5 Reasons Your Brand Needs to be Using Google My Business

David Ogilvy defines a brand as “the intangible sum of a product’s attributes: its name, packaging, and price, its history, its reputation, and the way it’s advertised.” This includes the way your business is presented online, and Google My Business is a quick, easy to set up way to manage your brand’s online presence.

Not only does search beat social media by more than 300% as a traffic source, making your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) vital, especially if you are a local business, but managing and maintaining your search results is a huge part of curating your brand. Google My Business is free to set up, makes a huge difference to local SEO, and helps maintain brand consistency, yet 56% of local stores are yet to claim their local listing on Google. Let’s get you out of that percentage and claim your business today!

What is Google My Business?

Google My Business is a Google product that allows you to manage the information that is presented when your business is searched on Google. Ever looked up a restaurant for dinner, or searched for your local supermarket’s opening hours? The box that shows up in the Google results with that business’ address, contact information, website link, photos, reviews, opening hours and more, all comes from Google My Business, and your business can and should have one too.

Why you need to use Google My Business

97% of consumers looked online for local businesses in 2017 and “28.88% of consumers who search for a type of local business on a mobile device call or go to that business within 24 hours” (Nectafy). If your business doesn’t show up there, or the information is wrong, confusing or misleading, you’re missing out on potential customers! But if your business information is available, complete and accurate, the experience for those searching you becomes drastically better. Let’s dive into some of the benefits of Google My Business a little more.

MANAGING INFORMATION CONSISTENCY

Google My Business gives you the ability to manage your business’ information, ensures that the correct information is being provided to your customers and helps to maintain consistency from your website to your social media profiles to your search results. Consistency is a huge factor in maintaining brand loyalty, so having the option to control information consistency across the web is a great way to manage this.

SETTING A GOOD FIRST IMPRESSION

According to Oxera, businesses that verify their information with Google My Business are twice as likely to be considered reputable by consumers. Having a complete profile makes you seem professional, accessible, and relevant to those searching, and enhances the experience for the customer as it makes contacting or learning more about your business faster and more straightforward.

UTILISING MAP SEARCHES

86% of people look up the location of a business on Google Maps and more and more people are using Google Maps to find new local businesses to visit. If your business doesn’t pop up in those searches, you’re missing out on potential customers every day, but being on that list and even better, high up on the list, has the potential to bring in amazing amounts of new business!

MANAGING CUSTOMER REVIEWS & QUESTIONS

Nearly 95% of shoppers read online reviews before making a purchase (Spiegel Research Center, 2017), and 92% of B2B buyers are more likely to purchase after reading a trusted review (G2 Crowd and Heinz Marketing, 2017). With having five reviews resulting in purchase likelihood increasing by a factor of almost four times (Spiegel Research Center, 2017), you want to make sure you’re getting reviews and good ones at that! Google My Business lets you manage and respond to reviews so that you can celebrate the rave reviews, and resolve any customer grievances, again giving you control over your brand’s online presence.

VIEWING INSIGHTS & TRACKING LEADS

Google My Business’ Insights provide some really helpful information about your customer’s experience with your business. With data on how customers search for your business, what search queries are used to find you, where they viewed your information, their engagement with your profile, and more, these insights can help you make better decisions about marketing efforts, SEO, content, sales, and copywriting among other things.

How to set up Google My Business

Hopefully by this stage you’re on board with this whole Google My Business thing and just want to get started! Well without further ado, here are the simple steps you need to take to get started:

1. Claim your business at www.google.com/business
2. Fill in the information required
3. Add images that show off your business, location, team, and products or services
4. Ask clients and customers for reviews
5. Create regular Google My Business posts to keep your profile relevant and appearing active

I know that I threw a lot of stats at you in this article, but it’s just to show you the powerful difference that such a quick and easy task can make to your business and your branding. If you haven’t claimed your business yet, go and sign up today, and if you already have a profile, take a look at the information displayed – is it accurate, up-to-date, recently updated? These little things can make a big difference!

‍