How would you handle this tricky situation?

[Les Zeppelin]

Hi,
I need some advice!

This is quite complicated so I'll be as simple as I can.

My business is split in half into two core services. One side sells mobility aids (wheelchairs, mobility scooters etc), the other sells hearing aids.

For one of our branches, we have sold the mobility aid side of the business to a competitor. We still retain a room in the building for our hearing aid dispenser.

The competitor have asked for control over our listing, which I am happy to do.

Now, my initial solution was to transfer ownership to them. Then I would create a brand new listing which finally would be under our 'proper' trading name). I would then change all of our citations to better represent this new listing.

The competitor would be free to build their own citations.

However, thinking about it, this might cause huge problems. Firstly, we share the exact same address and phone number.

Even with no citations at all, Google might not like this, even though we would have different business names and different business categories.

However, if there are citations out there on Yelp for example, which look like this:



yelpurl.com/page1

Business name 1
Fake street 1
Fake street 2
Fake Town
0123456789
urltocompeitorsite.com
Business category: Mobility aids



yelpurl.com/page2

Business name 2
Fake street 1
Fake street 2
Fake Town
0123456789
urltooursite.com
Business category: Hearing Aids

Would this make Googles head spin?
The reason I want to go down that route is that at least we still have a chance of ranking in this area for hearing related terms with our new listing. I really don't want to lose those searches.

We have a deal whereby any potential hearing customers will be passed over to us by the new owners.

This means that the other option is to let them take ownership of the google listing, change the linked url to their site, make the new company as popular as possible by changing all the citations I built to reflect the new companies details.

What would the recommended course of action here? And that's for the both of our companies really.

We don't want to appear for mobility aid related searches and they won't really want to come up for hearing related searches.

It's worse if we appear for mobility aid searches ahead of them though. It's not so bad if they come up for hearing terms.

Any advice appreciated (and apologise if I haven't explained things very well!)
Thanks!

 

[Eric Rohrback]

There are a couple parts i'm not following 100%. Why would the competitor take the same address? Don't they have their own office? Is this just space within your office/location? If they are essentially buying out the space within, then I could see the scenario take on a container store situation.

The other part is why would they keep the same phone number? Why wouldn't you make them use a different phone number, since the business isn't connected anymore?

Let me know about those two questions. Maybe there's more details in the situation that could clear that up a little more.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Sharing the phone number is a really bad plan. If it's a different business they need their own phone number.

 

[Les Zeppelin]

There are a couple parts i'm not following 100%. Why would the competitor take the same address? Don't they have their own office? Is this just space within your office/location? If they are essentially buying out the space within, then I could see the scenario take on a container store situation.

The other part is why would they keep the same phone number? Why wouldn't you make them use a different phone number, since the business isn't connected anymore?

Let me know about those two questions. Maybe there's more details in the situation that could clear that up a little more.

Sorry I wasn't clear.

The shop is predominately a mobility aid shop: i.e. it sells products rather than services. This is the main bulk of the shop.

The hearing aid room is a small office in the back.

They have taken over the business lock stock and barrel, so our staff have been transferred to them, the address is obviously the same and they also have that phone number. This is because existing customers have ongoing servicing on these products so the phone number they will have in their handbooks needs to go to the shop.

Basically all I want to do from now on in is to rank for hearing related terms, both organically and in the map pack.

What's happened now is that we have a room inside the shop which we rent from them so that we can still have some footprint in this area. They are happy to let me verify a new google business page in the same address.

@Joy

I think what I will have to do is to create a new phone number which re-routes to the existing phone number as our hearing aid audiologist will generally be out and about most of the time so I need the mobility staff to take messages for him.

If the phone number, business name and business categories are all different but we share the address, that should be ok right?

 

[JoyHawkins]

Yeah that should be okay. I would also make sure all your public signage is clear that there are 2 different businesses there. List both names on your outdoor sign.

 

[Priya Chandra]

Just out of curiousity if the audiologist is going to be out and about most of the time, what business hours are you going to put in? It's almost sounding like a SAB scenario to me rather than a shopfront type scenario.

 

[James Watt]

I agree with Priya. Can someone looking for an audiologist arrive at any time during stated business hours, or are they supposed to call and make an appointment first? If so you're an SAB.

 

[Les Zeppelin]

Sorry, just seen these replies.

I was thinking about it being an SAB, but customers can walk in to the shop in normal business hours and book in a test with any of the staff on the ground.

No one sees an audiologist without a prior appointment so this exact same arrangement was in place before this change.

I've managed to create a new dedicated local phone line and have a new listing verified and have adjusted the content on my shop page to reflect our new focus & business details.

Now I just need to update citations (yayyy)

Thanks for your help!