Nowadays, a company’s online identity is paramount. The web is one of the main vehicles for most businesses, so ensuring excellent visibility and correctly communicating your service or product pluses is essential.
There are currently several truly functional services available online.
In the next lines, the features of Google My Business will be analyzed, as an indispensable resource for promoting your business.
Google My Business: what is it?
As anticipated, Google My Business is a free service, accessible online , very useful especially for small local businesses but currently also used by larger companies. The main purpose of My Business is to increase the visibility of a business in order to attract customers and – consequently – increase sales.
More concretely, this service allows a company to be easily found on Google by a potential customer and to transmit to him the salient information, useful for establishing direct contact.
It goes without saying that My Business is decisive when potential customers who need a service or product offered are passing through a business.This service conveys marketing information and logistic information, capable of bringing together supply and demand.
My Business, as you can imagine, is a very powerful tool because the strength of Google itself is incredible: the search engine par excellence dominates the web with over 70% of total searches . These data make it the preferred means of guiding consumers’ purchasing choices. Google is the battlefield of most companies, which work to win the most coveted places in the SERP, or the list of results that is returned in the face of a search.
An important fact, useful for understanding the power of My Business even better, is thatone search out of three – carried out on Google – is aimed at finding an activity close to one’s position , or information related to a place in the vicinity of the user. Even more interesting is to observe that almost all searches are carried out by smartphone, contextually to the actual search for an activity or a service. As a demonstration of this dynamic, it has been confirmed that those who carry out a search usually reach the company within 24 hours and once in three complete the purchase.
It is certainly incredible data that leaves no room for doubt: for a local business, signing up for Google My Business is essential.
For its operation, this service does not require a great strategy but certainly a lot of care, because – if well managed – Google My Business allows you to get great prominence on the search results page , with an indescribable return and great evidence compared to its competitors. .
How does Google My Business work?
Basically, this service consists of an activity card, which is a space aimed at informing users when they perform a search on both Google and Google Maps . The data that is conveyed shows the name of the company together with the address, the contact details and usually the opening hours. The presence of a link to the website and useful directions to reach this activity from the point where the user is, as well as buttons useful for sharing with other users or saving information to be used later. But, how do users search? What search keywords do they usually use to find the timesheets described above?
Usually the data entered concern the name of the company and the type of business. This combination is more than enough to return the desired information.
On mobile and desktop, cards appear at the top , above all other results and after content sponsored by other companies (usually).
How can I create the timesheet for my company? First of all, it is good to clarify that not all the cards were inserted voluntarily by the owners, but many are generated automatically by the search engine itself., based on information found online. For a more efficient result, however, the owner of an activity can manage his own card by creating a new one or by optimizing the one already present on the web.
To do this, simply have a Google account and verify ownership. Once this is done, you will have a useful panel to manage, insert and edit the information published, such as photos and videos, and interact with users who ask questions or, better still, leave reviews on the activity.
Google My business, as will be seen later, gives the possibility to access statistics to analyze how users come into contact with the activity, in order to optimize all aspects of their profile and make the business profile even more performing.
As it was initially mentioned, the web and in particular Google My Business are essential to affirm theown brand identity and convey its pluses to potential customers. In the “offline” life, there are visibility materials to do this: a shop relies on a sign or on outdoor flyers and billboards to ensure that potential customers find the business in question. Online visibility tools are largely linked to searches, therefore an optimization of the My Business card is able to intercept interested users or those who have a specific need.
It is necessary to consider the existence of some main cases that can be satisfied through My Business. First of all, it is possible that people already know the business but cannot get in touch with it, therefore the card is essential to find all the necessary contact details.
Secondly, it may happen that a user has already planned a purchase and is looking for information to close the deal. Finally, very frequently, there is the case in which a customer is in the position of having to make an urgent purchase nearby. Just think of a plumbing emergency at home, for example. It is clear that the latter eventuality is the one that will most safely convert into a new purchase.
Google My Business: how to best set up the service
Therefore, if My Business is a truly valuable service for every small business, especially if local, you must pay the utmost attention to optimizing the settings offered , in order to position yourself correctly on the search engine and attract the target audience.
First of all, it is good to make sure that the identification data is correct and clear to the eyes of potential users: it will be necessary to clearly understand the object of the business and which data to use to establish contact. To ensure maximum clarity, it is advisable to enter the brand name without unnecessary information. Rather, it may be useful to indicate a sort of payoff containing the sensitive keywords related to the activity. This will facilitate the positioning on the search engine.
Choosing well among the numerous categories offered by My Business is another fundamental step. In this circumstance it is good to take all the time to identify your sector among those presented and continue drawing up an effective description of the business in detail.
Ban on marketing slogans, the field to be filled is limited, so you really need to make sure you convey your pluses and distinctive elements compared to competitors. Contact details and business hours will close the small essential baggage of information transmitted to its users. In conjunction with the holidays, Google will contact the owner of the card to ask for confirmation on the opening hours.
When it comes to data, the link to the company’s website cannot be ignored. What if the business doesn’t have a website yet ? Google will create a responsive page containing all the information already entered, surely this is a temporary solution while waiting to publish a real site, but we must admit that this feature is really useful.
After having entered all the necessary data, it is essential to dedicate oneself to the visual identity of one’s own profile, uploading a profile image on the platform and co-covering it in a coordinated manner with the actual identity , so that there is consistency and recognition. My business also gives you the possibility to upload photos and videos, which are useful to better convey the products or services offered.
Once this first setting has been made, you can devote yourself to managing contacts and the reputation deriving from the reviews they will leave . Be active,answering questions, and managing both positive and negative reviews correctly will give a great resonance to the My Business tab. Google My Business also gives the possibility to publish posts thanks to which users who search for the timesheet can always be updated on the latest activities of the Business in question. It is good to specify that Google highlights this type of content, therefore they are of great help to highlight your card on the search engine.
In order to clarify your offer directly, Google My Business offers the possibility of inserting the product catalog together with a series of functions to better organize your proposal: product name, description, relative image and price. Furthermore, GMB allows us to activate a messaging system that allows us to talk to our customers directly from the Google results list, thanks to the messages feature (which could bring up a large button with the wording “Request a quote” directly on our card , a very useful feature!).
As it has been mentioned above, Google My Business offers the possibility to observe the access statistics of the usersand understand through what searches they reach the timesheet and how they interact with it. This set of data is really useful for optimizing information and deepening the aspects most useful to your target.
Finally, you can enter a brief description of the activity , a description of the services offered if your business does not provide for the sale of physical services. To maximize your effectiveness on My Business, you can use sponsored ads through the Google Ads platform , which are particularly useful for improving your positioning and expanding the network of contacts reached.
