SOCi Introduces New Google Q&A Integration: Why It Matters for Multi-Location Businesses

Consumers are asking questions about your brand on Google My Business through Google Q&A, but with 100s or even 1000s of locations to manage, it’s nearly impossible to monitor questions across all business locations and ensure prompt, accurate, and brand-consistent answers are being delivered. Now more than ever, Google Q&A is essential for your multi-location business. As we navigate through this pandemic, Google Q&A can be a valuable tool that you can use to respond to consumers about any changes your business has made in response to COVID-19.

Currently, more than 90 percent of the questions asked on Google’s business pages are left unanswered. For multi-location businesses, the number is even higher at 96 percent and of the answers that are posted, only 7 percent of the responses are coming from business owners. Multi-location businesses also receive an average of 2.5 questions per location, making Google Q&A a necessary platform to monitor and respond to these engagements. The Q&A section of a business’s GMB profile can be the secret weapon that increases page and profile awareness. Having a well maintained Google Q&A section can help your business show up higher in more search results, and the information in these questions is often the deciding factor for many customers. In fact, data from our 2nd Annual Localized Marketing Benchmark Report found that the more answered questions a customer can see about your business, the more confidence they’ll have in visiting your location.

With concerns around COVID-19 growing and social distancing becoming increasingly important, it’s a critical time for businesses everywhere. Failing to respond to Google Q&A questions posted to your Google business page can pose a serious risk for your business. Any online user can respond to questions with inaccurate answers, or worse yet, reputation and service-related questions can go unmanaged, resulting in a negative digital image for your business. This could also cause frustrated users to share unfavorable feedback online, express frustrations with their friends and family, or seek alternative solutions with your competitors. 

Don’t let unanswered questions ruin valuable opportunities for your business. SOCi can help. The SOCi platform now integrates with Google My Business, giving multi-location businesses the ability to monitor and respond to questions posted to GMB across all their local pages.

Why use SOCi to manage Google Q&A? 

Through timely notifications, task assignments, and smart rules, SOCi’s integration with Google Q&A empowers your local managers to quickly prioritize, assign, and respond to questions, while enabling corporate oversight across all your locations. That way, you’ll never miss an opportunity to engage with your audience at the most critical points in their customer journey, ever again. 

This  Google Q&A integration, one of the many features in SOCi’s Care solution, makes it possible for businesses to monitor, prioritize, and assign questions and be the first to respond, across their many locations — all from one centralized platform. 

Strengthen Your Localized Marketing Strategy With Google Q&A

Google Q&A provides multi-location businesses with another way to engage with potential customers during the very important consideration phase. Consumers often ask a question right before they purchase a product or service. If your business is able to reply to a consumer when they’re considering a purchase, they will likely value your communication and trust your business. If you engage with your consumers and communicate effectively, this will strengthen your relationship, reassuring your audience that they can rely on your business for fast, accurate responses.

By using SOCi to manage Google Q&A, you can: 

• Be the first to deliver accurate answers to GMB questions about your business
• Manage questions across all your locations from one account
• Ensure that you’ll never miss a Google Q&A question again 
• Capitalize on more opportunities to drive traffic to your business
• Leverage the power of the Google Knowledge Panel to strengthen your online presence and improve search visibility
• Drive more conversions by removing potential roadblocks in the customer journey

Today, SOCi is making it easier than ever for businesses to see and respond to one of the most underutilized outlets for localized marketing – Google Q&A. If Google Q&A isn’t already incorporated into your localized marketing strategy, it’s time to start. For more information about SOCi’s Google Q&A feature and how it can help your business both during this time of crisis, and long term, request a demo today!