Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is sure to become the central element of any self-respecting local strategy. And at The Ramp we're already seeing it with the power of Local Campaigns.
As I was interested in the subject, I listened to @CarolineMignaux 's very good podcast and discovered Amin.
Brillantissime, the guy perfectly masters this environment that so few know. He has lots of tips and techniques to boost your local visibility in the SERPs via Google Maps and co 🗺
So if you're interested in the subject, I invite you to join us, you'll learn a lot of hacks 🔥 that nobody knows yet... Shhh...
And if you don't have time, you can always contact Amin and his agency directly www.localyse.fr
And to find all our replays, go to www.theramp.co/localmania
Romain Achard
Well hello! I'm very happy to see you again for this new year! Oops I'm a day late but it's not a big deal. That's it. And today, I'm very lucky because I have Amin Ochi who founded the Localyse agency and who is going to tell us all about local marketing, local visibility, how to hack Google Maps, Google My Business... a lot of things. I'm sure that at the end of this podcast, you will come out less stupid on the subject. You'll be able to get straight to work implementing all these ideas and precautions to gain traffic.
So, Amin, good morning!
Amin Ochi
Hello Romain, hello everyone! I am very happy to be here.
Romain Achard
We're very happy to have you too. So I'm glad to hear that, because when we first met, I was at Christmas getting ready for Christmas Eve. And then I started listening to your podcast and I thought, "Wow, this is a real topic. This is really good." There's a lot of ideas to put together and that's it. I thought, "You should definitely come and I'll invite you.
For those who don't know me, I'm Romain Achard, co-founder of The Ramp, a multi-local advertising platform for networked retailers. We make it possible to simply manage campaigns point of sale by point of sale, catchment area by catchment area. Today with Amin, it's just the right time, we're going to talk about local and catchment areas. This is interesting.
We're going to give ourselves about 30 minutes to go round the various questions and then we'll start straight away, we'll get down to business. So perhaps you could introduce yourself, say who you are, where you come from... There, I'll leave the floor to you.
Amin Ochi
Thanks Romain! So Amin, 30 years old, founder of Localyse which has been in existence since mid-2019. Localyse was born from my first digital agency that I created in 2017, which was called Everest Media and which evolved in 2018 to become Everest Immo, in which we offered coaching for all real estate consultants. So the real estate independents of the real estate transaction to be able to eliminate this scourge that is the real estate prospecting, since it is a horror, the pointing, the phoning on the good corner. And so we said to ourselves "Ok, we're going to position ourselves on this, we're going to accompany the real estate advisers to avoid this and to reverse this commercial posture that they had at the time and which is very demanding. So we accompanied them on this.
We created the first Everest Immo, with the aim of eliminating prospecting and exploiting as many digital channels as possible to attract leads. This is where we had the first big surprise and the first big success story which also marked the beginning of Localyse. We accompanied an independent who did not have a physical agency and whom we coached on different channels and the big surprise was the results he got on Google Maps, because in a few months, he was referenced in the first position on Maps, from which he had relocated all the players and big players in his sector who had physical agencies, some of which were very well known and we'll talk about this later, but I'll give you the figures he got in terms of acquisition, it was quite crazy. That's what led to the birth of Localyse. We said to ourselves, "Doing everything is doing nothing". Local is the future, it was the future for us and it still is today, and it's even the present. So we're going to focus everything on local and on Google Maps, in particular.
Romain Achard
Okay, so that was before. Since then you've set up this agency, Localyse, and you work for what type of clients? There's industry, I guess it's not just real estate?
Amin Ochi
No, we started with real estate, but it's very varied. We work with very small businesses, with a few SMEs, with independents, and also with traders. It can be anything from a car parts shop to independent financial advisors. It's extremely varied, we've worked with coworking spaces, real estate agencies, beauty centres, there are really no limits. As long as you have a local address and an audience that is nearby, GG maps is relevant. Today Localyse for clients is a conversion every 30 seconds.
Romain Achard
Okay, I think it's great because we know from experience, you weren't talking about big networks, it's true that when you work with small traders, they are basically the most demanding clients and they really want a very quick return on investment. For me, it's really someone who has made a name for himself in this area, so he's obviously better equipped to work with networks that are a little more robust and which may have other problems but are less down to earth. In any case, it's important.
So maybe you can share with us some small success stories. You spoke to us about real estate, perhaps there are other things? It's always interesting to have an idea of the figures and the potential, because it's quite enormous.
