How to Add Video to Your Google Business Profile to Attract Customers

Video is attention-grabbing and you should add it to your GBP 

Imagine you’re a tourist in Burlington, Vermont and you’re ready for lunch. You open Google Maps and search for “Restaurants.” There are dozens of results, all with high star ratings and hundreds of reviews. How will you ever pick?

While scrolling through listings, a few are particularly attention-grabbing– mainly for their images. 

Pokeworks takes its Google Business Profile a step further and includes a video in its carousel of images. In the Google Maps App, the videos play automatically, capturing the searcher’s attention. Instead of continuing to scroll past, you stop on the Pokeworks profile to watch the video, then read the reviews, and eventually, you choose to head there for lunch.

Every business wants its online listings to stand out to prospective buyers. While a high Google star rating is definitely an important factor in getting consumers to choose your business, it’s also the case that optimizing your Google Business Profile and including video is a great move to become more engaging. 

In this article, we’ll highlight the value of videos in your Google Business Profile as a tool to draw in prospective customers and give them a sense of what your business is like. With a recent update that displays videos prominently in search results, it’s all the more important to add videos to your GBP today. 

In this article, learn:

Why video helps with engagement and conversion. 

What kinds of videos you should add to your GBP.

How to add videos to your GBP.

How customers can add videos to your GBP.

Our key takeaways.

Video helps with engagement and conversion rates

As we illustrated earlier, adding videos to your GBP can result in improved engagement. Videos are attention-grabbing. Not only that, but using videos in your ads rather than static images or text is proven to increase conversion rates. 

Before choosing to patronize a business, consumers want to know if it passes the “vibe check.” That is, they want to get a sense of the atmosphere and environment to determine whether it’s worth going to. Videos are generally better than images or text descriptions at giving someone a sense of a place. Using videos in your GBP is a good opportunity to show off the “vibes” of your business. 

What kinds of videos should you add to your GBP?

Google has specific requirements for what kind of videos are allowed. Notably, the primary subject has to be your business, meaning that your GBP is not the spot for flashy ads that don’t directly showcase your business. 

Here are some ideas for videos that can grab the attention of your searchers: 

• Share details about your business. Describe its history, mission, or the problems you can solve for your customers.
• Introduce your staff. Show off how your business prioritizes people and film video introductions of your team members. 
• Take searchers on a virtual tour of your business.
• Highlight best-selling products.
• Offer a behind-the-scenes sneak peek of an aspect of your business. This could be a glimpse into how your products are made, the packaging process, or a peek at the CEO at their desk.  

Note: These videos must be 30 seconds or shorter, according to Google’s policies. 

How to add videos to your GBP

1. Sign into your Google Business account.

2. Navigate to “Photos” from your dashboard menu.

3. Select “Add videos.” 

4. When the file browser appears, upload the video you want to share by dragging or selecting from your computer. 

Can my customers add their own videos to my GBP?

Yes! 

And in Google Maps, customers' videos play automatically. 

Customer videos are generally more trusted than business videos because consumers today trust their peers’ reviews about a business more than they trust a business’s own ads. This point is illustrated in the graph below. Notice that 38% of consumers trust business ads (or their own videos), while 91% of buyers trust peer review sites (or the videos posted by your customers). 

Encouraging your customers to post video reviews to your Google Business Profile is a great way to build trust in your business by letting your customers do the selling for you. 

Getting video testimonials from your customers is not as challenging or expensive as it may seem. These days, you don’t have to hire a professional video crew to get your customers behind the camera. With smartphone technology, your customers can record a compelling testimonial themselves, for free. 

Consider launching a video testimonial collection campaign to encourage customer video reviews and ask them to post their videos to Google. With automated software like Invite Video, you can even configure campaigns to only request video testimonials from customers who have already left you a five-star review, cutting out the chance of getting negative videos posted to your profile. For more video testimonial strategies, check out our blog post full of tips. More customers will leave video reviews than you think.