Where to put your booking link

A booking link is the only marketing asset a service business has that works while it sleeps. Most businesses have it in exactly one place, which is a social media bio that a third of their customers will never see.

The link costs nothing to place. The only thing stopping it appearing in fifteen places is that nobody has sat down for twenty minutes and put it there.

The four that convert best

Your Google Business Profile. This is where people find you when they are ready. A profile with a working booking link converts intent that is already at its peak. A profile with only a phone number converts it during opening hours and loses it outside them.

Your social media bio, as the only link. Not one of four. The whole point of the position is that it is unambiguous.

The bottom of every invoice and receipt. This is the most under used location in the entire list. Somebody reading an invoice has just had the service, thinks well of you and is holding a document with room on it.

Your voicemail and your missed call text. Half the calls a small business misses are somebody trying to book. A missed call that triggers a text with the link recovers the ones that would otherwise ring somewhere else.

The rest of the list

• Email signature, on every email anybody in the business sends.
• Every confirmation and reminder message, so rebooking and rescheduling never requires a phone call.
• Your review replies. Somebody reading reviews is deciding, and a link in the reply is in front of them at that moment.
• Printed on the card you hand over, as a short link and a QR code.
• On the window and on the door, for the people who arrive when you are closed or full.
• In the shop, at the till, on a small card by the card machine.
• On the vehicle, if you have one on the road.
• In your out of office and your holiday message.
• On the quote you send, so an approved quote can turn into a date without another exchange.
• In any local directory, forum or community group listing you have.

Make the link short and legible

A booking URL with a long random string is fine in an email and hopeless on a van, a card or a voicemail script. You want something short enough to be said aloud and typed correctly by somebody who heard it once.

A QR code alongside it covers everything printed. Test it before you print five hundred, and test it with an actual phone rather than a preview.

What to check once it is out there

Every link should land on the booking page itself rather than the homepage. Sending somebody to a homepage after they clicked "book" adds a step, and every step loses people.

Then check it on a phone. Most of your traffic is on one, and a booking page that requires pinching and zooming will be abandoned by people who fully intended to book.

The twenty minute job

Open a note, paste the link and work through the list above ticking off where it already is. In most businesses it is in two or three places out of fourteen.

Fixing that is not a marketing campaign. It has no budget, takes one sitting and it is very likely the highest return twenty minutes available to you this month.