For businesses with physical locations, your digital marketing strategy will not be complete without a Google My Business listing.
Google is by far the most used search engine in the world. Microsoft Bing comes in a distant second place, and lagging far behind Bing are Yahoo Search, DuckDuckGo, and the strangely named Qwant. In terms of daily direct queries, only Google and Qwant are quantified and openly published.
The results are stunning. Google receives over 9-billion daily queries, whereas Qwant receives a measly 10-million. Apparently, you Qwant always get what you want… when you list your business on Qwant.
All joking aside, we probably don’t have to convince you that Google is a superior search engine. But you might need some additional information before you agree that listing your company on Google My Business is important.
By the time you reach the end of this blog post, you’ll not only agree that creating and managing a GMB page is important, but you’ll understand why.
These days, businesses pour their time, effort, and money into SEO strategies that will ensure their websites land on the first page of Google’s SERP (Search Engine Results Page). First and foremost, Google My Business provides brick-and-mortar companies with superior SEO capabilities. A GMB listing ensures that Google users will find your company on both Google Search and Google Maps, and have access to your address, phone number, and website.
GMB is all about local SEO and broadening your customer base locally. When your business appears on Google’s map during relevant user searches, those users can quickly determine if your location is close enough for them to make the trip. This initial determining factor helps convert users into customers, but there are a few more steps in-between, such as reading customer reviews, calling your business, and investigating your products or services. The bottom line is that your GMB listing will inform customers of all the pertinent information they will need.
One of the greatest determining factors that will help persuade consumers to visit your business is the average star rating that appears on your GMB page. We’re talking about customer ratings and reviews. Whether a prior customer leaves a review or a star rating, both feed into the overall star rating average that Google users will see when they discover your GMB listing. Consumers like to compare businesses by reading these reviews and judging the difference in ratings, which means that your five-star and high-star reviews will ultimately boost consumer confidence in your brand.
Even if a Google user decides not to visit your business, the fact that they found you in Google’s search results thanks to your GMB listing will help to increase their awareness about your brand. This could influence them to choose your business next time. Remember, Google My Business is all about increasing your company’s presence locally to attract local customers that will shop with your brand time and again. In terms of achieving this goal, there is no better free marketing tool on the internet than GMB.
Your business’s reputation matters, especially when you rely on local customers. An aspect of managing your Google My Business page is that you can read and respond to customer reviews, and future customers can see those interactions. Even if you receive a poor review, it’s possible to use the opportunity to improve your brand reputation. The key is to respond to the poor review in such a way that rectifies the complaint, or at least takes an honest step in that direction. Consumers don’t expect perfection, but they do expect professionalism, which you can demonstrate in moments like this. GMB makes reputation management easy.
Even though maintaining a GMB page might seem relatively passive, it’s actually extremely proactive when it comes to building trust with consumers. The trick here is to fully fill out your company’s information within your profile and provide as much detailed information as possible about your business’s policies, hours of operation, and other critical details that consumers are going to want to know. You can even go above and beyond by linking your business blog to your GMB page so that Google users can discover and read your articles, which we’ll examine in the next section of this blog post.
As we mentioned in the previous section, you can link your business blog to your GMB page in such a way that your blog posts will automatically publish to your Google My Business listing. But that’s not all you can do to help win over potential customers. GMB also allows you to add photos of your products, services, storefront, employees, and anything else you can think of. By including this kind of additional content to your GMB listing, you can further legitimize your brand and have a decent shot at beating out your corporate competition.
If you’re ready to get started with Google My Business, here are some links to assist you:
For an in-depth, step-by-step guide to help you set up your Google My Business page and start collecting valuable customer reviews, check out Making the Most Out of Google My Business.
Creating and managing a Google My Business page greatly increases the chances of your business appearing on the first SERP, which means that potential customers will discover and consider your company before they see your competitors.
Also, having a GMB page will guarantee that your business stands out from the countless eCommerce companies that appear online. Only businesses that have a physical location can use GMB. ECommerce businesses are not eligible, which is great news for all brick-and-mortar companies!
