How To Use Google My Business To Get More Customers

Small businesses and entrepreneurs are always on the lookout for proven strategies that they can utilise to attract more customers to their businesses. In this post, I will show you how to use a free tool called Google My Business to get more visits to your website or landing page, more calls to your phone numbers, and ultimately, more sales and business deals. But first, I have to explain what Google My Business is.

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Get the entire content on how to use ‘google my business’ all in video format. Watch the video below!

What Is Google My Business

Have you ever heard of Google Map? Google map is a free service by Google that allows users to search for businesses, addresses, offices, parks, restaurants, and everything else in-between. Apart from the Google Map app available on mobile, users can also search via the Google Map online platform, or search natively within Google Search.

So how is this important to your desire to attract more customers? When customers are searching for businesses like yours on Google Map, if you are not on the Google My Business Platform, you might be missing out on opportunities to attract new customers to your business!

Google My Business is a free and easy-to-use tool for businesses and organizations to manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Maps. To help customers find your organisation, and to tell them your story, you can set up your business on the platform. Sometimes, your business might appear on the platform already; in that case, you can claim and edit your business information.

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How To Setup A Google My Business Profile

Create a Google account (skip this step if you already have a Google account)

• Visit business.google.com
• Click on “Add Your Business to Google”
• Input your business name and choose your business category
• Next, you will be asked if you have a physical location that customers can visit; choose “yes” and click next
• On the next page, input your address details and click on “Next”
• Next, you will be asked if you serve customers outside of your chosen location. Choose the appropriate answer and submit
• After that, you will be prompted to enter your contact information, input your contact phone number and your website address. If you don’t have a website, you can either choose not to input a website address or get a free website created for you by Google using your contact information
• Next, you will choose your preferred verification method. Kindly make sure that you have access to the verification tool that you choose because a code will be sent there.
• After that, you will be prompted to add other information including your opening days and hours, business description, and other relevant details. Please go ahead and fill in those details appropriately and submit

Congratulations! Your business is now on Google!

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How To Optimise Your Google My Business Profile

Having your business on Google My Business is the first step towards attracting more customers to your business, but it is not the final step. To truly harness the possibilities that abound with a GMB profile, you need to optimise your business listing. Thankfully, optimising your GMB listing is not as difficult as it sounds. Take the following steps to optimise your business listing on Google and ultimately attract more customers.

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Fill In Your Whole Information

The first step towards making sure that your prospective customers easily discover your Google My Business profile is by making sure that you input all your information on your GMB profile. Prospective customers search with intentional keywords, so make sure that you provide them with all the information that they might need. For example, a customer might be searching with the keyword “pharmacies near me that are currently open” and if you don’t add your opening hours, you may miss the chance to be shown to a prospective customer.

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Use The Right Keywords

Secondly, you want to make sure that you are using the right keywords in your GMB profile. A foolproof to work around this strategy is by searching for businesses like yours, and taking note of all the keywords they use in their profile, then using the same keyword to optimise your own GMB profile.

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Upload Photos

See Google My Business as a sort of social media platform for businesses. So with that thinking, you’d understand that you need to share a profile photo and a cover photo. However, if you want to achieve more results with your GMB profile, you need to share more photos on your GMB profile. Consider sharing pictures that show your location, your products and services, and other important aspects of your business. Not only do photos help add a personal touch to your business, but research also shows that images help increase conversions by as much as 77%.

Here’s how you can upload pictures to your GMB profile:

• Visit your Google My Business profile.
• Open the location you’d like to manage (if you have multiple locations).
• Click Photos from the menu.
• Choose the type of photo that you’d like to add.
• Upload your photo from your computer or choose the one you’ve already uploaded.

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Encourage Customers To Leave Reviews

Another ranking factor that Google uses to show businesses to customers who search is the reviews that customers leave. Obviously, Google has not come out to say that ratings affect ranking, however, they have made it clear that they use the relevance of a GMB listing when deciding which businesses to show to a searcher.

So, make sure that you encourage customers who have had a positive experience with your business to leave reviews on your GMB listing.

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Respond To Reviews

Encouraging customers to leave reviews on your GMB profile is the first half of the game. The second half involves you responding to customer reviews and inquiries.

If you have an active GMB profile, chances are that some customers will leave reviews and inquiries about your business on the profile. If you don’t respond to reviews and questions on your profile, you might be sending the wrong signal to Google which may result in a lower ranking for your business. So, make sure that you are actively responding to reviews on your GMB profile.

Post Special Offers To Stimulate Visits

Finally, you want to periodically post special offers and deals on your GMB profile. This will surely help you keep your current customers engaged while opening the doors for new customers to patronise your business.

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Conclusion

Google My Business is an amazing opportunity for small businesses and entrepreneurs to attract high-quality traffic to their websites. It is also a great way to get more phone calls as well as store visits. If you follow the steps we share in this post, you will be on your way to attracting new customers and making more sales. Let us know in the comments section if this article is valuable to you!

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