographical reach if you’re a service-based business.

Attributes: Select options like ‘women-led,’ ‘wheelchair accessible,’ or ‘offers delivery’ to answer customer questions before they’re even asked.

10. Enhance Your Profile with Photos

A picture is worth a thousand words (yes we were thinking of you Thousand Word Media when we wrote this – our photographers of choice), and in local search, it can be worth a new customer. High-quality photos and videos give potential customers a genuine look at your business. Listings with rich media receive more clicks and engagement. Go beyond static images by uploading short videos (up to 30 seconds) like a virtual tour or a product demonstration. For an advanced SEO boost, consider geotagging your photos with your business’s location data before uploading them. Regularly add new content to keep your profile fresh and signal to Google that your business is active.

11. Types of Photos to Add

Exterior and Interior Shots: Show customers what your business looks like from the outside and inside. This helps them feel more comfortable when visiting.

Product Photos: Highlight your best-selling or unique products.

Team Photos: Introduce the people behind your business to build a personal connection.

Customer Photos: Share images of happy customers (with their permission) to build social proof.

12. Utilise Google Posts to Keep Your Audience Engaged

Google Posts is a feature that allows you to share updates, promotions, events, and news directly on your Google Business listing. These posts appear prominently on your profile, providing a great way to communicate with potential customers and keep them informed about what’s happening at your business. They also rather helpfully push further down the page, suggestions of businesses that might be competitors. If you only do one thing today – with your profile – check that you have updates visible on your profile as should you not have posted one for a while it may have expired.

13. How to Use Google Posts Effectively

Share Promotions and Offers: Highlight special deals and discounts to attract more customers.

Announce Events: Promote upcoming events to increase attendance. Remember that post updates will automatically expire after the event, freeing up space for another update.

Highlight New Products or Services: Keep your audience informed about new offerings.

Share Blog Posts or Articles: Drive traffic to your website by sharing your latest blog posts or articles.

Your Google Business listing is an essential marketing tool that can significantly impact your business’s visibility, customer engagement, and growth. By ensuring your profile is complete, adding high-quality photos, and utilising features like Google Posts, you can stand out from the competition, attract more customers, and drive traffic to your website. Don’t overlook this powerful tool—optimise your Google Business listing today and watch your business thrive.

14. Build Trust with Customer Reviews

Customer reviews are one of the most powerful features of your profile, acting as social proof for potential new customers. Actively encourage satisfied customers to leave feedback by sharing a direct review link. It’s crucial to respond to all reviews – both positive and negative. Thanking happy customers shows you appreciate their business, while addressing negative feedback professionally demonstrates that you care about customer service and are committed to resolving issues. This engagement can turn a poor experience into a positive one and show prospective customers that you are trustworthy.

The holy grail with reviews is to get your score and the number of reviews to the point where you appear in the top three map results for your area and category (this is usually easier for b2b businesses than b2c, as they tend to have fewer reviews).

If you want to work out what influence say 5 more Five Star reviews would have on your overall score, it is quite easy. Let’s imagine you have a score of 4.2 stars based upon 10 reviews. This is a total of 42 stars. Add 5 more Five Star reviews and you have a total of 67 based upon 15 – taking your score to between 4.4 and 4.5.

When you ask for reviews ask the person to say who they are, who they work for, what service / product they used, how they felt about the service or product, what stood out as particularly good and would they recommend you. This leads to much more content rich reviews and influences the words that Google uses in its AI summary of your business.

15. Leverage the Questions & Answers Feature

Your Google Business Profile includes a Q&A section where anyone can ask a question about your business—and anyone can answer. It’s vital to monitor this section to ensure information is accurate and to answer questions promptly. You can also use this feature proactively by seeding it with your own frequently asked questions and providing clear, helpful answers. This saves your customers time and allows you to control the narrative around common queries.