There’s no reason not to have a Google My Business listing. The only question is, are you going to create and manage your GMB page yourself, or would you like the digital marketing SEO strategists at FTx 360 to handle it for you?
FTx 360 offers a full suite of marketing solutions at affordable prices. Whether you’re interested in our consulting services or hiring us to manage all of your digital marketing needs, our team of experts can help grow your business, boost sales, and increase your revenue. Contact us to discover what our marketing agency can do for your brand.
The entire marketing industry was forced to make a huge shift when the coronavirus pandemic changed how consumers shop. Companies, both B2C and B2B, needed to quickly implement innovative marketing initiatives in order to retain their customers while accommodating sudden governmental mandates.
Consumers had new habits, and businesses that didn’t develop new marketing strategies took a big financial hit throughout 2020.
The timeless adage holds true–necessity is the mother of all invention–and the digital marketing sector certainly birthed a wealth of inventions that companies could use to survive. These innovations evolved swiftly and not all of them worked. But those that did, thanks to advances in marketing technologies, were tested and thoroughly vetted during 2020.
Marketers now have a fresh arsenal of digital marketing tools to use in 2021. Here is a list of all of the tried-and-true marketing strategies that resulted from the most tumultuous year in modern history. These marketing trends are here to stay, which is why you should implement them at your company as part of your digital marketing strategy.
Considered the best location-based marketing strategy for online marketers, Google My Business, or GMB, has been around for a few years now, but it has dramatically evolved over the course of 2020. If you’re unfamiliar, GMB is an online directory that provides Google users with a map of relevant businesses whenever they search locally. Since 46% of all Google searches are for the purposes of finding local businesses there is no downside to creating a GMB profile, especially because having one is completely free. For more on GMB, check out Making The Most Out Of Google My Business.
The number one reason that consumers abandoned certain brands, retailers, and businesses throughout 2020 was because of product availability, or rather, the lack of available products at a particular store. In other words, retaining customers boiled down to keeping shelves stocked, and more importantly, keeping customers informed about product availability, online order turn-around times, and how long it would take a retailer to replenish popular items. Communication goes a long way with today’s consumers, and retailers will have a better shot maintaining customer loyalty if they inform their customers of fluctuations in product availability.
Google Ad’s automatic bidding feature has been around since 2016. However, this automated advertising method gained real traction in 2020 when businesses had to downsize and modify their operations due to COVID-19 shutdowns in certain industries, especially the retail and service industries. Google’s auto bidding allows Google, rather than the marketer, to assess your ad campaigns for you and adjust your bids accordingly in real-time. By permitting Google’s A.I. to handle these adjustments, the marketer is freed up to optimize other aspects of their PPC campaigns’ performances. The ultimate outcome is that companies will end up spending less for their targeted advertising campaigns.
Shocking as it may seem, Google’s algorithms cannot yet pick up voice search SEO. But that doesn’t mean that marketers and business owners should hold off on implementing voice search as part of their overall digital marketing strategy. There has been a steady rise in Google users opting to speak, rather than type, their searches into Google. A whopping 45% of consumers have used a voice assistant on a smart speaker, whether using Alexa at home or their smartphone while out-and-about. Simply put, if there is an increasing number of consumers using this feature, then marketers should cater to that demographic.
When interactive content is offered on business websites and ECommerce stores, visitor engagement dramatically increases, which leads to rises in brand awareness and sales. Interactive website content includes dynamic product images, short videos, active blogs with an open comments section below each article, and the list goes on. What 2020 showed marketers was that static, text-heavy online content no longer holds web visitors’ attention. But when that same text content is broken up with graphics, GIFs, memes, info-tisements, and graphs, visitor engagement shoots through the roof. One of the heaviest hitters among all interactive content is the blog. By adding a blog to your website or ECommerce store, you will easily drive traffic to your website. For specific pointers, take a moment to read Creating A Remarkable Business Blog.
