Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is a free tool that allows users to promote a Business Profile and business website on Google Search and Maps. With an account, users can see and connect with customers, post updates to the Business Profile, and see how customers are interacting with a business on Google.
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Podium
Score 7.1 out of 10
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Podium, formerly Repdrive, is a ratings and review management platform from the company of the same name in Provo, Utah.
$249
per month
Signpost
Score 1.7 out of 10
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Signpost is an automated marketing solution that helps local businesses to get more customers, reviews, and referrals. The software builds customer profiles by capturing email, call and credit card transactions. Signpost's automated marketing engine then uses this data to drive new customer conversion and loyalty, reviews and referrals from existing customers.
The great advantage of Google My Business is that any business that complies with the privacy and authentication policy requirements can access all the functionality tools that help promote the business website through the referral system, exchange of opinions with other users and search engine optimization (SEO).
Podium is well suited for several types of businesses. If you are an entrepreneur or small business owner, Podium would be a great way for you to ask that customers leave you a review online sharing their awesome experience. For medium to large businesses, Podium review invites can be automated through the company's customer management system, allowing the use of Podium to be simple and not timely, even with a large customer base. It may not be appropriate for a large company to manually send out individual review invites
I would NEVER recommend Signposts! Signpost's fee is very expensive for a small company like ours, so I had to cancel the service - or at least TRY to. I contacted them the day after they billed our card for another $2,000, and I was told that we were automatically on the hook for another year, with no exceptions and no recourse. Very greedy and desperate; this doesn't seem like the way to keep happy clients.
Google My Business offers us an alert system in our work email, where we receive notifications when there is a new comment or review of our company. This alert system helps us to be aware of each of the opinions written by each client who has received our services, in order to be able to respond to each of them in record time.
Google My Business gives me a complete visualization of the clicks, location of the searches of my company and the visits that my business file has received. This visualization allows me to control access and measure the traffic that my business listing is generating in conjunction with the Google Maps service.
The update of my company file is done in real time and immediately. I don't have to wait several minutes for my company file to update. When I make a change to my company information, the changes are shown immediately to all clients who consult that business card.
Maintains conversations indefinitely, so we are able to go back to confirm details from conversations.
Provides the ability for our company to have a 'team' messaging platform where we can communicate with one another via single person to a single person, groups where we can add/subtract members of the group... this is invaluable to our organization.
Until today(!), we could 'share' or forward a message to one another; oddly, that feature disappeared just today, so I'm hoping it's a glitch!
The best feature that I like the most and have been using for some time is their marketing tool. Signpost makes marketing an easy task. It has enhanced our productivity.
As I did things manually in the past but now Signpost has made this very much easier for me to just trust their marketing tool to do marketing according to the algorithm.
It helps me to have more organic views on the platform and more positive reviews on the newsletter.
The automated system asks for reviews from the customer which makes it even more helpful in changing and advancing new things.
It also changes our approach to the work and with the automated extremely functional setup it increases our positive reviews which is good for the organization.
Account manager communications: I had been asking my Podium account manager for integration with our CRM tool for over 8 months before my account manager fell silent. After another 6 months, I proactively reached out only to find out that the integration had been in Beta for months and 8 other companies had already integrated. It was frustrating that my account manager did not remember a key request and make the Beta available to me the minute that it was open.
Again, Podium has been so wonderful in the year and a half we have been using it, we are able to integrate it with our CRM and use alot of the available features. The most helpful has been getting TONS of reviews on MULTIPLE sites through Podium!
I gave the Google Business Profile's overall usability an 8 because it doesn't update the directions automatically when you put in an address if a business moves. You also have to go in and manually move the pin. This isn't always easy to do. It would be much easier if the pin updated automatically.
While giving our clients the ability to leave a review was there, we had much worse results and got fewer reviews through the Podium portal than we did by sending our clients simple email requests, or simply having our service staff ask for a review while still on the clients' job sites.
Whether it is technical or customer support, Google My Business excels and suffers in the exact same ways that all other branches of Google do. While you'll eventually figure out the issue, the sheer magnitude of the company comes with expected hurdles, wait times, and support you'd come to expect from other large companies.
I have to send an email to get information. They have a chat system but I end up having to go through my rep for account questions. It was a little frustrating to not have a direct phone number to call with questions. I would like to see a helpline added.
Google is the most powerful SERP and has much more robust features than Bing Places. Users also statistically trust Google more than Bing and it provides much more authority in the search space. The good news is that Bing Places can be synched with Google My Business which is great and convenient for business owners. It's just another alternative for businesses and I highly recommend that all businesses have an account with both Bing Places and Google My Business for optimal performance.
We use Digital Air Strike at our two GM dealerships because it is one of a small list of reputation management companies authorized by GM as part of their SFE program. Digital Air Strike surveys our customers and invites them to write a review about our dealership. It is not as effective or flexible as Podium so we have been using Podium at those dealerships alongside Digital Air Strike. We also recently started a trial use of ReplyPro which is a service that monitors review sites and writes customized responses to positive reviews and suggested responses to negative reviews. I'd like to see Podium add this as part of their service so we can consolidate 3rd party vendors and manage every aspect of online reputation management from one place.
Its easy to scale to different departments as needed. We initially began using it to solve one problem and as new features became available it was easy to scale this and include other departments who could benefit from its tools
I don't have any numerical metrics but, we have seen an influx in customers purchasing our hot hands ever since we listed them on Google Business Profile about a year and a month ago. We have since sold over 400 units since listing them as an available item.
I am glad there are card readers now, sales team members too often try to just send a request instead of taking payment onsite.
It's made capturing messaging leads much easier.
It's worth the cost but if it did a few more things it would be worth a lot more to us. Document signatures, surveying after jobs, even geotagging of photos/reviews for SEO
The support team is very professional. I had problems while using Signpost in the past and I contacted their support on that matter.
They responded very professionally, listen[ed] to each and every problem related to the work, and doing hindrance to the flow of work with the full-fledged solution to the problem.
This makes me more confident in using the platform more in depth.