15. Make sure that you have more than one person with admin rights to the Profile

If you only have one person as an admin to your page and that person leaves the business you could lose access to your page. Having more than one admin spreads the workload and also means that potential customers interacting are likely to get a fast response.

We hope that you find these tips useful. If it all sounds just too much hassle (and in most cases it shouldn’t be), then why not get us to manage your profile for you. For more tips on how to leverage digital marketing tools like Google Business, feel free to contact Prestbury Marketing & Consulting. We’re here to help!

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How to make the best use of Linkedin in 2025

With over one billion users worldwide and continuous updates to its core features, LinkedIn remains the go-to platform for professionals looking to connect, learn, and grow their businesses. Long gone are the days when it was just a platform to find your next job. But with ever-evolving algorithm updates and shifts in user behaviour, making the best use of LinkedIn in 2025 means more than simply posting an update.

Whether you are a business, brand, or individual, knowing how the platform works – and how to work with it – is key to standing out. This guide breaks down how LinkedIn ranks content in 2025, what it rewards, and how you can tailor your strategy to grow visibility, connections, and authority.

How the LinkedIn algorithm works in 2025

LinkedIn’s algorithm has one mission: deliver the most relevant professional content to each user’s feed. To make that happen, it follows a three-step process:

  1. Quality Filtering

    When a post is published, LinkedIn immediately classifies it as spam, low quality, or high quality. Posts that violate platform rules – clickbait, misleading engagement bait, overuse of emojis, or chain-letter-style prompts – are flagged early and deprioritised.

  2. Engagement Testing

    Once your post passes the quality filter, it enters the engagement testing phase. Here, LinkedIn tests the post on a small sample of your audience to measure how well it performs. If it receives strong engagement (likes, comments, shares) within the first hour, the post will be shown to a broader range of users, expanding beyond your first-degree connections.

  3. Network and Relevance Ranking

    Finally, LinkedIn assesses who should see the post next based on relevance. This includes prior engagement, shared interests, job titles, industries, and the strength of the user’s connection to the author.

What is the Algorithm Looking For?

To successfully navigate the LinkedIn algorithm in 2025, you need to create content that meets its priorities. This means substance, not sensationalism.

LinkedIn now favours posts that spark meaningful discussions and rewards those that spark genuine conversations – not just ones flooded with emojis or single-word replies. While it is still important to encourage interaction, the depth of those interactions matters more.

Posts that demonstrate subject matter expertise will be particularly favoured. Sharing your professional insights, tips, and advice will add value that your audience engages with. Posts that captivate attention for longer periods, even without immediate engagement, will be prioritised by the algorithm.

How to Craft a Quality LinkedIn Post

Creating content that performs well on LinkedIn is not just about what you write – it is also about how you write it and how you optimise it for visibility. These tips will help you create posts that not only engage your pre-existing connections but also draw traction to your page.

● Targeted Posts: Tailor your posts to the audience you want to reach. Speak directly to industry peers, clients, or niche communities rather than trying to appeal to everyone.

● Keyword Optimisation: Like any content strategy, search engine optimisation (SEO) is key on LinkedIn. Conduct keyword research to identify the terms your target audience is searching for and include them strategically in your posts. But beware of not keyword-stuffing, as this can diminish your content’s credibility.

● Original Content: Repurposing is useful, but original posts—especially those rooted in your expertise—build credibility and outperform reshared links. Share insights, case studies, and tops that show the depth of your knowledge and experience.

● Planning Posts: Consistency is key. Use a content calendar to plan your posts ahead of time, ensuring that you are publishing regularly and at strategic times when typically posts have performed best for you.

● Mobile Optimisation: Structure your posts with line breaks and concise paragraphs to improve legibility on mobile.

Resonating with your Audience

The best content on LinkedIn in 2025 goes beyond just being informative. It captures your audience’s attention, engaging them visually, emotionally, and intellectually.

What types of LinkedIn posts perform best?

