Using Google My Business can get you quickly onto the first page of Google search results for your local clients.
Unless you’ve spent the past decade in a parallel universe, you know that Google is the dominant player in the online space. The technology juggernaut is responsible for ranking our websites, serving our ads to our niche audiences and just about everything in between.
As business owners, appealing to prospective customers in our locale is very important because it allows us to target the low-hanging fruit; people that are the most likely to purchase our products and services. Especially for brick and mortar establishments, getting local customers is a good way to generate repeat clientele.
Other than allowing us to rank our website for keywords that pertain to our location, Google offers services and features of its own where we can showcase our business and attract users in search of our products in our area.
What is Google My Business?
Google My Business is a digital business directory on steroids. Rather than just a place where we create a listing and hope people stumble upon it, this service allows us to appear in a prominent position in the search rankings and map results.
What Features Can Help With My Local Marketing?
The features you gain access to once you sign up can really boost your business and help you cement your place at the top of your niche. Especially when you start to link back to your website, include business open hours and have your Google reviews front and center.
Business Descriptions
A 750 character description gives us the opportunity to tell our target market what we are all about.
Q&A
In the case that we lack an effective customer support platform for our clients, your listing has a Q&A function that can serve as just that. Users can upvote questions, bringing the more commonly sought after issues to the top. This makes it easy to provide answers to issues that might otherwise require a time investment on our part.
Book an Appointment
If a visitor is sold on our product or service, they can head directly to a landing page to complete a purchase. No need for extra steps that could result in users bailing out of our sales funnel.
Direct customers straight from finding you on Google to booking an appointment.
Google Posts
Google Posts is a micro-blogging function that gives us the capacity to post content that Google’s algorithms will look at faster than scouring the web for our blog.
5 Benefits of Posting on Google My Business
Using Google’s platform has a host of benefits that outshine any other online directory.
1. It’s Free to Use
Normally, appearing in a prominent online spot where our niche can find us requires reaching into our wallets. Google avails us of this opportunity at no extra cost.
2. Better Presence in Search Results
A fully optimized listing can appear on the first page of search results, causing an increase in your overall digital marketing efforts.
3. Map Listings
The platform is necessary if we want to appear in Google’s map listings and in the local listings that are displayed for local queries, making it easy for our audience to find us.
Create a Google My Business account and your business will come up on Google Maps.
4. Hang Out with Clients
Google Hangouts, the video and chat app that allows for live interaction, integrates nicely with our business’s listing, allowing us to build stronger relationships with our clientele.
5. Extra Source of Customer Insights
As with Google Analytics and Google Ads, posting on Google My Business gives us useful data that we can use to further our marketing efforts. Access to this data is given under the Insights tab.
Wait no longer, get started on Google My Business today.
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If you’re getting some clientelle, you may want to start a mailing list to keep in touch with them. Have a look at our ‘building a mail list‘ post on getting started with MailChimp.
