Local SEO Search Optimization and Managing Customer Returns

The Small business show episode 343 for Wednesday, September 1, 2021. Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow co. The show where small businessing is what we do. It's a verb, folks. That's how it works. SaneBox is our sponsor@sanebox.com smallbusiness where you get 14 days free and a $25 credit. This is perhaps my favorite service that I use, so I can't wait to tell you about it. But, but really, just go sign up for it. You'll see. I'll help you. It's fine. I'll tell you about it in a little bit. For now. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in California, Lafayette, California, of course. I'm Shannon Jean. How goes it Somewhere out in California?

Yeah, it's somewhere. It's fine. I've got some travel coming up and things are a little nuts.

Yeah, me too.

Yeah.

Yes. Good. We're always busy. And we're not. No, no, we're not busy.

We're productive.

We're productive.

That's right.

There's a big, big difference there. Important.

Hey, we are doing a survey. We need your answers and, oh, yeah, you need our $50 is how it's going to work. So we, we're doing a. Here at Backbeat Media, we're doing a survey with all of our podcast partners, including us here at the Small Business show, of course. And a lot of what we want to find out is just who you are, but we also have some questions about the show itself. So please do take a minute, and it should really only take a minute. We, I, we went through this a lot here at Backbeat to really keep this survey tight and easy. But, but we'll, if you, if you care to give us your email address at the end, we'll put you in a drawing for a $50am Amazon gift card. And we're giving one of those away for every hundred respondents of the survey, so. Oh, that's cool. Well, because, you know, you don't want to dilute it and then have you just give away one. No, this information is really truly valuable to us. So we're giving away one for every. Every hundred. Which I thought was a good way to do it, I don't know, make things up. Yeah.

Do you say that on the survey, that it says for every 100.

Yeah, perfect. Yeah, that's cool. So there's a link in the show notes here at businessshow.co. but you know what? I'll link it to businessshow co surve so that, so that if you, if you're like riding your bike now or something and you remember, it'll just bring you there. But you can always go to business show co. It'll be there in the show notes.

So, yeah, let us know what you think because, you know, if you, if you don't like to show, we, we certainly would like to change that.

And if you'd like to know.

Yeah, yeah, we'd like to know. And, and you know, we can adapt and talk about things that you'd like to talk about.

And there is a place if you care to type, you know, some feedback in. You can do that too. So.

Yeah, perfect. That's cool.

Cool. What are we talking about today, man?

Yeah, so we're going to do a couple things. We want to talk about local search engine optimization tips to get your small business higher up in the search rankings when people are searching locally, like, I don't know, donut shops around me or paint supplies around me. Right. Interesting. Or near me.

Near me. All those near me searches.

Yeah, near me searches are very, very. And then after we talk about that for a bit, we're going to talk about customer returns, one of my absolutely favorite topics. And I'm not saying that in jest because I think that it can be such a big problem, but if you put a spin on it, it can be a tremendous opportunity to connect with your customers and a big plus for your marketing. So I'm excited to talk about that.

Nice. All right, well, let's get started. Let's talk about the near me man.

Yeah, yeah, near me. So we did an entire episode around this topic a while back. We will link it in the show notes. And one of the most important things that you need to do for your small business is you want to make sure that your listings on these search engines and on maps becoming even more important or as important are, are correct and they're claimed by you. If, if you don't go up and claim the information. Well, who knows if it's right? And what I say claim is you want to go up and say, I'm the owner of this business.

Yep.

They'll do some verification. We're going to, we'll put some links in the show notes on how to go about getting connected and claiming your Google search results, your Apple Maps listings and your Bing Places listings, which are used by just thousands and thousands of companies. And you want to go up there, do the verification process and then make sure the information that's up there is correct and it's presented in a way that you want it to be presented. One of the things I really like to do is for local search, I don't like to use 800 numbers. I think that kind of turns people off and I think it's very important for local search results to have your local phone number, your local area code because you're connecting with people and they see it and they go, oh, that's in my town. You know, that's where I'm at.

