Thirteen Google My Business Benefits and Why You’ll Want to Incorporate Them

Did you know that of the over 30 million businesses in America, only 44% of them have claimed their Google My Business profile? If you are one of the 44%, you’re missing out on free organic traffic that you could be receiving to your business from Google every day.

Are you losing potential clients or customers due to not having an optimized profile? Don’t let this happen to you, get your business claimed, and then optimize your profile to receive the maximum benefits from this amazing tool.

Don’t worry if you’re confused about where to start or how to optimize. We’ve got you covered. Check out these thirteen Google My Business benefits and how you can take advantage of them. 

1. Boost Local SEO

When it comes to local SEO, one of the biggest factors to ranking higher is optimizing your Google My Business listing. Simply having a GMB profile isn’t enough, you need to ensure that it is optimized to bring you the highest rankings.

There are three top factors to optimizing your GMB profile. The first is to verify your business. This includes having a 4-digit PIN mailed to you so that Google knows you’re a legitimate business with a legitimate address. 

The second is to ensure all of the information is filled out completely. When you complete your GMB profile, many of the fields will say they’re optional, be sure to fill out as many as are relevant to your business and keep this information up to date continually. 

Finally, you want to get reviews. People want to see reviews before they purchase an item, visit a restaurant, or choose a service provider. Encourage your customers to fill out a review by offering coupons or some other incentive.

2. Google 3-Pack

You know you need to rank on the first page of Google to get found online these days. Nobody looks at page 3 in the listings. If you’re a small legal practice however, how can your blog and website compete for terms with the bigger national firms?

Those larger practices have an entire staff dedicated to optimizing their website, but you have local SEO. As mentioned earlier, your Google My Business profile can help you rank higher in terms of local SEO.

One way to get on the first page of Google is to make it into the Google 3-pack. Some ways to stand out in the crowded field of local businesses is to make your profile as detailed as possible. Yes, your name, address, and phone number are vital, but so is having a captivating description and choosing the most relevant category.

3. Google Map Searches

Many potential customers will use their Google Map app to find local businesses near them. When they tap on restaurants, will you come up at the top of the list? What features will they find when they tap on your business?

You can include your menu of products or services offered. You can include your hours of operation, a hyperlinked phone number so they can call you directly from the map, and if you’re able to, you can offer direct messaging from the Google Map app as well. 

All of these extra features will help you stand out when most of your potential clients have several options to choose from.

4. Increase Traffic

Remember the old movie quote “Build it and they will come?” Well, that doesn’t work in the online world. You want to increase your sales and build your customer list. To do this, you need to increase traffic to your website. 

As mentioned previously, getting onto the elusive first page of Google can be incredibly difficult. However, getting into the map pack will ensure that your business comes up on page one every time someone searches for “chiropractors near me.”

An optimized profile will ensure that more potential clients will find your website and increase traffic. When your website is optimized to convert that traffic into email subscribers, it becomes easier to increase your sales and improve your bottom line.

5. Get Reviews and Improve Client Trust

As we said earlier, potential clients want to see reviews before they give their patronage to a business. You need to find an incentive to offer your current customers to write a review. One way is to offer a coupon. For example, a juice and smoothie bar might offer a free smoothie to everyone who can show their review at the counter.

Similarly, a chiropractor might offer 10% off the next visit for any client that can show they left a review. Whatever incentive you can offer will improve your chance of getting more reviews.

Future potential clients and customers trust these reviews left by former customers and will give their business to the place with the most and best reviews. Be careful, you can’t pay for reviews, but you can encourage your current clients to leave a review. This will help increase your ranking and improve customer trust. 

6. Increase Engagement with Customers

One of many advantages of Google is that they offer your business many touchpoints with which to build customer interactions. These engagements will set you apart from the crowd. 

When you fully utilize all the benefits of your GMB profile, your business can go miles beyond everyone else who only enters their name, address, phone number, and hours of business. 

You’re a smart business owner to also include professional photos, short videos, menus, posts, messaging options, and countless other features offered in your profile. It’s not enough to simply claim your business in GMB, you need to go the extra mile and engage with your customers.

7. Increase in Sales

When you take the time (or hire a professional) to optimize your profile and engage with your clients, you will see an increase in sales on your website.