In recent years, “chatbots” have become a buzzword in the digital marketing community. Despite the fact that chatbots have technically been around longer than P.C.s, their current level of artificial intelligence far outshines what it used to be, and their modern-day capabilities put their former ones to shame. If your website or ECommerce store does not have a chatbot, you should seriously consider adding one. The A.I. that the average chatbot possesses in 2021 has been optimized for functionality, and can handle evolved levels of responsibility, from engaging in simple conversations to recommending products to completing complex transactions.
Does that conclude all of the marketing trends you can expect in 2021? Not at all! We’ve only scratched the surface, which is why we invite you to subscribe to our blog. We publish weekly articles on helpful topics such as Marketing Tricks That Can Help You Go Viral and Social Media Marketing Strategies.
All business brands, whether B2C or B2B, must implement a solid digital marketing strategy in 2021, and you can’t go wrong if your company’s strategy includes the forward-thinking trends we laid out in this article. But that doesn’t mean you should stop researching newly emerging trends.
Businesses that remain on the lookout for the next big marketing tools keep themselves ahead of the technology curve and a cut above their competition. Digital marketing is a constantly developing industry, which means that business owners should stay in the know, research new technologies, watch trends, and launch marketing initiatives that have been proven to work.
But don’t get intimidated if you aren’t tech savvy. You can always hire FTx 360 to manage your digital marketing. Our full suite of marketing solutions includes all of the creative services you will need to launch effective digital marketing campaigns that drive website traffic, increase revenue, and expand your brand’s digital footprint online.
The marketing strategists at FTx 360 have experience working with businesses of every industry. To discover all that our agency can do for you, check out our digital portfolio or contact us today.
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Does your company have a Google My Business page? Google My Business, or GMB for short, offers businesses a wonderful opportunity to rank on Google’s search results. When you create a GMB listing, your business and its location will appear on Google Maps, which means that anyone who is using Google to find a company like yours will see your business’ page. And the best part about GMB is that it’s completely free!
Setting up a GMB listing for your company is fast and easy, and once your listing is live, Google’s geographically specific algorithms will start recommending your business in location-based search results. Even if Google makes regular changes to its algorithmic rules, those changes won’t affect or exclude your listing when users search for businesses like yours in a specific city, town, or region.
One of the greatest benefits about GMB is that the content of your business’ page will grow. While your primary business information will remain the same for the most part, such as the address, phone number, hours of operation, and a link to your website, your page will expand as customers leave Google reviews for your business.
What this means is that in order to truly optimize your GMB listing, you will have to manage it by soliciting customer reviews and responding to them whether the review is positive or negative. You will also have to post business updates, adjust the listed hours of operation when necessary, and keep up with other maintenance as needed.
In this blog, we’ll walk you through the basics of establishing a GMB listing, as well as offer the best tips to help you get the most out of your presence on Google.
When you begin this process, following the steps below, don’t be alarmed if you discover your business is already listed on GMB. Oftentimes, this is the case and the business owner only needs to claim the preexisting listing.
Once you’ve completed the verification process, you’ll be able to beef up your listing with even more attractive information, starting with your business’ description and including photos and videos of your location, products, services, happy customers, and anything else you’d like to show visually.
Since this description appears when Google users search for businesses like yours, make every word count. You only have 750 characters to make a strong impression.
In addition to regularly uploading photos and videos as a way to optimize your GMB listing, it’s important to collect customer reviews so that your GMB page is always growing, staying fresh, and ranking high on Google’s search results. And when you have a new review, be sure to reply. It lets other Google users know that you’re involved in the customer service and customer satisfaction areas of your business.
GMB provides the following benefits to companies that create, maintain, and manage their business listings:
Want a digital marketing and SEO strategist to handle your GMB listing? FTx 360 offers a full suite of marketing solutions at affordable prices. Whether you’re interested in our consulting services or hiring us to manage all of your marketing needs, our team of experts can help your business grow. Contact us to learn more about our content marketing, social media marketing, and SEO marketing services.
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