Is still like I. That will go away at some point. Right. Maybe so many people are keeping like I wonder if one more generation is all it takes for the area code to not matter anymore.

Because mobile and it doesn't matter.

Like you get a number as a kid now. Right. Like my kids have cell phone numbers. I would not be surprised if they keep those numbers longer than I am alive.

Could be.

Right. I mean, like they have no reason to change it and every reason not to. Right. Like people know how to when you search. So. Yeah.

And now, but. And you're right. I think that eventually it'll just be a non issue.

But I think right now I think it still matters.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good. You know, you just want to do that.

And I even, you know, I even feel that way when I travel. Obviously, you know, I'm going to Oregon because I got to drop my son off at school. So when I see a 503 number as the listing for the restaurant, I know they're local to where I am visiting. Right. If I see 800, then I wonder, oh, wait a minute, like what am I getting myself into? Is this some chain? Like, I don't know, you know, so.

Yeah, I can see that there's all kinds of. One of the things that I've noticed with these near me searches is there's all kinds of service providers trying to get in between you and the business that you want to connect with.

Right.

Whether it's home Advisor, Angie's List, you know, on and on and on with companies trying to be like, oh, come use our search engine of local businesses and we'll connect you with them and they're charging a fee or taking a referral, however it works.

Sure.

So I like using, you know, that, that local area code to your point. And of course that can be spoofed, but for the most part I think it's a great way to show and.

You know, feel if for whatever reason you don't have a number that's local to. To the area where you are. Go get a Google voice number. You know, you might be able to do that for free. And then. And then it's just a voicemail, but it can also ring your cell phone. And it doesn't matter how that works.

So we talked about, we talked last week, we talked about different phone systems and you know, virtual. This kind of thing, you can tie it all into there and, you know, works out. That's really great. If you have multiple locations, you want to be sure that you're doing this for each of those locations. So when people are using maps to find things, you know that it's coming up the. Your location that's closest to them. It's really important.

I have heard of issues getting things. Get it. Claiming your listing on Apple Maps. Have you. Have. You probably haven't even tried to do that because you haven't had a local business since Apple Maps has mattered. Is that right? Okay.

Yeah. Since it really grew. Right. I have not. So I have had problems, you know, claiming on Google and on Bing as well.

Okay.

Their verification. You need to be sure that a human can answer whatever phone number you put down to verify that's the one they want in your listing. And someone needs to answer that and enter a code and this kind of thing. So you need to be able to get access to that. And that may mean temporarily changing the way your phone tree works if you're using a virtual phone system that you just. Okay, just make the number ring at my phone right now and then do the verification. Get it all set up and then go back and. Okay, now point it out to my sales department or yeah, re. Re.

Engage your phone tree. Yeah, exactly. And I've heard that Google is now for many businesses doing a postcard that they send to you.

Oh, yeah.

Yes. So to confirm that you actually have this address and you're actually there and all that good stuff.

So, yeah, it's great. And you know, most of these local near me results also tie into your reviews on these platforms. So, you know, you want to encourage and respond to those reviews, even if it's just a hey, thank you. We really appreciated you coming, you know, using our service. Or you want to clarify something if someone poached something you didn't understand. So getting up there and getting involved is important because there could be all this data about your small business up on these platforms that you're not in control of. You're not setting this or telling the story that you want to tell, and that's I think the most important thing that we could leave you with today.

I agree. I agree. Yeah, no, and that's a good, that's good advice no matter what your business is, but especially here. Yeah, yeah. Yep. Good stuff.

So go take a look. Do kind of an audit, if you will. Go search up there. Used to drive me crazy, but I forced myself to do it. Use a different browser, use another computer, come in from another location because results are different based on where you're at, what IP address. Try it with a VPN and see what happens. Because you're, your location's not going to be shown as much because more and more people are going to use VPNs or the relay at Apple's. Going to the Apple Relay thing. That'll be interesting to see what comes up then too.

