Google My Business

What is Google My Business (GMB)?

GMB is a Google tool that helps your customers easily find important information about your business, such as your locations, business hours, products, services, website, directions and much more, depending on the level of completion you have on your GMB listings. You can find it at the top of Google’s search results page as a result of local searches. 

Although Google will automatically create your profile, making sure your business information is accurate, consistent and up to date in GMB is key to a successful online presence that drives visitors and customers to both your physical locations and digital channels.

GMB is an organic channel that, when optimized can drive extraordinary value to your business and brand.

Why should you care about Google my Business?

Your GMB listing is the first thing your customers and potential customers see when searching for your brand online. This means it’s important to make sure that key information about your business is accurate and updated. Also, an abandoned looking GMB listing will lose you some credibility and reputation points, and even business opportunities.

A complete GMB listing:

• has 7X more clicks than sub-optimized listing;
• is 2X more likely to affect the company’s reputation;
• is 38% more likely to attract local visitors;
• is 29% more likely to attract a money-spending public.

There are additional benefits to leveraging this channel:

– Communicate your products, services and value propositions in a stand out format, at the top of Google’s search results page, without the need for media investment
– Optimize one of the most important SEO factors (local SEO)
– Contribute to your brand’s local notoriety, communicating directly with customers in specific locations
– Share your location-based promotions, offers and events
– Get local insights and measure the return on the GMB optimization, cross referencing business metrics with other insights such as notoriety, quality of service (ratings and reviews), and others.

This means keeping and optimizing your presence is fundamental for effective drive-to-store, has a huge impact on your local search performance and reputation, and can have a huge impact on your local sales.

What can you do with Google My Business?

GMB has been expanding its features and it is now possible to have highly effective communication through this tool, as well as great data and insights you can act upon.

In terms of communication, you can divide GMB into two levels of sophistication: the basic level, where you fill in a minimum amount of information, and the advanced level that allows you to leverage this tool as a revenue generating channel.

The basic information includes your company name, address, business hours, contact, website, location(s) photos, payment methods available and other standard data. 

An advanced approach includes adding your product and services catalogue, special offers, promotions, events, articles, updates (for example, business hours changes or safety changes due to COVID-19), posts, news, reviews management, and even direct messaging.

GMB gained even more relevance due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as it facilitates organic communication with customers, locally, with in-time information on business hours, product availability, service changes, safety information and so on. Just what consumers were looking for before leaving their homes. According to Google, 54% of people are searching for establishments’ new business hours.

How can Karma help you leverage Google My Business?

Karma brings know-how, experience and technology together to help you make the most of the Google My Business tool, from an integrated vision of this channel’s maximum potential to its ongoing optimization operation.

• Setup and management of your GMB: from initial mapping to ongoing optimization and reporting.
• Optimized bulk management: full fledge GMB management solution based on APIs. We are the first agency to design an automation solution for GMB management and optimization.
• Internal operation dedicated to GMB integrated management, using technology to maximize this channel’s efficacy, and an experienced team to ensure and validate information accuracy, to develop copy and creatives, ensure adequate review management, etc.
• Digital intelligence: a proper and continuous management of the GMP presence will generate great data and insights regarding local presence. We can help you organize and make these outputs actionable.

You can also count on our experience with +1000 listings and GMB projects with a high level of complexity and geographical reach.