Overview

There’s nothing better than a fresh Google Post to make your Google Business Profile (GBP) outshine your competitors. What are they, you ask? Google Posts are a feature within GBP that allows businesses to create content directly within the search engine results page (SERPs). Utilizing Google Posts on your property’s GBP can help you claim more SERPs real estate for branded queries. That ultimately means more opportunities for future renters to see fresh content within Google about your property and why it is the perfect place for them to call home! Users can find their Google Posts within their property’s knowledge panel on branded searches. While it may not seem like a big deal to take advantage of this feature within your GBP profile, Google Posts actually contribute significantly to your property’s SEO since they help generate more organic clicks and help increase traffic to other pages on your site.

Currently, Google Business Profile offers four different options for Google Posts; What’s New, Event, Offer, and Product. For this test, we specifically looked at the difference in performance for the What’s New and Offer post options, seeing that they make the most sense to test within the multifamily industry. The What’s New Google Post is only visible within your property’s knowledge panel for 7 days and usually includes content surrounding the property’s location, community amenities, apartment amenities, floor plans, or any other information about the property that would be useful for future residents. The Offer Google Post can stay live for more than 7 days or less, depending on the offer’s start date and end date. Typically, the Offer Google Posts highlight any current specials or deals that a property is offering for a specific time frame. For this test, most of the Offer Google Posts that we published for the test properties were live for approximately one month. An important thing to note is that these two posts differ in appearance within the SERPs. For example, the What’s New Google Post displays a picture, post copy, and CTA (if applicable). The Offer Google Post displays a picture, offer title (i.e. “NEW SPECIAL”), start date, end date, post copy, CTA (if applicable), and a yellow tag next to the offer title making this post more visible within the SERPs for users. You can see the difference between these two posts in the examples below.

Purpose

Over a 12 week period, we measured the performance of the Offer Google Post versus the What’s New (regular) Google Post. The overall purpose behind this test was to best understand what Google Post type, of these two options, performs the best and produces higher engagement with users.

Key Findings

Tested for 12 weeks across 9 different properties. Below we have found the average of the 9 properties from the compiled the data we collected over the 12 week test.

Results

• Offer Google Posts increase average impressions by 79.58%

• Offer Google Posts increase average clicks (back to your site) by 271.88%

• Offer Google Posts increase average CTR by 107.08%

• Users have a stronger interest in Offer Google Posts highlighting current property specials versus regular What’s New Google Posts highlighting the property’s location, amenities, and floor plan options.

Conclusion

After conducting the test over the course of 12 weeks, we found that users have a stronger interest in Offer Google Posts versus the regular What’s New Google Posts. In fact, users are 107% more likely to click on a Google Post if it contains an offer. Plus, since Offer Google Posts are typically up for longer than 7 days, they can potentially see 79.58% more impressions than the normal What’s New Google Posts. We would recommend utilizing offer posts as much as possible. Since these offers are right in the SERPs for users to see when they search for your property, it can help entice them to schedule a tour or complete a form fill for your community. We would highly recommend including any monthly specials your property may have in the Offer Google Posts or send over any future or current specials to your Digible Account Manager so they can publish that offer within your property’s knowledge panel.

Wanna talk more about all the ways your property can better optimize the current Google Business Profile features? Hit us up!