They say that you will get an IP that Apple says that you will get an IP that is local. Ish to you. When I tested it here I've got, I'm in New Hampshire, I'm about, let's say 40 minutes from the Massachusetts border. I got an IP from a place that's about 20 minutes south of the Massachusetts border. So not, you know, not New Hampshire, not super hyper local. But I think that's sort of Apple's point. Yeah, yeah. We don't want to be as hyper local because otherwise then, you know, what's the point? So yeah, that's right.

It's cool. Yeah, so it's great. So you know, if you have tips about coming up in near me or things that you've tried with your small business feedback at BusinessShow Co and put the term near me searches in the subject line so we will know to look for it.

Now if you don't look for it that way. Yeah, I, I want to talk about our sponsor, SaneBox here. Look, is email a soul crushing distraction for you? My guess is you're answering yes. And therefore my answer to you is that you need sanebox because what sanebox is is it has the it is they have, but it also is this AI engine, artificial intelligence engine that monitors your inbox and automatically the email from like all the knucklehead stuff and the newsletters you didn't remember signing up for and all those things are moved to your sanelater or your Sane News folder and what's left in your inbox are the things to you, the important things. And using email folders you can, if you know how email folders work, you know how sanebox works. Like it's that simple. All you're doing is moving folders around. You can create new folders for it to filter things into. And the way you tell it what you want to filter into that folder is by putting the thing in that folder. So if you get some newsletter and you're like, oh, I didn't, I don't want that in my inbox. You move it to your Sane News folder and boom, it's there. You get a receipt from Amazon. You want that in your Sane later folder, Move it to the Sane later folder. The next receipt that comes from Amazon is there. If you wind up and the corollary is true too, right? If you see something in your same later folder, you're like, wait, wait, wait, that's an email from Shannon. I want that in my inbox. You put it in your inbox. The next time I get an email from Shannon, it goes to my inbox. It's super trainable and the trainings are for you. These aren't just like generic trainings that you're sort of hoping will stick. They definitely stick immediately because they are for you. It's an amazing service. I've been using it for years and I cannot imagine managing my email without it. Truly, like, it is life changing. There are other features too that I haven't even gotten into. Like the ability to have it remind me. When I send an email out to somebody that I know I'm going to want to follow up on. If they don't answer to me, I put in the BCC field, Shannon, I put one W for one week@sanebox.com then I send out the email. If they haven't responded in a week, sanebox tells me, hey, you should, you should, you know, you wanted to be reminded this. Now if I definitely want to be reminded in a week, I can do one w keep whether or not you replied to me, I'm still going to get a reminder to follow up with you in a week. And then of course, I can choose what to do with that information. But it really is a fantastic service. And like I said at the beginning of the episode, if you go to sanebox.com small business, you get a 14 day trial for free. No credit card required. And because you're a small business show listener, you get a $25 credit towards your SaneBox subscription. Go check it out today and it's SaneBox S A N E box.com/small business. And our thanks to SaneBox for sponsoring this episode. All right, Shannon, I know the crazy useful. It's super crazy. I Know, I talked for. I talked a mile an hour, a mile a minute, and, And, And a lot about that, but I love it. I couldn't. I truly. It. It honestly is worth probably at least one employee. It's like having an assistant managing my email for me. Yeah. Yeah.

That's really cool.

Yeah.

I love those sponsors that we use and. Couldn't dream without it.

Couldn't dream of being without it. No, it's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Returns. Yeah, man.

