Do you run a home based insurance agency? You can still take advantage of Google My Business even without displaying your location (your house in most cases).

Many businesses work virtually. We do. Early on we realized that we didn’t need a physical location to thrive. In fact, it only drove up our costs. The year we operated an office out of Bellevue we didn’t have a single customer stop by. Our relationships with carriers wasn’t impacted by this decision either. They didn’t require us to operate in a commercial space to be a referral partner. Our team works virtually and that works great for us.

If you’re reading this, you might operate a home-based business. What many businesses don’t know is that they can still take advantage of a Google My Business profile to market their business. The secret lies in a simple checkbox labeled “I deliver goods and services to my customers at their locations.” If you select this, it will hide your physical address from Google Maps, but everything else remains. Just be sure to select your target market (more precise is better such as just the city you’re located in).  Here are the directions right from Google:

To edit your service area details:

  1. Sign in to Google My Business.
  2. Make sure you’re using card view. If you’re viewing your locations as a list instead of cards, switch to card view by clicking the cards icon on the right side above your locations.
  3. Choose the listing you’d like to manage and click Manage location.
  4. Click Info from the menu.
  5. Click the Address 
  6. In the window that appears, select Yes next to “I deliver goods and services to my customers at their locations.”
  7. Enter your service area information. You can set your service area based on the zip codes or cities that you serve, or on a given area around your location.
    • Select the box next to “I serve customers at my business address” if you want your complete address to appear on Google and your business location is staffed and able to receive customers during its stated hours.
  8. Click Apply.

Best of all, if you need help, you can request a phone call directly from Google in a minute!  Have a Google Specialist Call You

Google My Business is a necessity of businesses today. To be successful online, people need to know that you are reputable and that you have happy clients. Utilize Google reviews on your Google my business profile. Hopefully this trick can help you if you work from home.

Tosten Marketing is an insurance agency marketing company based in Seattle, WA. Our team of marketing experts can help any agency with web design, search engine optimization, blogs and more! If you need help with your insurance agent marketing programs, we’d love the opportunity to earn your business.