Putting Promotion in GBP Cover Photo

[wcssderek]

With the economy the way it is, our industry (self storage) has hit quite a slowdown. In looking for ways to increase business, I wonder what effect changing the GBP cover photo to a promotional graphic would have? Our business is hyper local, so most of our traffic comes from maps search. We typically put a photo of our facility in the cover photo spot as do our competitors. But in an effort to stand out, what are your thoughts about making this promotional (i.e. a graphic stating "50% OFF SALE!" or other promotion. Would Google have a problem with this? Would it work? Thoughts?

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

Hey @wcssderek, you very likely could run into an issue as it seems Google over the last 12 to 18 months has really been cracking down on the use of text on photos/images that violate their policy. This Google doc spells it out pretty clearly: Photos and videos criteria - Maps User Contributed Content Policy Help

This document applies to any GBP images/photos too, not just maps. In the past Google's automated filter was not very good at catching photos that violated their policy. However, I believe their filter has gotten much better and many users on this forum have seen their photos rejected with superimposed text on GBP posts and product images that didn't follow guidelines. Sometimes though the filter can be over aggressive and other times very lax. Lastly, even if the auto filter doesn't catch it, one of your competitors could report that image as a violation. If it is your profile image, I'm not really sure what the repercussion would be if Google were to take action. Not sure if I would want to take the risk of having something negatively impacting your GBP.

Just curious, do you do any paid advertising on other platforms such as Facebook?

 

[wcssderek]

That's good feedback, Jeff. I hadn't seen this. As far as paid advertising on other platforms, yes, we advertise on Facebook/Instagram, Yelp, Google, and Bing. Haven't jumped into TikTok yet.

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

@wcssderek, with your FB advertising how are you tracking your conversions? If you are offering specials and are not using FB's lead generation you should give it a try. We've found with our clients that have specials, classes, or need a way to gather more info, having the form integrated into the FB advertisement has significantly contributed to more leads versus asking them to call or click on a link to fill out a form on a website. Also, if not already doing this, many people don't realize that you can really tweak your FB audience much more selectively by specifying one or more addresses in your audience selection. This typically allows you to specify a radius as small as one mile, rather than FB's automatic radius of sometimes 25 miles which isn't probably ideal for self-storage if you have multiple locations. You may already be doing all of this, but if not, I hope it is helpful.