Get Help With Your GMB Management

Read Time: 5 minutes

Google My Business (GMB) is a necessity for all businesses nowadays, especially as we recover from the knock of COVID-19.  Your GMB listing contains information users find important, such as location, phone number, hours of operation, and service areas.  Additional information about your services and products should also be added to your listing. GMB management is important for keeping this information up-to-date and showing Google your listing is active

What Is Google My Business?

Google My Business is another way to get your business in front of Google users.  It provides information to your potential customers in one area without them having to navigate through your website. Your Google My Business Listing displays in a couple different areas. All of them help your business get noticed. They include the Local 3-Pack in Search Results, Google Maps, and even a panel in the search results when users search for your business.

Google My Business works alongside Google Maps. A key difference between having a Google My Business Listing and a Google Maps Listing is that Google My Business provides customers with the information necessary to do business with you while only having a Google Maps listing will just provide directions to your business.

For Example:

Go to Google.com and type in a business name, Connectica LLC.  Do you see the panel on the right side of the page dedicated to Connectica? That is our Google My Business Listing knowledge panel.  Now go back to the search bar and type in a service, SEO Company near me.  You should now see a map with three listings below it.  Those listings are the Local 3-Pack and are Google My Business listings.

If you go to Google Maps and type in a service, it will display search results on the left of the page.  Google My Business listings will display here with more info than the maps listings.  As mentioned above, Maps listings will only have a link to directions, while Google My Business will have detailed information about the business. So, alongside having your website display in Google Search Results, Google My Business is a great way to increase your business’ exposure to internet users.

In a nutshell, optimizing and leveraging the power of great GMB management is one of the best ways to be seen on Google.

What Is GMB Management?

By listing your business on GMB for free, you are able to showcase some of your offerings and contact details as a business profile in the GMB management toolkit. The aim of this is to drive more engagement to your website, product and services, and to assist customers as they search for you.

GMB management is continuously updating, optimizing, and showing activity on your listing.  You want to make sure you fill out all relevant fields for your business, including a description, services, products, etc. Remember, the more info the better as long as it is relevant.

This is not a “fill out the fields and then forget about it,” type of tool.  Google wants to see activity to show the listing is still active and up-to-date.  Though most of the business information and fields in the listing profile are static information and do not change often, there are other ways to consistently update your listing.

• Images

  Images are a great way to keep your listing active and updated. Take photos of your work, products, employees, etc. and post them to your GMB listing. If you have a bunch of images, and you don’t take them often, spread out the posting dates rather than posting them all at once. In fact, we recommend uploading at least one image each week. Tip: you can also upload videos up to 30 seconds long.

• Posts

  Posts are also a great way to keep your listing active. Posts can be about anything, from blog posts to specials and events. This is another area that should be updated on a weekly basis. Two posts will display at a time without users having to scroll so we recommend 1-2 posts per week, which works out since they expire after 7 days. Posts will last longer if they are dated – such as an event.

Why Is This Important For Your Business?

There are a few elements embedded in the process of managing and nurturing leads through your GMB account.

Some of these steps include the following:

Share Valuable Details About Your Business

There is no need to drive potential customers crazy as they try to search for information about your company. Your GMB account makes all the details (such as a map, contact details, opening hours, etc.) abundantly clear to searching customers. They might not even need to call you to find out what time you open before their feet walk through the door. Keeping the information easy to find and access means less frustration for potential customers.

You can also use posts on your GMB listing to share information about sales and special events. This is a great way to promote these events to users searching for your product or service. As mentioned above, if you create a post for a sale or event that has an end date to it, the post will remain until the listed end date. This means you do not have to re-post about it every 7 days.

Engage With Potential Customers

There is nothing better than engaging with customers and potential customers within your online presence. Everything is moving into the digital world at a rapid pace. The sooner you can get comfortable talking to clients online the better!

Google My Business offers several ways to engage with potential and even current customers: 

Q&A

There is a Question & Answer section within your GMB listing. This allows users to ask a question. When this happens, you will receive an email that a question has been asked on your listing. Don’t wait too long to provide an answer as this particular section allows anybody on Google to answer the question. Make sure you pay attention and engage in this section. It’s important that the answers to the questions are correct.

Reviews

Reviews are incredibly important. They are trust factors for potential customers. When customers leave reviews to your GMB Listing, you have the option to post a response to their review. This is especially important when receiving a bad review. You may not be able to make everyone happy. But! You can show people how you handle negative situations through your response.

We always recommend responding to all reviews, positive and negative to stay engaged with your customers.

Messaging

With messaging turned on, customers can message you directly from your Google My Business Listing.

Insights & Analytics

Google My Business allows you to track data about your listing. This includes: how customers find you, how you compare to businesses like yours with photos and photo views, where your listing is seen, and customer actions from the GMB listing. This information provides great insight into how your listing is performing and can be very helpful, especially when optimizing your listing.

For example, if you see competitors have more images than you, you can up the number of images you upload each week.

Free & Easy SEO

If you don’t have the biggest budget for SEO, that’s okay. Google My Business is a great start and will build more traction than you might initially realize. You just have to make sure you keep it optimized for best results.

One Less Thing To Worry About!

At Connectica, we have the capacity, knowledge and expertise to apply the very best GMB management practices to your business. Remember, it’s not only about setting the account and profile up. You will need to continue to manage it well in order to get the best results. Let us help!

GMB Management Experts In Fort Lauderdale

GMB management is not something that you can setup and then forget about. It needs to be managed in order to be effective. We are equipped with a team of experts and who are just a phone call away. Contact Connectica today at 877-816-2259 for help with your GMB management process today and get yourself seen on the internet!