The honest answer isn’t about whether you can
Let’s clear one thing up straight away: can you set up and run your own Google Business Profile? Yes. One hundred per cent. It isn’t the most complicated task in the world, and you don’t need a marketing degree to do it. So the real question was never “am I capable of this?”
The real question is this: have you actually got the time, and will you get around to doing it properly?
After eighteen years of building businesses, the biggest lesson I’ve learned is to stop trying to do everything myself. You hire people who are good at things to do the things they’re good at, because the truth is you probably can do most of it yourself; you just can’t do all of it, and do it well, and still run your business. Where you choose to delegate and where you choose to take things on yourself is very often exactly where the speed of your growth gets decided.
So this guide isn’t going to talk you out of doing it yourself. It’s going to help you make an honest decision about whether you should.
Two questions that actually settle it
When an aesthetician asks me whether to do their own SEO or hire someone, I don’t give them the sales answer. I ask them two things:
- How much time have you genuinely got, and when are you actually going to get around to this?
- Do you have the desire and the will to do it yourself, properly, and keep doing it?
Your Google Business Profile is a fundamental building block. It’s one of the pillars your entire online presence is built on, and if you get it right it sets you up for success. In the grand scheme of things it’s a relatively minor investment for something that can bring a real return.
So it comes down to priorities. Do you want to spend your time learning to do this well, or are there other things only you can do in your business that your time is better spent on? Because plenty of people, not just me, can do this for you and do it right.
What actually goes wrong when time-poor owners DIY it
The failure I see most often isn’t people doing it badly. It’s people doing a fraction of it and then never touching it again.
They put in their address, some opening hours, and one photo of the salon front or the treatment room, and they think that’s the job done. Will that give you a presence on Maps? Yes. Will it use even a fraction of what a Google Maps listing can do for you? Absolutely not.
Here’s the shift that helps: your profile is a shop window. Especially if you don’t have a high-street position, it’s how you get found, how you establish yourself online, and how you show your business’s personality to someone searching. A shop window you dressed once, a year ago, and never looked at again isn’t doing its job.
Treat it almost like social media. If you’d update Instagram or Facebook, update your Google Maps at the same time. It’s a live, constant window onto your business for everyone searching. The two things that quietly sink most profiles are not putting enough in to begin with, and then ignoring it once it’s up.
What the bare-minimum version actually costs you
This is the part people don’t weigh up properly, so let’s be honest about it.
Your profile is a huge opportunity to show someone they can trust you. Now picture your competitor. They’re updating their profile three times a week. They’re posting before-and-afters, they’re putting up offers, they’re talking about their treatments, and they’re actively getting clients to leave reviews. Sitting next to them is your two-photo profile that hasn’t changed since you set it up. Who is a new client going to choose?
For a lot of customers, the Google map pack is the very first place they start deciding who to trust. If you can’t compete on how your business looks there, you can end up stuck in the worst position of all: feeling like you have to discount and drop your prices to win people, simply because your profile isn’t pulling its weight.
And remember what you’re actually asking someone to do. Letting you treat their face is an enormous amount of trust to hand over. The very least they expect to see first is a properly filled-out, active, professional profile. Get that right and it does the early trust-building for you: it hooks them, then they’ll click your website, follow your socials, and take you seriously. This is exactly the groundwork that helps turn Google searches into actual bookings.
If you’re going to do it yourself, do it properly
If you’ve got the time and the will, then genuinely, go for it. Just don’t do it half-heartedly. Being methodical is the whole game here. Fill out every single part you can:
- Choose the correct business category.
- List every service you offer, in the words a client would actually search for, not your professional shorthand. (There’s a full guide to the words your clients actually type into Google if you want to get this bit right.)
- Add plenty of images, not one or two.
- Write a description that’s actually engaging, not an afterthought.
- Don’t skimp on any of the detail.
Then build yourself a second checklist: what you’ll update each week. Don’t set it and forget it, and whatever you do, don’t forget about asking for reviews and keeping the profile ticking over with regular, steady posting rather than sporadic bursts.
If you get partway in and find yourself struggling or unsure, that’s the point to bring in a professional rather than leaving it half-built. And here’s how I’d think about the cost. Everyone charges differently, but look at your own prices and ask: how many treatments would I need to do to recoup this investment? I’m guessing it isn’t many. Frame the decision in those terms, against the return, and it usually looks very different.
The one question to settle it
If you’re still on the fence, ask yourself one thing: where is my time most valuable?
If you’ve got the time to invest in this and you’ll genuinely do it, it will pay dividends. But if what you actually want is to take a task off your plate, that’s a completely reasonable answer too. Life as a business owner is busy and there’s always more to do. This is a relatively inexpensive job with a high reward, and it’s one you can hand over and have built, subject to verification, within about five working days.
Either way, don’t leave this one undone. It’s one of the genuine foundations you build a business on. If you’d rather have it done properly and off your plate from the start, that’s exactly what my Google Business Profile setup is for: your profile built out in full, verified, and working the way it should, so the foundations are firm from day one.