Amin Ochi
Yes, that's right. As you say, it's good to have sales figures because if you start SEO, you often see the increase in the number of visits, etc., but you don't talk about conversions afterwards. That's what's important, how much will we sell behind? What is the number of searches? And one search is not worth another, a qualified search is not worth a basic search. You have to differentiate between the two.
In terms of success stories, I can talk about the first one which was the basis of Localyse and of which we are very proud. This is the property consultant who became a top-ranking referral in his sector in just a few months. So today, he is attracting calls from prospects every month. I don't have the exact figures, but in any case he holds one of Localyse's records as an independent. He generated an inbound call via Google Maps that will generate 25 thousand euros in commission. An inbound call, without any leads or anything, generated 25 thousand euros in commission, so we're pretty proud of that stat, which was really cool for him.
Romain Achard
He must be happy.
Amin Ochi
Ah well, absolutely! Without prospecting, it's a dream.
In terms of other stats, I have a service provider. I won't have the exact details, but we referenced a top one over three months, in the middle of the capital, on a hyper-competitive query. This resulted in a threefold increase in client actions, knowing that this is an ultra-known structure, which even advertises on TV and which already has a brand image. But the fact that we're in the top one on Maps, we've done three times on customer actions. It's a great win for us.
I'd finish with this one, another service provider, partisan type, with whom we've lodged in top one over three months. We often have three months, in fact, this gap in position and stats.
R.A.
It's quite fast compared to SEO which usually takes longer.
A.O.
That's it, basically. You get the first results as early as four weeks on hyper-competitive queries, and it's from three months onwards that you really see a visibility gap. So it evolves according to the markets and niches, etc. But generally, it's three months. But in general, it's three months.
And for this one, we became the top one in three months and literally, we took the monopoly on his niche in his whole city and it's one of the biggest French cities. This allowed him to make a large amount of turnover and even to buy out a historic franchise in his town. He grabbed the market and seized it firmly.
R.A.
So you're whetting our appetite, we want to know everything. I imagine that there are methods, or at least, there is a process. Without really going into the secrets of the gods, how do you, when you arrive, come to see yourself? What are the first actions you take on this issue?
A.O.
Yes, in fact, I am a logical person. When someone comes to see me for a Maps referencing process, what I always do is a geo-competitive analysis. In other words, I always look at what the top three in the sector are doing, the top three competitors. I say to myself that if they are in this place on Maps, there must be a reason. They certainly have things that are good, so I analyse all the parameters of their Google My Business listing. Just a reminder, to be visible on Google Maps, you need to have a Google My Business listing.
So I look at everything. I look at the fixed content that's on the form and that doesn't move, and I look at the evolving content, which is the content creation type, visual or textual. I look at the frequency of publication to see how often they are feeding their page. Just, in fact, do better. You have to do better.
R.A.
Is it important to publish posts on your Google My Business?
A.O.
Yes, in fact, I always give this example: if you were Google, in front of you, you have two cards that are well set up. One of them publishes frequently and the other one does not. Which one are you going to put forward? Logically, the one that publishes content. This shows that it is active and ready to receive customers, quite simply. So that's the geo-competitive analysis.
Then in front of them, I do an SEO analysis. Basically, it's setting up a strategy for attacking a geo-market. It's finding the keywords that we're going to target. I don't know, for example, you work with a DIY shop, it's "DIY shop", "tool supply", etc. So you find the main keyword. So you find the main keyword and the secondary keywords, which will then allow you to deploy an editorial strategy on your profile to quote these keywords.
Basically, if I were to keep it simple, you kind of create the word cloud that fits your client's market so that they show up on all the surrounding keywords in their niche. That's the competitive analysis and the SEO analysis.
Then you move on to the optimization phase on your listing. Basically, you optimise the base, the solid foundations, and then you go into the acceleration phase and create content and feed the Google Maps machine.
R.A.
Okay. Just one thing. Just one thing, but I'm going back to what you said earlier. You were talking about a freelancer, does that mean that he still had a physical address?
A.O.
Yes, that's right. So you don't have to have a reception point or a sales point to be present on Google Maps.
R.A.
I agree.
A.O.
You can be independent, or even freelance, and do 100% digital and be present on Maps. You have the choice, in fact, to hide your postal address. You also have a parameter called "service areas" which allows you to manage your catchment area to attract prospects in your geographical sector. This is very effective.
R.A.
Right, okay. That's smart for all the independent networks. I guess in real estate, I had experience in brokerage, it's kind of the same issues.
A.O.
Yes, exactly.
R.A.
