Service-based businesses like dental practices, law offices, or salons are finding more and more success using Google MyBusiness to connect with potential clients. In fact, if you have a location-based business of any kind, Google MyBusiness is already affecting your online presence — and your competition’s, too.
Would-be customers looking for a local service, for instance, are usually going to do one thing first: Use Google to look up information on who offers that service nearby. So when your business pops up, you want it to be as easy as possible to contact you for an appointment. That’s where adding an appointment booking link to your business’s Google presence becomes important.
Maintaining your Google MyBusiness page is a necessary part of marketing and promoting your business online, and we have plenty more information on ways to do that, like in this blog post on how to use Google Posts to update your MyBusiness page and attract clients.
Recently, Google has revamped the way businesses can customize links on their Google MyBusiness profiles. It’s now a very short and easy process to add links for appointments and other actions you might want a customer to take. So, many local businesses are taking advantage of the opportunity to make their appointment process easier for people to book online.
Why Put Your Appointment Booking On Google?
Because that’s where the clients are. When someone finds your business online, and they decide they’re interested in your services, the next thing they want to do is contact you and set up an appointment. Adding a handy link right there on the same page makes it much easier for them to click through and actually book an appointment. And conversely, if you don’t have that easy-to-use link, it’s quite possible they’ll go with a business that does make it easy for them to book straight from Google MyBusiness.
Many service-based businesses already use some form of online booking to make it easier for their patients to contact them for an appointment. That might be a page on your website, or a booking portal on a separate site. Whatever your booking method, a link to that page or portal is what you’ll want to use as an appointment link on Google MyBusiness.
If you don’t have online booking at all, or an existing page on your website that is focused on appointments, come talk to us! One of the things we do when designing client websites is to make sure all our sites seamlessly integrate booking with their other functions. If you don’t have a separate appointment link right now, it’s still a good idea to add in a link with contact information for your office. That will at least let interested customers give you a call for an appointment.
How to Add an Appointment Link
It’s actually super easy to add your appointment link to your Google business page, and the process shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.
- Find your appointment link, the URL you want clients to use to make appointments, and have it ready.
- Sign into your Google MyBusiness profile, here.
- If you have more than one business or location, choose the one you want to update.
- Go to the URLs section, where you should see options to add links.
- Fill in the fields with the right links. There should be a separate field for “Appointment URL”.
- Click “Apply”.
The changes should take effect nearly immediately, and you can go to your MyBusiness page to check that they did.
What's Next
Now that you have your appointment link set up, it’ll keep directing potential clients who Google you to your booking process. While that’s a marketing win in itself, there are other things you can do to make the most out of Google’s business pages and encourage even more online appointments.
Once you’ve connected your Google MyBusiness page to your appointment booking or contact link, it’s worth thinking about how easy that appointment process is for people. Streamlining the appointment process to be entirely available online is what many patients are coming to expect from their service providers. That might mean using an online app or service, or tweaking your website to designate a page or form for making appointments.
Another good step to take is promoting that appointment link. Advertising the fact that you can offer easy, fast online booking attracts would-be customers and reassures them that your business will help them in an efficient, no-hassle fashion.
That’s something you can do right from your Google MyBusiness account, too. Google Posts are an easy way to get the word out about your online booking. If you haven’t used them before, here’s a little primer we wrote on how to do that. We recommend setting up some posts that share your appointment link, with an image or button that links directly to it. Again, it’s all about making it as easy as possible for people to make an appointment.