So if you sell products, you know you're going to have returns, right? It's just. It's just part of the, the, you know, whole concept, and people change their minds or stuff goes wrong or things don't work. And the, the message I really want to, you know, get across in this brief time we have left together today is you really want to embrace them and, and turn them into a competitive advantage. And I'm going to tell you how. You know, for years, I was really frustrated. I mean, we were in the technology business, so as you can imagine, there's all kinds of reasons people return things and get. People get frustrated with things like, this didn't work. You said it would do this or I thought it would do this, and it didn't. And, you know, returns can be expensive. They can be very frustrating for your customer support staff, frustrating for you, frustrating for your cash flow when you have to, you know, issue lots of returns. So the thing I learned over the years is the easier you make returns, the less headaches you're going to have, and the less headaches your customers are going to have. And let's jump into that first, eliminating those headaches. And what I would suggest you do is create a system that has some standards that are as automated as possible. Ideally, what you really want is a customer just to handle the whole thing so you don't have to be involved in it. Because if your return policy is simple, very easy to understand, and somebody should be able to come in, request and set up a return all on their own and without having to touch a phone, without having to, you know, they should be able to do it from a piece of paper in the box or from your website, from an email. And if that happens, I think that's just a huge success. If something rolls in and you just issue a refund and you're done, I think that's. You save time and money for everybody.

Yeah, well, and by making it clear to the customer that this is an easy process, you might get less returns, too, right? You will.

You will get less Returns, I guarantee it. You know, you want this policy to be, and that's part of the mindset is people like, well, if I make it really simple and all this kind of stuff, I'm just going to get flooded with returns. But I would arg you that you will actually, you know, you'll have less. I've just seen it over and over.

No, it makes sense because if I feel like I'm on the fence about a product, right. And, and I look and I see, oh, returns are super easy. Like, I know for me with Amazon, returns are super easy. And it's like, okay, well that's a non friction point. So I can give this a couple more weeks before I make the, the final decision as to whether or not I'm going to keep it or not. Right. Like if it's something that, where that is, is a realistic path to take. Whereas if I get it and it's like, oh, it's not working exactly as I want out of the gate and oh crap, look, I got to call somebody and I got to wait on hold. Okay, well now the next opportunity I have to carve out time to do that, I'm just going to, I'm jumping ship. That's it, I'm out. I don't want to be stuck at the end of my return window having to do something that I need to wait three days to have time to do. So yeah, I can see it.

And it changes your behavior, you know? Exactly. We always used to say, like in our return, sake. Okay, well, well, what's the window? Do you want to give them 30 days? Well, then, you know, give them 45 days because you know, if, if they call you a few days after and they're complaining about something, we know we're just going to give them the return anyway.

That's it.

So tell them it's 30. But on the, in our, our return system, program it to accept any return for 45 days. So when the, when a customer comes up, so they're pleasantly surprised, oh, I missed the window. But you know what, we're just going to take it anyway.

Yeah, it's all good.

Yeah. So your return policy, like on your website, in your email, on the invoice you send your customer, you should have that there and it should fit. It should be short, simple, and very easy to understand. If it's complicated, something is wrong. If you're putting a barrier in between your customer and your business, like you said, Dave, a friction point, you're creating more work for your customers, more work for yourself. And you can't lean into it as a marketing program, which I'm going to talk about in a few minutes. Yeah, okay.

Yeah, I got it. Makes sense. Yeah, man.

Yeah. Now I'm talking about just straightforward, simple returns, you know, if, for returns that need customer support, if you know, technical or you made a mistake and a customer's upset, you want to use the two tokens concept that we've talked about, we talk about all the time on the show. Episode 296, which we will link in the show notes. We really took a deep dive into this two tokens concept. And if you can embrace that and if you can teach it to your customer service people and then use it throughout your organization, it's a life changing system to build trust and credibility with your customers and it can change everything.

Yeah.

So go up there and.

Yeah, we'll link to it. I always say every business is the customer service business. And therefore the first thing you need to understand is this two tokens concept of customer service. Because otherwise you're just going to screwing it up left and right.

Yes, you are.

I've always said that I, you know, was in the customer service business since day one and then I learned about the two tokens concept and I thought, wow, I know I've said I was in the customer service business, but I've been missing this really important piece. So we'll, we'll link to that. So you can, you can have that.

Yeah. And I've learned over time since, since I've learned and I think mastered that two tokens concept is actually it goes well beyond customer support. And if you can use it in your life when other situations come up, it can benefit you tremendously. And we can, we can.