Really, very smart. So, just on Local Mania, we are quite followed by people who are interested in the problems of retail networks, this type of thing. When we were talking, we talked a lot about geo-conflict. This is a subject that every brand manager or franchise director can deal with, to avoid cannibalising between different sales outlets. I know that, for example, when we accompany people in the car sector, the catchment areas are ultra-contractual. That is to say, we really cannot overflow to the right or to the left because if we start to eat into the communication territory of the other, it creates a mess.
So, this notion of geo-conflict, can you give us some details? Because when you told us about it, it was clear, so it's not necessarily clear.
A.O.
Yes, to put it simply, geo-conflict is a crossing of catchment areas between two structures in the same network. In fact, it's a bit like what we do with clients. We're going to go and grab the catchment areas of the competition. Except that, on the same network, it generates conflicts. So that leads to one thing, which is that your sales outlets will cannibalise each other. In other words, there will be sales outlets which are the oldest and most well-known, which will gain visibility and which will literally shred the visibility of the most recent sales outlets.
This is a big problem because when you have a network and you open a lot of sales outlets, whether it's a car dealership or even a restaurant, your new sales outlet starts with a big bullet in its foot. It already has to make itself visible, but if the older outlets don't give it time to breathe, it's potentially just as dangerous. So avoid at all costs.
In our case, we had a case, to give an example, about four months ago. A manager of a Parisian pastry shop had two addresses in Paris, three kilometres apart. It's not much, three kilometres apart. In fact, he had an eye for it. He noticed that when he searched for the name of his business, only one shop came up on Maps, so he thought there was a problem. It was the oldest one that came up. So in terms of statics, his oldest outlet was generating seven times more visibility than the new one.
R.A.
I agree.
A.O.
So I'll let you imagine the difference in performance that the different outlets had in terms of physical sales. You should also know that in terms of customer actions, they are very often proportional to the visibility of the poster.
If you have seven times less visibility, you have seven times less customer action. So seven times less turnover, in theory. So you have to avoid it. This is a big problem that franchises can have in large towns, because we can give the example of Paul who has bakeries all over the place. I would be curious to see, but I am almost 100% sure that I would find elements of conflict in a network like Paul. So we have to stop the haemorrhaging as soon as possible and avoid this because it can be a problem for new sales outlets.
R.A.
Okay, very clear. So, I know we kind of sold it that way, and it's true that when I listened to your podcast, you went into great detail, you gave us a lot of information with Caroline Mignaux on the subject. Do you have any important hacks? I hadn't thought about geo-tagging images and things like that. I hadn't thought about it. So, I find it rather interesting to know your point of view on this and if you have a top 5 of little hacks to do.
A.O.
Yes, we'll start with the geo-tag. We'll tease it out. What is the geo-tag, in fact? I like to make an analogy with the criminal police. Google does the same thing. That is to say that when you have a serial killer who commits murders, the police, to know where they were committed, they look at photos. Why do they do that? Because in fact the photos, when they were taken on a smartphone with GPS activated, the smartphone records the GPS coordinates in the photos.
R.A.
Yes.
A.O.
So that means that basically Google, when you put a photo with a smartphone, as we have also seen in some patents, in fact it will read the data, what is called the EXIF data. So the geolocation data of the photo that tells you where it was taken. So you can, in fact, manage this by yourself. You have tools, you type "geo-tag photo" on Google and you have tools that do that, that allow you to geo-tag your photos with the GPS coordinates of your business. Coordinates that you find on Google Maps.
This means that you can take various photos, from image banks or not, and you can geotag them to show Google that you've done it right in your business. In fact, it acts a bit like a backlink, in the jargon. Basically, a photo will support your positioning and your geographical location by publishing it.
R.A.
So the guy who makes montages with Photoshop, all that and who doesn't tag, he's in trouble?
A.O.
Me, in 30 seconds with a photo from an image bank, I have more impact by geotagging my photo than he does with Photoshop. I might as well keep it simple.
R.A.
Very, very nice and obviously I hadn't thought of it
A.O.
You can go further. You can go as far as geotagging the photos you put in your posts on your social networks. In terms of photos, for a second hack, we observed that there was a big visibility gap from 100/150 photos on the GMB page. What does this mean? It means that you have to send a photo to Google My Business. That's all. Put as many as possible and that will allow us to have more visibility in terms of the listing and in terms of the visibility of the photos themselves.
R.A.
Okay, so for example, I don't know, you're a bakery, you photograph all your products, you add them.
A.O.
Exactly, the photo of the front, the interior of the shop, etc.
