Google My Business: 7 Tips for Improving Your Local Marketing: Indeed, you know and access nearby places in your area that are your favorites—places where you find what you need. But, what happens when we move to less known places, and we seek to find somewhere for a specific requirement, such as drinking a coffee?
It is estimated that 80% of people find out on the internet about a potential purchase, either find the address, know the place through photographs, or know its characteristics. For this reason, local marketing has become essential in recent years.
What if my online presence is weak or non-existent?
It is a built-in habit to use a cell phone or some other device to find nearby places where you can make a purchase, stop for something to eat, or use a service. For this reason, Google My Business and Google Ads have become essential tools to optimize your business’s commercial strategy.
Also, Google offers a personalized program for each city, including a website with a comprehensive guide to Google My Business, a free subscription to a web domain with Startlogic, and tools to exemplify how they appear in Search and Maps.
Next, we will leave you seven local marketing tips on Google, through which you can improve your positioning in Google.
1. Keep your Google My Business page updated Google:
My Business makes it easy for users to access your business information in map searches. It is a free tool and very easy to use. How to keep it active? Integrate interior and exterior photographs. This will allow those who intend to visit you to get an idea of what they can find in your place. Update the information in your profile.
Make sure to keep the links, your phone, and all contact channels up to date. It is surprising how some locals neglect this step and therefore lose many potential customers since they cannot contact them. Describe your hours. Complete the list of the week with the hours and days of customer service.
This step is essential because people do not risk much going to places that may be closed. It can be considered a waste of time, and many people do not risk visiting a place that they do not know will be open, and therefore they will choose a more specific option.
Describe in some striking or captivating way the environment of your business. Get people interested in meeting you.
Include any unique information or any particular characteristic of your business that makes it stand out from others in the same field. For example, you can put if you have a place to leave a bicycle or if you have WiFi available for your customers.
2. Create call-only Google Ads campaigns
Google Ads allows you to create ads that only focus on generating phone calls. Google points out that 70% of the calls are due to Google searches, either to check product availability, schedules, reservations, among others.
In 2015 this campaign was launched with visibility only on mobile devices, and the experience has been satisfactory. Why? With this type of campaign, you enter Google, where the option to call appears, without the need to travel intermediary paths to its website or other locations. Your search, call and go.
You have a direct call button on Google, blue. Your number will appear on the first line of the ad and your business name on the second.
3. Use the Google Ads call and location extensions.
Use all possible Google Ads ad extensions. Your potential clients must have all the information at their fingertips to be able to access your business. The telephone number and address are necessary for you to obtain more excellent benefits. If your goal is to attract traffic to your store, you must make sure to increase your ad’s presence in the SERPs and the physical reality, including more options to generate customers.
4. Improve segmentation
It seems like somewhat obvious advice, but many accounts do not configure their area well, or very large or very small, and it is necessary to optimize. There are several ways to target your store with location accuracy. You can make one-off location changes to the ad text and use keywords. You must consider the traffic that enters your business and the competition that exists in that same area.
For example, if your store is in an area where there is a massive concentration of stores, you can direct your location to neighbor regions where the offer does not exist. In Google Ads, you can handle this area. First, when selecting the campaign, go to “Settings” and then to “Locations,” in this option, you can generate ads by city, region, postal code, as well as obtain detailed information through the “Advanced Search” to guide your Ads to a specific area.
5. Take advantage of local search ads.
This function allows your store to appear directly on Google Maps. For example, if you go along a route that is not the usual one or do not know the sector and want to go for a coffee and a delicious cake.
Google Maps will give you the option of locating in the industry where you are, various possibilities to make it possible to satisfy that temptation. Local search ads will appear on Google Maps, whether for cell phones, tablets, or computers and appear as a result of the Google Expanded Maps website. These ads are created and configured using Google Ads.
6. Add suitable keywords to your Google My Business profile.
Indeed this concept is familiar to you because keywords are essential for positioning in Google. Within your Google My Business profile, the most prominent sections to add your keywords are your business’s title and description. Both of which can be found in your profile information.
Make sure both contain one or more of the keywords that users find your business. In this way, your profile has a better chance of appearing in Google searches that contain these phrases. These keywords can be found in the ” Statistics ” section of your Google My Business profile if you have already had your profile up and running for a long time.
7. Encourage your customers to leave comments and evaluate you.
A place may seem extraordinary to us until we see your comments. If you have a low rating or low appraisals, we tend to doubt whether to visit that business or not. Recommendation and experience are two excellent marketing allies, especially the local one.
For example, if your trade is a restaurant and someone leaves a comment like “excellent service, food, and good prices” or “the price is worth it for all the service, food and place.” It is almost sure that someone else will be tempted to visit you. On Google My Business, on Maps, your star ratings and people’s comments will appear. They are a filter so that they also appear in the first positions of the searches.
How to get your customers to comment? Offer at your store any rewards, discounts, or whatever is within your power to offer your customers for commenting. You can also run raffles among those who leave comments. It will be worth it, as they are a great help to position your business.
We advise you to respond to comments, whether positive or negative. This will generate a more excellent bond with your local clientele. You can also offer access through a QR code or a direct link.
We want your business to have the most visits from Google. Implement any of these seven tips and start boosting your Google positioning today. The comment section tells us how this article “Google My Business: 7 Tips for Improving Your Local Marketing” helped you.