How Many Leads Do You Get From Google My Business?

[JoyHawkins]

I'm publishing an article in a few weeks talking about how Google My Business stacks up against other lead sources for some of our clients. What are you guys finding? For the industries you work with, how many leads does Google My Business drive compared to other lead sources?

 

[Rasmus Himmelstrup]

We have a case where GMB generates approx. 10-20% of all leads across hundreds of locations in several countries. GMB generates a vast amount of Store visits too. This while the company invest heavily in other channels too.

 

[Theo1313]

For the home service (hvac, plumbing, etc.) company I work for, it can fluctuate from month to month by quite a bit. Though that can be depending on weather and time of year. But looking at the numbers, I would say about 30% of all leads can come from GMB that I can track. Which roughly translates to about 1500 average leads a month.

 

[johnlavapie_SEO]

My company is in the event rental industry. Solely comparing conversions compared to our other online marketing campaigns - it's 25% for the past year. But it could be higher as we are not investing in tracking calls coming from GMB.

It could go down to 20% if we add other traditional (non-online) campaigns.

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

Hi Joy, we've always struggled with accurately measuring what we consider "leads" or "prospects" from GMB, especially our more visible and established clients. We suspect that a good percentage of the Customer Actions on GMB for well established businesses, are repeat customers/clients, which for us, usually doesn't fall into the lead/prospect category. We'd love to share some of our data, but it would help if you could provide your definition of leads/prospects. Are we strictly speaking anybody who visits website, gets directions, makes phone call versus other platforms? Thanks!

 

[JoyHawkins]

We suspect that a good percentage of the Customer Actions on GMB for well established businesses, are repeat customers/clients, which for us, usually doesn't fall into the lead/prospect category

Really solid point. I was speaking specifically about any calls/chats/forms from GMB but I agree that there are probably tons that are existing customers. I know for one of our clients that has a lot of repeat customers (insurance agent), we actually split the "leads" into 2 graphs. One is tracking quote submissions they get (almost always new customers) and the other is tracking calls (tons of which are existing customers) so that way we can at least see how the quote graph looks over time.

 

[Theo1313]

Really solid point. I was speaking specifically about any calls/chats/forms from GMB but I agree that there are probably tons that are existing customers. I know for one of our clients that has a lot of repeat customers (insurance agent), we actually split the "leads" into 2 graphs. One is tracking quote submissions they get (almost always new customers) and the other is tracking calls (tons of which are existing customers) so that way we can at least see how the quote graph looks over time.

Agreed about the solid point. But as you pointed out, that is a whole other topic. At our company, we know a percentage are people who have used us before, seen our trucks, etc., and just did a search for our name -- which produced our GMB listing and then called/filled form as a result.

We still consider that a "lead" because when it comes down to it, that is what it ends up being regardless of any other factor. We do a lot of brand marketing so this is just another indicator of how it is doing. But yeah, we try to separate if it is a new customer or repeat.

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

We still consider that a "lead" because when it comes down to it, that is what it ends up being regardless of any other factor. We do a lot of brand marketing so this is just another indicator of how it is doing. But yeah, we try to separate if it is a new customer or repeat.

I disagree and agree. It depends on the industry what should be considered a lead from GMB. We service a large number of urgent care locations. Depending on what is going on locally (e.g. covid, flu, sports physicals) the phone may ring off the hook. The main reason why they are calling: What time do you close/open? The second most often reason for calling: "Do I need to wear a mask?" Unfortunately because of covid, so many businesses are changing their operating hours and don't post their new hours, resulting in many existing customers calling "just to make sure" they are open and have normal hours. GMB makes it very easy to call for routine questions like this, as it is one-click, versus clicking on the GMB website button which, at a minimum is one more click, possibly more. This applies to other industries too as covid forces many businesses to make day to day operating hour decisions based on illness or employee availability, especially walk-in retail environments.

Again, depending on the industry and the number of calls they are getting, we simply can't expect the client to ask each and every caller "how'd you hear about us", "have you been here before", etc. For other businesses, like movers, attorneys, insurance, the process of logging and on-boarding is somewhat easier to track as Joy pointed out.

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

Really solid point. I was speaking specifically about any calls/chats/forms from GMB but I agree that there are probably tons that are existing customers. I know for one of our clients that has a lot of repeat customers (insurance agent), we actually split the "leads" into 2 graphs. One is tracking quote submissions they get (almost always new customers) and the other is tracking calls (tons of which are existing customers) so that way we can at least see how the quote graph looks over time.

Thanks for the refinement, we'll work on getting some numbers on calls/chats/forms. I'll try to separate those out for you by industry as I believe some industries with high call volume would skew the results if lumped with other industries. I mentioned this in an earlier reply to Theo.

 

[Tim Colling]

Attribution to GMB is often a bit difficult. If you're tracking phone calls, you can at least tell who called and, if you really dig into the data, you can tell whether they are a new or existing customer or just an employee or vendor. But even call tracking is not always precise for attribution.

What if someone asks for driving directions or clicks through to the website, and then later decides to buy when they see the brand in a Facebook post or something?

Murky at best, when it comes to attribution. And yet, GMB is probably the single most important factor in getting new leads for many of the clients in the verticals that we work with.

 

[Theo1313]

I disagree and agree. It depends on the industry what should be considered a lead from GMB. We service a large number of urgent care locations. Depending on what is going on locally (e.g. covid, flu, sports physicals) the phone may ring off the hook. The main reason why they are calling: What time do you close/open? Unfortunately because of covid, so many businesses have different hours and don't post their new hours, resulting in many existing customers calling "just to make sure" they are open and have normal hours. GMB makes it easy to call for routine questions like this and others, as it is one-click, rather than going to a website and at a minimum having to make one more click, possibly more. This applies to many other industries too in this covid era where many businesses are having to make day to day operating hour decisions based on illness or employee availability, especially walk-in retail environments.

Again, depending on the industry and the number of calls they are getting, we simply can't expect the client to ask each and every caller "how'd you hear about us", "have you been here before", etc. For other businesses, like movers, attorneys, insurance, the process of logging and on-boarding is somewhat easier to track as Joy pointed out.

I work for a home service company -- HVAC, Plumbing, Electrical, Generators, and Indoor Air Quality that services half of a fairly large state. We have over 250 trucks with our logo rolling around and we also use billboards. So a lot of our calls/leads come from people just searching our name and getting our GMB after seeing one of our trucks/billboards. So we might view our GMB leads a bit differently than other sectors.

So yeah, this all comes back to the famous line, "it depends."

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

Attribution to GMB is often a bit difficult. If you're tracking phone calls, you can at least tell who called and, if you really dig into the data, you can tell whether they are a new or existing customer or just an employee or vendor. But even call tracking is not always precise for attribution.

What if someone asks for driving directions or clicks through to the website, and then later decides to buy when they see the brand in a Facebook post or something?

Murky at best, when it comes to attribution. And yet, GMB is probably the single most important factor in getting new leads for many of the clients in the verticals that we work with.

Very well said. If GMB were able to associate the "search terms" used by the customer with the specific Customer Action taken, I believe it might help differentiate the reason for the engagement. I really was hoping to see something like this added to the Call History feature.

 

[andrewthorn]

I agree with conversion from GMB growing year over year. We also looked into CTR Organic Listing in Position 1 and GMB listing in 3 Pack.

Organic listing CTR even in positon number one declining rapidly anywhere between ( 7-13% CTR) Maps pack CTR regurally 30-50% on any local intent keywords, Across most verticals.

Really shows how maps is pushing its way up the search results.

Great article Joy.