Understanding Google My Business

What You Need to Know About Google My Business

It can be quite a task attempting to keep up with all the incarnations Google goes through with its local products. The old Google Places, Google+ Local, and Google Maps are now under the umbrella of Google My Business . Before you go running away while throwing up both your hands, let me just tell you that it’s not bad at all. With this centralized business profile, you, as business owners, can monitor and connect with prospective customers through the centralized Google My Business Dashboard.

What is Google My Business?

Touted by Google as a way for local merchants and service providers to create and manage listings all in one simple to use platform, they appear to have accomplished exactly that!

Google sees this as a way to centralize all your listings that have anything to go with Google; search, maps, reviews, and business location making them all at your fingertips for easy access and management. Let’s see what this new platform has to offer, and why we think it can work for you.

1 – GMB allows you to easily update your information from one place

• Business address: Whether you have a physical address or service-area business listing if that works better for your business model. Including this information gives you the opportunity to show up in local Google search and maps and reach potential customer.
• Business Description: This is your opportunity to tell your potential customer about how you help them. Choosing a business category increases your exposure by detailing your business to a search engine. In turn, your business will appear in a variety of more relevant searches instead of only direct searches. This will increase your organic search traffic in different ways along side search rankings. 
• Contact information: Ensuring your contact phone & email are correct and clickable on your Google Business Profiles make it as easy as possible for customers to reach you. This essential info is invaluavle for any business owner. How can you expect to do business if no one knows how to contact you?
• Operating Hours: Listing your business hours can help your customer reach out to you when you are available to them and cut out frustration. Accurate hours info will make sure any interacton starts off in the right way. You can also use the feature of Google My Business to update customers to any special hours or hours for holidays.
• Social integrations: Connecting Google My Business with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and others social platforms to offer people the platforms they can connect with you. Linking all your various social medias to your business profile allow customers new avenues to get to know you better before even interacting. They can research any specials or featured services advertised through your socials. 

 You also have the capability to add pictures and even virtual tours if you would like, thus making it easy for people to get a real understanding of your place. Encourage your happy customers to share their photos and tag you.

2 – Connect with your customers through GMB

Google My Business has revolutionized the way business staff and owners can communicate with the public. You can chat with potential customers or message with customers directly through your company Google My Business business profile, sharing content and news. You can use this time to get to know your customers better in order to fill their service or product needs. You can also receive direct feedback from customers to improve your business. Choose your business categories carefully to make sure you are showing up for the right searches and keep in contact with customers. 

3 – Manage customer reviews

This one is the most talked-about feature as a service provider: being able to see, respond and manage business reviews on Google from one centralized location. Public customer reviews can have massive effects on your business, either positively or negatively. 

4 – Run your business on the go

Using the Android and iOS apps, you can access any part of the Google My Business platform wherever you happen to be. We are always on the go as a business owner, whether it be for personal or professional reasons. Being able to access your Google My Business business profile while on the go allows you to stay on top of anything related to your business. You can recieve messages from customers, update your business description to include a new product or service, or even change your hours of operation in the event of an emergency. 

5 – Customer Insights

Another cool feature. GMB shows you a number of useful statistics, such as where your customers are driving from. This will be useful when planning new campaigns. Another plus is that you can easily integrate your Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google Ad accounts into Google My Business. Giving your more control and information to create your future campaigns.

Have you claimed your Google My Business listing? If not, grab it today and feel free to send me any questions or book some time below.

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Book Now Founder & CEO of ThinkFlame, Shelly Patrick, trains individuals and companies to understand how their marketing affects their sales conversation and how to integrate marketing into their yearly plans for consistent growth.