That's it for the photos. One thing that's very important on Google My Business is the categories. The categories of the poster And that, as I said, I always look at the competition, what they have done. I think that if they are top three, there is a reason. So there's a Chrome extension called GMB everywhere. It's a Chrome extension that allows you, in fact, when you go to a listing in Google Maps, to show the main category that we see without the extension, but also the secondary categories. Because in fact, on Google My Business, you can select the main and secondary categories. So it allows you to spy on the competition, which they have done. And in fact, what I do is simply a mix of the top three competitors and a summary of the categories that are relevant to my client and I integrate them into their listing.
R.A.
Okay. So without the extension, you don't actually see the secondary categories?
A.O.
There you go, you just see the main category, there is only one.
R.A.
I agree. Always smart to look at what the competition is doing. So, just one small thing. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them. In fact, on Livestorm you can ask your questions. So don't hesitate, I see that there are people from certain networks, like Flying Tiger which I love. So feel free to ask your questions and we'll answer them later.
So let's go on, let's make some more?
A.O.
Yes, go ahead, I have two more.
R.A.
Go ahead and throw it away!
A.O.
In terms of reviews, there is a myth that says that reviews make the positioning: it's true, but it's false. Do a test, do a keyword search, I don't know for example "hairdresser Lyon", you will see that there are people who are better referenced with fewer reviews and with lower scores than others. So that's not the whole story. Nevertheless, Google, in fact, when you go to see the reviews of a listing, it gives you a summary of the keywords most used by your customers. What does that mean? It means that Google analyses the semantics that are used by customers, everything that is a keyword. This means that if there are keywords that stand out a lot in your reviews and even in the responses, this also plays into the responses, and well, it will necessarily feed your positioning on keywords. Make sure that you highlight specific keywords related to your business in your customer reviews and in your responses to reviews.
The last little hack. I call this one the "Chuck Norris hack", basically, it's to be able to generate notices, because it's not necessarily easy. You don't necessarily dare, you don't know how to do it. Two pieces of advice: timing and means. As far as timing is concerned, always favour the closest to the transaction, that's when you'll get the best returns. Very often, since you have the person in front of you, it is easier to leave a positive opinion than a negative one. That's in terms of timing.
In terms of means, what I like to do is to use the QR code. Because actually, if you want, it's very time consuming to log on to Google, take your smartphone, type in the name of the box, find the Maps poster, find the link to post a review and write a review, it's too long. So the idea is, in fact, that you have a quick review link that's available on Google My Business. You take that link, you go to a QR code generator site, UNITAG does it, and basically it generates a unique tag for you, which you print out and put on a display next to the till or often on your invoices if you're a service provider. So there you go, just by pulling out the smartphone with the camera, boom, you go straight to the notice window to write directly. So many steps are avoided.
R.A.
Yes, it's clever. It's true that sometimes you hesitate to find the thing. But it's true that the QR code and the sign are very clever. I'd like to throw it back to Cédric Gautier, who was previously in our webinar and with whom we talked about small businesses. It's typically this type of clever thing. It's simple and relevant. No, but it's true that it's a real subject, the management of opinions, responses... it's true that people are demanding. It's true that I think it's clever that your answers include these stories of keywords, your cloud of keywords in relation to positioning.
A.O.
In fact, when you look at Romain, our job is to use the digital lever by adapting it to the physical. So we are the bridge, in fact, between digital and physical. So we have to find a way to make it as fluid as possible, and that means local advertising, QR codes and Maps to get consumers to sign up on the internet. But retailers have not yet taken this digital step to get closer to their consumers online.
R.A.
It's true that in addition, well, I think that the subject is becoming more and more important, because we see the importance of GMB today for a structure. Whether it's us working on campaigns such as Local Campagne, we have to have this framework in which we can manage in-store visit campaigns, this kind of thing. It's true that sometimes it's a bit easy to manage just for the address, but we don't think about the potential. When we look at the visibility offered today, in fact, for local search, which is a real subject at Google, roughly speaking, I think that for the figures, it is around 45% of searches today which include geolocation elements, proximity in such and such a town or next door in five minutes... It is incredible. But it's true that the visibility of Google Maps is incredible. Today, it is actually ahead of SEO. Today people think very SEO and not necessarily Google Maps optimization.
A.O.
That's exactly it, in fact. It's that you when you go to be correctly referenced on Maps, I had made a calculation with stats that were given by Google, is that basically, in 98% of the cases, the Maps insert appears above the certified results. Before you get the Google results, you get the Maps results first. This means that if you reference yourself in the top three, because it's the first three on Maps that are visible in this insert, you're going to outrank all the guys who have put tens and hundreds of thousands of euros into SEO. That's what we did in Paris with a major service provider.