Some of the top-performing posts include thought leadership pieces, carousels, and short-form videos. Video content, in particular, continues to dominate on LinkedIn. Uploading videos directly to the platform, whether they’re quick tutorials, interviews, or company updates can increase engagement and visibility. Using these visual storytelling devices to address common pain points in your industry or share unique insights will allow your posts to capture users’ attention for long and spark some meaningful discussions.

Another tried-and-tested strategy to diversify the posts on your page is to make use of LinkedIn-specific features, such as LinkedIn Newsletters, LinkedIn Live, and LinkedIn Events. These tools help you engage your audience more effectively and increase the visibility of your content. Looking further afield, keep your content relevant by utilising Google News Alerts to share topical third-party news stories.

Building a LinkedIn Network

LinkedIn is a networking platform at its core – using it that way will let you expand your network and build your brand. The first step to building any network is to make sure you are connected with your customers, current and future so that they can remain updated with any big announcements you are making. Here are some more ways to construct a foundational network and grow your platform:

● Engage your Employees: Make use of the pre-existing network you have already created and encourage employees to be active on LinkedIn. By having your team like, share, and comment on your posts, you increase your visibility and credibility.

● Connect with Intent: Instead of sending generic connection requests, personalise your messages. Mentioning shared interests, mutual connections, or specific reasons why you want to connect will make your outreach more genuine.

● Comment Strategically: Engaging with others’ content, especially with thoughtful, well-crafted comments—helps you build visibility and establish your voice.

● Join Groups: LinkedIn groups that relate to your industry are a great medium for connection building. They provide an opportunity to share expertise, interact with like-minded professionals, and broaden your reach.

Your LinkedIn company page is often the first touchpoint for potential clients, partners, or employees – so it needs to be strong. Start by ensuring the page is fully optimised: include a clear, keyword-rich “About” section, relevant industry tags, and up-to-date contact details. A polished logo and banner add credibility, while consistent, engaging content – shared in a mix of formats – keeps your audience informed and coming back for more.

Measuring Success: Analytics and Iteration

Posting is just the beginning – refining your strategy through data is where the real growth happens.

Tracking key metrics including likes, comments, shares profile views, and follower growth will allow you to evaluate the performance of your content. This is not only helpful to see what is working, but also to inspire your future posts.
Using tools like Google Analytics will show you how much traffic comes from LinkedIn and whether it leads to high-quality engagement with your site. Once you know which posts are doing the work for you, replicate these formats and topics to maintain the momentum.

Whether your goals are lead generation, personal branding, or community building – tracking your progress and adapting accordingly is key to refining your content strategy.

Remember to ring the bell and ask people to ring yours

There was a time when if you were connected with a person or followed a company you would see everything they posted. This is no longer the case – to see everything that a connection posts or see everything that a company you follow posts, you need to visit their profile and click on the bell. A pop up menu will then appear with all as an option that you need to click. What was a single bell now becomes two and you will see all their content in your timeline. This also means that you need to ask your connections and company followers to do the same.

Winning on LinkedIn in 2025 isn’t about chasing trends – it’s about aligning your content with the algorithm’s deeper priorities: relevance, expertise, and authentic engagement. When your strategy focuses on value, consistency, and connection, LinkedIn becomes more than just a professional network – it becomes a growth engine for your brand.

And if you are looking for a little extra help with your LinkedIn strategy, then why not get us to manage your profile for you. For more tips on how to build a social media presence and branding, contact Prestbury Marketing & Consulting.

This post has been written by Darren Stevens, Managing Director of Prestbury Marketing
Darren has over 30 years Marketing and PR experience.
His specialisms include Marketing Strategy, Marketing Implementation, Public Relations, Internal Communications, Digital Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation/Generative Engine Optimisation.
You can view his Linked profile here.

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Clean Air Cheltenham seeking a volunteer to be their Publicity Co-ordinator

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Marketing in uncertain times

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How do you know your website is working?

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