Google My Business is a Must Have Local Business Tool.
As a local business owner, one of your goals is likely to have as many people in your area know about your business, where it is, and what you do. Accomplishing this may require a large promotional effort which includes expensive signage, advertising, and encouraging word-of-mouth referrals from satisfied customers. Two of these require significant expenses and the other relies on people keeping your business at the front of their minds. These methods, although necessary, come with financial risk and risk of failure..
What if I told you that there was a way to accomplish all three at no cost? You could create a free online profile and put 30 minutes of effort to get the ball rolling. This method will get the existence of your business, your location, hours, and more vital information in front of the eyes of people needing your products and services. As a former freelancer who has helped small businesses grow their online presence, I am always surprised to see how many neglect to take advantage of this free tool.
Google offers a wide range of free tools for individuals and businesses, and many people do not use them. Most of them are optional, but Google My Business is not for local business owners who wish to succeed. Setting up a profile on this platform will lead to your business appearing on Google Maps. Google Maps is the modern day Yellow Pages, and best of all — it is free to use. Setting it up takes 30 minutes. From there, you can put as much or as little info as you want, but merely setting it up can make a vast difference in growing your business.
Google has found that 50% of Google Maps searches lead to a sale within 24 hours. You will be hard-pressed to find a marketing tool with that level of conversion. You could spend a significant amount of money on a traditional media campaign and not come close to that return on investment. In today’s world, it is a vital tool that will ensure consumers can find your business. If you do not set it up, consumers looking for someone that offers your products and services will find your competitors instead.
Using smartphones and other personal devices is increasing every day. In the past, consumers had to use the phone book, word-of-mouth, or drive-by to locate the surrounding businesses. As the internet blossomed, you had basic web searches and the online Yellow Pages as a directory. As the internet grew, services such as MapQuest emerged that provided directions between geographic locations. Now, Google Maps has emerged not to only provide directions but has come close to being its own social media site.
Google Maps has become a shockingly effective marketing tool. The only requirement to set up a profile is a Google Account. Setting up a Google account and subsequently, My Business profile will take approximately 30 minutes. Like many things, you can put more into it or add to it as time passes.
A Google My Business profile is perhaps one of the easiest and quickest things you can do to get your business information in front of prospects. Whenever someone pulls up Google Maps, they use certain words and phrases to search for local businesses that will meet their needs. Sometimes, they search for specific businesses, but even when they do, Google Maps will pull up similar businesses along with the specific business they are seeking. With a strong Google My Business profile, your business can pull-up in searches for all kinds of specific keywords which you can control.
For example, if you own a hardware store, you can set up keywords so that anyone that searches for hammers, a new door, roofing tools, or even specific stores such as Home Depot, your business will come up among the searches. The stronger your profile, the higher your business will appear on the search list. Even without getting too in depth with keywords, setting up and activating your profile can expose your business to a whole new group of customers that likely never knew your business existed.
With 50% of searches leading to a sale within 24 hours, just think about the number of sales your business is losing. A Google Maps profile may sometimes exist for your business because of Google setting it up or a customer doing it for you. But it is important to take control of this profile and add accurate address(es), hours of operation, phone number, website, description, keywords, pictures, and — reviews. If you do not have a business location and have a service business that works on-site, you can still set up a profile and provide your service areas. You can input entire states, counties, cities, or zip codes and your business will appear for consumers searching in those areas.
Getting a detailed My Business profile becomes even more important when you consider that younger generations such as Millennials are becoming a larger part of the consumer base. Research conducted by Thrive Analytics in 2015 found that Millennials use their mobile phones 47% of the time when determining where to make their local purchases. Evidence suggests that this number will continue to increase and younger generations will have higher numbers. Even older generations such as Baby Boomers use their mobile phones 18% of the time when finding local businesses to solve their problems. Overall, consumers use their mobile phones 37% of the time when finding local businesses to meet their needs. This makes the importance of Google Maps hard to ignore.
Personal recommendations and referrals used to be the main word-of-mouth marketing tool available for businesses. While this is still important, we live in a world where personal recommendations, sometimes by the thousands, are available with a few taps on a keyboard. BrightlLocal found that 88% of people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. If your business either does not have a place for online reviews or is not taking advantage of all the online venues where reviews are possible, you are losing out on a free marketing resource where your customers can place a permanent recommendation to the masses. With the trustworthiness of reviews that high, a positive review is worth thousands of personal recommendations. We used to live in a world where people would ask their friends and family when they need a recommendation. Now, people go to one of their favorite online directories and search for reviews. The most popular among these resources for local businesses is Google Maps.
I am not sure if there is a tool for a small business as low-cost and simple to implement that will provide as much benefit as having a Google My Business profile. Without dipping into your marketing budget, you can set up a tool that will lead to the growth of your business. If you ignore this opportunity, there are customers out there in your community that will never know you are there and spend their money at your competitors. You can even grow your profile so that your Google Maps profile shows your business’s personality and character. You can show consumers not only what you do and where you are, but what your business is about.
While setting up your profile will yield benefits, the more you put into it, the greater the gain. Some companies have even run promotions by providing an opportunity for discounts or giveaway free items for Google reviews. One small business in my area found a small trinket that cost them around a quarter each and gave them away for an honest review. In a matter of weeks, they went from having 8 reviews to over 500. From there, they saw a 14% increase in traffic to their stores. Another strategy is to find out how customers are finding out about your store by collecting the information at the point-of-sale. This way, you can find out how customers learn about your business and how they are not. You may find that your Google Maps profile is not strong enough and needs improvement.
There are a lot of ways to promote your business, and many of them come at substantial cost and effort. Google My Business platform is a way to put small businesses on level ground with larger competitors. While large corporations usually have a fully developed My Business profile established, many do not take the time to give it the personality that a small, local business can accomplish. This can give you an advantage over companies you normally do not have. If you have not set up your Google Maps profile or have neglected giving it your full attention, now is the time to remedy the situation and take advantage of a free tool that will help put your business on the map.
Photo by henry perks on Unsplash