R.A.
Yes. So we have a small question here from Gaétan. Is there a link between the purchase of keywords and the visibility of the listing?
A.O.
No. You'd think that because we pay Google for advertising, they'd put us on Maps, but that's not the case.
R.A.
Right, okay. It's a product they're going to release. Because we, for example, Local Campagne type products, we have a certain form of highlighting on certain subjects. But it's profile by profile, we don't have the control. It's not because we say we refer to such and such a subject that we will appear. It's a bit at Google's discretion.
Okay, do you have any other questions on the subject? So, what are the KPIs and dashboards to value and monitor these clever solutions via GMB?
A.O.
You've already got the GMB interface itself, which gives you a lot of stats that are super interesting as well. They've redesigned the statistics section, so it's pretty well done. The only thing is that you have a history of one month and three months at the most. You have to follow up every three months at the most. They give you data on all customer actions, conversion actions. So basically, route requests, site visits and incoming calls. That you can monitor, you can even know which days of the week generate the most customer action. One thing I really like is that they show you the keywords that you're appearing for to drive leads to your listing. It's really relevant, because you can see the progress you're making when you're starting an SEO process and you can see your progress.
There's another thing, though, which is a tool we have at Localyse, which allows you to materialise a geo-positioning on a precise sector. The subtlety of Google Maps is to geolocate. This means that if I type in "local advertising agency 500 metres from The Ramp", I won't get the same results as if I were five kilometres away. So we have a tool that allows us to monitor, from 50 metres to 50 kilometres, to know in which position you are located for a specific keyword. It is extremely precise. And in fact, we follow this file every month to see the progress of the geo-positioning. You can see, in addition there are colours, you start from red, you start to become orange, then green and it widens as you go along. It's satisfying to watch.
R.A.
So as time goes on, the catchment area is indeed growing.
A.O.
Exactly, I'd say you're prospecting further and further afield.
R.A.
Okay, very smart. So, I don't know if you have any other questions, don't hesitate. I always end with a little question that I like, which today is the little Nostradamus question! How do you see local marketing in ten years' time?
So I feel that it has evolved enormously in a very short time and that we are only at the beginning of it. How do you see things evolving?
A.O.
I see the future of local marketing in everything that is click-and-collect app. I think that in the future, even sooner than that, not in ten years. We'll even have a bakery, a butcher's shop on the corner that will have its own app, that will distribute to its own regular customers and that will be able to pre-order their groceries etc., in advance so that they can come and pick them up on the day.
For me, we're going to come to a model, in fact, like this, which will combine the physical side with human interaction, because we're coming back to that. Human beings love that, especially with what's happened in the last few months, we're coming back to that. We need this, it's vital for us. But the consumer also needs to go fast and we know that in successful shops, it takes a long time sometimes. So the fact of going faster in the transaction, of being able to pay on the application and to go directly to the shop to pick up the order simply, a bit like what McDonald's did in fact, in the principle of the drive you see, but keeping this human interaction. I think that in terms of click-and-collect, we're going to make a big effort on this. In fact, we are in the process of setting up a partnership with an e-commerce player to be able to offer this solution in the short term.
R.A.
Right, okay. This overlaps with what our friend Edouard Morhange from Epicery was doing and who we interviewed for the first time. He's our first speaker in Local Mania.
Well, that's very interesting. I hope you've had a good time, I hope you've learned a lot. I hope you're going to get on with it as soon as you leave this webinar. Feel free to call Amin and talk to him. We can contact you on LinkedIn I guess?
A.O.
LinkedIn or on the localyse.fr website. But on LinkedIn, I am personally active
R.A.
Okay. No, because in fact, on these issues, it's good to have experts who accompany you. I think it's clearly a real subject and if it's coupled with SEO, which takes a bit more time I think and is a bit less adapted to the shop, then it's really an ultra hot and very relevant subject!
So listen, thanks to Amin! Thank you all for being here, for asking your questions and we'll send you the replay as usual. We're going to post it on the Youtube channel and we're going to podcast it on all your favourite platforms: Apple Podcast, Spotify and Google Podcast. So we'll be doing that very soon.
In any case, thank you, there were so many of you, we were very pleased. We'll be back very soon, we have a lot of ideas. We are working on new formats by inviting franchise managers to come and tell us their stories. So, all this is to give you ideas and success stories from the local area, like Amin. We believe in it. It's time to take back control of digital marketing and advertising investment.
Well, we'll see you soon, goodbye. Bye Amin!
A.O.
Bye-bye, bye-bye.
R.A.
Ciao.
