5 Ways Local Businesses Can Get More Out of Google

In today’s world where international, far-reaching companies have such a large share of the retail market presence, it’s easy for local business owners to get duped into believing that they can’t compete.
However, there’s still a large segment of the buying population that believes in supporting local businesses first and foremost when possible.  The key for businesses reaching these local customers can often be found in learning to make the most out of their presence in Google online search engines.
Many customers, when searching for a good restaurant, coffee shop, bookstore or other business in their city or town turn to Google as their first source for available business information.  If your business’ information on Google search pages is missing or sparse, however, you just might lose that potential customer to a competitor who has more thorough information available. Here are 5 ways local businesses can get more out of Google, and use it to help become more visible to local and visiting customers.

Locate, Customize and Maintain Your Google Business Page

Any type of a search for your type of business or any other business type in your town will bring up a list of competing stores and businesses in the coordinating market.  The Google Business page for your particular company has to be up-to-date, accurate and full of pertinent information if you want it to draw potential clients to your store or company as opposed to your competitor’s business.
Your Google business page should contain your business hours, contact information, location and plenty of positive reviews that encourage people to take a chance on taking advantage of the products and services your company has to offer. By customizing your Google business page with a photo of your store or of your logo, and by personalizing your business page’s information to attract the type of customer you want to attract, you have a better chance of seeing potential customers walk through your door after finding you on your Google business page.

Verify Your Google Location Information is Accurate

Too many times Google business reviews say things like, “I tried to find this place but couldn’t.” or “The location for this store is WAY off – it’s six block away from what their page says!” Avoid turning potential customers away by having inaccurate location information on your business page. Make sure Google sites have accurate mappings of your company location so that when a potential client wants to visit, it won’t take a miracle for them to find your store or business. By doing an occasional check of the location information for your business on Google, you can quickly correct any errors, before a wrong location ends up turning an exasperated customer away.
Make Sure Contact Information is Easily Located
There’s nothing more frustrating for potential clients than wanting to visit a business but not being able to contact the business with their questions about hours, services and the like. When assessing your Google business page, be sure that your contact information is displayed prominently, clearly and accurately.  If a potential client wants to contact you in a hurry to find out if you have what they need, they’ll be more likely to count you as a potential vendor if they can easily find your contact information. If not, they’ll simply move on to the next option until they find a business that they can reach easily. Don’t lose out on potential business simply because a client couldn’t locate your contact information. Instead, make sure your phone number and address information is easily seen and accessible to potential customers.
Start and Maintain an SEO-Optimized Online Presence
Even for customers who prefer the coziness and visual attraction of the brick-and-mortar local business, online presence is important. Online advertising is one of the top ways businesses attract customers in today’s device-driven world, and if you aren’t maintaining an SEO-optimized online presence in the form of a website, a blog and social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter, you are potentially driving away hundreds or thousands of customers.
What does an effective online presence look like? It starts with valuable and engaging content. When searching for a business, readers want to see a professional website, complete with engaging images, accurate and helpful information, frequent blog postings and entertaining content.  On Facebook, clients want to follow businesses who are actively posting information, education and too-good-to-pass up deals on products and services. On both Twitter and Facebook, followers are drawn to businesses that provide valuable information and work to truly connect and form relationships with customers and potential customers.
SEO optimization is another key to a successful online presence for your business. By learning to maximize your company’s “searchability” through appropriate keywords, you can help potential clients to more easily locate your business. In order to find the right keywords to reach your target audience, utilize a free keyword e-book, and from there, build your content around the keywords that most effectively reach your target audience.
By making your website and Facebook site SEO friendly, web-searching customers have a better chance of finding your business. A prominent and smartly-created online presence is key to the growth of any business in today’s app-driven, device-driven world.
Utilize Google’s Call-Only Campaigns
Google’s Call-only ad campaigns, introduced in February of 2015, provide Google searchers with an immediate option to call businesses as opposed to simply clicking on a link to their website. This form of advertising allows businesses to connect with potential clients immediately on the phone, which gives them a better chance of winning the customer’s business quickly instead of leaving clients with the option to simply put the business and its potential offerings in the back of their mind, or leaving them with the option to move on quickly to a competitor’s site. Call-only campaigns are Google’s newest form of advertising created to help businesses have a better chance of winning customers through successful advertising. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to reach inquiring customers quickly.
Local businesses will give themselves a leg up on the competition by using Google’s well-researched advertising tools in order to have a prominent online presence that helps draw in local customers who may not know about their business as well as visiting tourists who are looking for the city’s best stores and companies. By utilizing all of Google’s advertising tools, you can help your business to reach many more potential clients than you would without the vast reach of the Internet.