Every relationship is customer service, isn't it?

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

Excuse me. Yeah, it's definitely is. So you create this system. One of the things you really need to do to have a simplistic and successful, you know, return system is you need to measure it. Right. You need to be able to check your returns, look at the percentage, what the numbers look like, the reasons for the returns. And then you need to decide what is an acceptable percentage for your business. Right. I don't know what your business is. But you know, if, if you like, for us in the technology business, you know, our returns, we were thrilled when returns were 2 to 2 to 3, 4%, if they got over 5, 6, 7%, we would start looking at it. What's going on?

What changed? Yeah, yeah.

What changed? And it's oftentime it's something you may miss. It could be something as simple as the description of the product on your website or the fact that there's not a tutorial linked in, the email confirmation that you send to the customer, like how to set it up.

Right.

Or you know, I bought store returns for, you know, my whole career and maybe the company that you're buying that particular product from, the quality is just not there and you need to reassess what you're paying them and if you can buy from them in the, you know, at all.

Right.

So, so you want to look at that and see if there's a systemic problem with the product or how you are selling it or how you're supporting it to see if you can get those numbers down. So if you, if you have all kinds of different product categories, you may have to, you know, measure those returns by category. So you can say, you know, gee, we're just, okay, we're not going to sell green socks because they come back all the time. So we're, you know, you want to change your behavior by measuring those returns.

Yeah. Black socks. Yeah, yeah. Then you can't tell if they're dirty. You're good to go.

There you go. It works for me. So, you know, you spent all this time, you got this back end system in place. Your return system turn process is very easy. Your policy is two or three sentences. Once you've got that system in place, now you want to start promoting it, you want to talk about it all the time, make it part of your story, talk about your unique return policy, your 30 day or 45 day, no hassle, whatever it is, make it part of your marketing program. Compare and contrast it with other companies and talk about what a nightmare it is, how many hoops you have to jump through. You know, company a, make a phone call, wait on hold, get a number, go get a label, do I mean boom, boom, boom. Give this, you know, eight or ten step process and then show your process.

Yeah.

Get your product. There's a, there's a label in the box. Send it back.

Right.

And you know, show how simple and how easy it is. It helps to build trust, it helps to convert people that are on the fence of buying from you.

Right. Yeah. One, one thing I will throw out there that is a friction point of mine. I understand when something is a large item that I probably need to be on the hook for paying shipping to return it if I want to return it. Right. Especially if there was free shipping to get it to me initially. Right. So okay, fine. Some companies eat it on both sides, and that's even better. But I do get it. What I hate is when I have to go and print that label and buy my postage myself. What I much rather have is you give me a label, I put it on the thing, I send it back, and then you refund me whatever you're going to, whatever I paid minus the postage it took to get it back to you.

That's a great way to do it.

That to me is because it's that friction point. Right. Like, I'm realistic about this. I understand. You know, this costs $38 to ship one way. Okay, like, fine, whatever. I'm going to pay one of those ways. Great. No problem. Don't make me negotiate with UPS to do that. No, no, no, no.

Because you're my job. And also your rates as a business owner for UPS or FedEx are dramatically lower than what an end user is going to. And you're going to get a phone call or an email that says, hey, I went to ship this thing back and it was 80 bucks and you only charged me 20 to get it to me. You know that kind of. Because retail shipping rates are ridiculous.

Ridiculous. Yeah, I understand why. Like, I get that. But. But share that with me. And like you said, make that part of your story even. Hey, look, because of the cost of shipping these, these heavier items, anything over, you know, certain size or certain weight, we have to charge you. But we will extend our rates to you for that return shipping so you can avoid paying retail shipping rates. Like, all of a sudden. Now this is a benefit. Yes, this is a benefit. Like, all you got to do is talk about it. Yeah.

And even if it doesn't work out for this purchase, you want that customer to come back. You've already done a bunch of work to get them.

Yeah.