Customers want to do business with brands they trust and feel connected with. Potential clients say they are 59% more likely to do business with brands they trust, and a whopping 92% say brands aren’t listening online.

It can be nearly impossible for businesses to monitor all the forms of digital marketing and communication. That’s why you need to hire a professional who is experienced across multi-channel touchpoints with your current and potential customers.  

8. Easily Include Your Phone Number

There are 3.5 billion smartphones in use around the world today. Over 51% of those surveyed say they access the internet solely on their smartphones, with this number predicted to increase to almost 75% by 2025. 

A phone number in your GMB profile that people can use to call you directly from either a Google search or Map search means more customers. When you can provide fewer steps for customers to reach you, you’ll increase conversions. 

You want to make it as easy as possible for customers to find you, and a clickable phone number does that.

9. Rank Higher in SERP

When it comes to digital marketing, one of your key performance indicators should be to increase your rank in the search engine result pages. An important way to help your business increase your visibility online is to create your GMB profile.

When you give Google this information, it knows that you’re a legitimate business and is more likely to recommend you by increasing your rankings. This will help not only your map pack ranking, but your blog post rankings as well.

All your digital marketing efforts will compound to help you get found by your potential clients. A quality digital marketing specialist will be able to help you across the many touchpoints between your potential customers and your business.  

10. Stand Out in a Crowded Field

There are over 30 million small businesses in the United States. How can you stand out in a crowded field?

The answer is in your Google My Business profile. As mentioned above, only 44% of businesses have claimed their GMB profile, and we would argue a much smaller percentage have optimized their profile.

By taking advantage of this tool offered by Google, you can help your business stand out online. This is why Google is good for businesses, you can use it to your advantage to build a uniform brand online. Offer your customers many ways to find you online, GMB might not be as sexy as Instagram, but it is just as valuable to stand out in the crowd.

11. Cost-Effective Marketing

When it comes to advertising, you can start to bleed money in your marketing budget. When it comes to organic traffic though, you can see exponential ROI for your time and money.

By setting up your profile, optimizing it, and then monitoring it regularly, you can utilize this free tool from Google to bring you continual organic traffic for years to come.

When it comes to cost-effective digital marketing, your business can benefit from the many Google products including GMB, Google Analytics, and Google retargeting.  

12. Free Menu Tool

Do you run a restaurant or coffee shop? Did you know that you can upload your menu to your GMB profile and even sort it by category? Do you offer services online such as a chiropractor’s office or consulting firm? You can also submit your services and pricing to the menu feature. 

Are you an online eCommerce shop? List your top-selling items along with a brief description to entice click-throughs from your GMB profile to your website. 

Take advantage of the many features in your GMB profile. Don’t stop just because you entered the basic required information. People want more information and you can give it to them by listing your products or services in the menu tool.

13. Free Organic Traffic

When it comes to getting sales each month, you can’t beat free advertising. Every day that your website brings you new customers and sales is another day you don’t have to pay for ineffective outbound marketing tactics such as television commercials or billboard ads. 

Digital marketing allows you to use the power of the internet to bring you new leads every day. People are searching for the products or services you offer. You just need to get your business in front of them. You can do that with your GMB profile.

Maximize Your Google My Business Benefits

A quality GMB profile, along with a robust website, will signal to Google that you’re a legitimate business and move you up in their rankings. So, if you want to get to the coveted first page of Google, you need an optimized Google My Business profile.

Additionally, your GMB profile is not a one-and-done chore to cross off your list. It needs to be continually updated as things change.

Customer comments and reviews are imperative to get featured, but you need to monitor and respond to them. To get the most Google My Business benefits that you can from your GMB profile, you need to be regularly active online.

You can outsource these tasks using Google My Business user roles. This allows you to designate an employee or consultant certain levels of capabilities to make changes to your profile without giving out your personal account information.

Utilize this feature to outsource your GMB profile optimization and monitoring today.

Enjoy These Many Benefits Today

We’ve covered a lot about the importance of optimizing your GMB profile. There are several Google My Business benefits available to you through free online searches. 

Take advantage of this valuable tool today. If you don’t have the time to learn as much as you can about GMB, then outsource this vital task to a specialist.

You need to be sure you can optimize your listing, and continually monitor it. At Five Channels, we can help with both. Schedule your free digital marketing review and see how we can help you optimize your online presence today.