5 Facebook Features You Probably Didn’t Know Existed

 
If you’re managing a Facebook page for your business, the chances are good that you are missing out on some great tools and features. While setting up a page for your business is easy, Facebook doesn’t offer a ton of guidance about some of the things you can do with a business page. Some of the tools they offer can help make managing your page easier, while others can be used to make your ads more effective.
Importing Email Contacts
This feature provides a quick and easy way to let your existing customers know about your Facebook page. If you have an email list or client database, you can import it into Facebook and send invitations to everyone on your list asking them to “Like” your page. To use this feature, all you need to do is click on the ellipsis that appears next to the SHARE button at the top of your Facebook Timeline.
Then click the “Invite Friends” option and it will give you the opportunity to import your email list from a variety of places, including:

• Autoresponder sites like Constant Contact and MailChimp
• Email providers like Outlook and Yahoo
• AOL Instant Messenger

It is important to note that you are limited to importing 5,000 addresses per day. If you have a huge database you may need to do it in batches. You can select specific names from a list or choose the whole group. That means it’s easy to eliminate clients who have already liked your page and focus on those who have not.
 

Using Free Stock Photographs in Facebook Ads

If you have ever gone looking for stock photographs to use for your business, you know that they can sometimes be expensive. One nice perk that Facebook offers advertisers is free access to a huge database of stock photographs courtesy of Shutterstock.
You can access this feature when you first set up your ad, or going to your Manage Ads page and clicking “Edit Ad”. You will see three options for images:

• Upload image
• Choose Image from Library
• Stock Images

You may already have images to use in your ads, but if you don’t this is a good way to make your ad more appealing. Research shows that people respond more strongly to images than they do to text alone, and a compelling picture can do a lot in terms of getting people to click on your ad. However, it is important to make sure that you check that the image you choose meets Facebook’s guidelines.
 

Schedule Facebook Posts in Advance

Many companies use social media management tools like Hootsuite to manage their social media content. However, you don’t need to pay for an online tool to schedule Facebook posts. The ability to do so is built right into your Facebook page.
Like many of Facebook’s features, this one requires a little detective work to find. To access it, click the “Publishing Tools” tab at the very top of your Timeline. When you do, you will see a menu on the left with an option to schedule posts.
You can draft your posts and specify the date and time you want them published. You have all of the same options you would have when sharing a post in real time. That means you can include links to websites and articles, as well as embedding videos and photographs.
The nice thing about this feature is that it means you can be sure you will always have new content on your page, even on weekends or when you are on vacation.
 
Check the Relevance of Your Ad
One of the nicest things about social media advertising is that you can get feedback, in real time, about how your ad is performing. With Facebook, you get a notification every time someone new follows your page, and you also get information about the number of people your posts reach. These are important things to know because they can help you identify the content that matters the most to your audience.
A relatively new thing that you can find on Facebook is a score that rates the relevance of your ad. It takes into account things like comments, video views, clicks, likes, and shares. If people are telling Facebook to hide your ad, that can decrease its relevance. You can access this feature from your Manage Ads page.
What’s the benefit of tracking your ad’s relevance? Sometimes companies don’t make adequate use of Facebook’s demographics and psychographics when targeting their ads. If a large number of people are telling Facebook that your ad is not relevant to them, it may be time to take a look at who is seeing it. Your ad spending won’t do you any good if you’re wasting it on people who aren’t interested.
 
Add Pages to Watch
Every skilled marketer knows the importance of monitoring the competition. Regardless of your industry, there are other companies online who are in direct competition with you. Many of them undoubtedly maintain a presence on Facebook.
Facebook gives you an easy – and free – way to monitor the competition’s social media activity. To access it, all you need to do is go to the Facebook Insights page and scroll down to the bottom.
You can add up to five pages and track things such as the number of likes they get or how often they post new content. These are helpful things to know. If your competition is posting new content twice a day and you’re only posting a few times a week, you may need to increase the frequency of your posts to keep up with them.
All of the above tools are free and very easy to use. Facebook is constantly adding new tools and features, and keeping up with them can be tricky. The features mentioned here are ones you would be unlikely to stumble upon unless you made the effort to scroll through all of your ad management tools to see what you had missed. Using them is a good way to make sure you are getting the most bang for your Facebook advertising buck.