You've paid and all this kind of stuff. So if they buy one thing and they're like, ah, I didn't like that, that return process can turn them into a lifetime customer or someone that will never buy from you again.

Yeah, you get to pick. It's like it's two tokens applied here.

Yes. So pay a little extra attention. Talk about it. We used to joke around with the customers. We'd have labels inside the boxes for just, you know, we eventually just paid for free shipping.

Sure.

Just, we just decided we had people first. We did this. Hey, if you're just changing your mind, it's going to cost you. If there's a problem, you know, we'll pay for it, but we just wound up arguing over if there was a problem or not. And they often brought something up. So we just said the heck with it. And our stuff was relatively lightweight, but we were promoted in the box. We were like, hey, go ahead, use the return label. We'll still love you. Let's do more business next time.

Yeah, right.

And come up with ways to promote it and phrases and to put a smile on people's face. Everything will be better about your business if you can make that happen.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

A couple more comments I have about, you know, more and more companies using fulfillment centers, which I love to manage their inventory, ship their orders, handle returns. I think that's awesome. However, be sure that your return process, your, your return philosophy on how you want to handle your returns matches the capabilities of the fulfillment center. Don't let the fulfillment center dictate how returns are going to work for your business. If, if they can't do what you want, go find somebody else, you know, or work with them to do it. It's, it's important to tell, hey, these are my customers. Not, not yours. They're not the fulfillment center's customers. So no, you want to be sure. Sure. Now maybe they've got it set up and it works great and you're happy with that and that's, that's wonderful.

That's great.

But if it needs to be tweaked, if you want to, to have a better experience for your customers a certain way, you have to bring it up. Because I've, I've had that happen before and it could be problematic.

Well, yeah, you, you are, I mean, it's just like hiring a person, an employee at your business that is going to be customer facing. You need to make sure, you need to train them how you deal with customers. Because how could they know? I mean.

Yeah, that's right.

They don't know. And so just because you're contracting with a fulfillment house doesn't change that. If they're going to be interfacing with your customers in any way, including just the boxes that they're sending, you need to train them and work with them to make sure that they are interfacing with your customers your way, not their way, because you are their customer. That's it.

That's right.

That's it.

I love, you know, when you buy a product and you open that box, I've talked about this for years, this out of box experience, right. The box is kind of, kind of your salesperson. Even though the customer has made the leap and they've ordered that product from you. You know, they're still like, well, how's, what's it going to look like? Is it going to be what they said? Does it match the pictures? Does it do what they say? You know, there should be a piece of paper right in there and when they open it up, that tells them, you know, thank you, yada, yada, yada. But it also says, hey, if this doesn't work out, we're still here for you. We want to be, you know, your support system. Just do this and it'll all work out. That's really a great opportunity to connect with your customer on an emotional level and provide that safety net that we all want that, oh, I'm not left out in the cold for this thing. And tons of companies do it and here's your chance to stand above them. So I'll just leave you with, I think easy returns. They help to build your credibility. They buy you awesome reviews like we talked about earlier on the near me searches. Because even if the product didn't work out, if you handled it right, somebody is apt to go up and write a good review about the experience. Maybe the product didn't work for them. They create trust between you and your prospective customers. If they know that if it doesn't work, don't worry, we're still here, they're going to buy more and that will help offset the costs of these returns. So you just want them to know that if things don't work out, just send it back. It's no big deal.

No big deal.

We still love you and we're going to be here next time you're ready to buy something else. And that's really powerful. If you can use that message as part of your story, you know you'll win every time.

I love it. I love it, man. This is great stuff.

So tell us how you handle returns and what I've got wrong and you know, what I got right. We'd love to hear from you. Feedbackusinessshow co Put the word returns in the subject line so we'll know what show you're talking about. And we'd love to hear from you.

Thanks so much for listening, folks. Make sure to check out sanebox, of course, sanebox.com small business for that 14 day trial and that $25 credit just for being a small business show listener. Keep living that charmed life and we'll see you next week. Thanks for listening.