Google Maps – where success is located?
As is by all accounts already known, e-commerce is a maturing tree with more and more ripe fruit growing on it. This does not mean, however, that older trees are less attractive. Customers have not forgotten about stationary shopping. How to attract customers using Google Maps?
The customer is the ultimate goal of any corporation, as it generates profits for the corporation and ultimately determines its existence. With the pandemic, yes we have moved faster a large part of our lives to the network, but who of us does not like to try on clothes in a fitting room, go to a restaurant, or just walk after an 8-hour marathon of staring at the screen. This effect is also enhanced by the location of the premises, the time of year or. Stationary stores do not have to be afraid of lack of customers, especially if they properly manage their resources in promotion. One way might be to use your location in Google Maps. Marketing with Coffee published an article written by Miłosz Wójcik from Appchance, who is also an MTC partner and a member of the MTA Competition Chapter. The text makes it clear what needs to be done to leverage the geolocation potential of our store.
E-commerce is only 10 percent of. market
The value of the e-commerce sector is indeed growing year on year, but it is still a small part of the business compared to the share of sales in stationary outlets, which the CSO estimates at 89.8 percent. value of the whole sales market in Poland. So do not panic, because as you can see not all store windows are websites. Here, in this very place it is worth mentioning that it is worth to diversify your profits, and the presence on the Internet can be crucial, not only to build competitive advantage and expand your offer, but also in case of uncertain future, after all, who knows if we will not live to see COVID 2.0 or some nuclear bomb will not fall on our sources of income. Although some negative scenes can coruminate in our minds to skyrocketing proportions of absurdity, so according to Murphy’s Laws, if something bad is going to happen, you have to be sure it will happen. Of course, not all black scenarios will always happen, but as they say – the safe is always insured, and your head will be calmer.
You are not on Google, you are not there at all!
Undoubtedly, there is something in this! Presence on the Internet is mandatory, at least for those who value the development of their business, regardless of whether our store directly sells on the Internet or not. The truth is that the more quality communication channels we have, the greater the profits we will see. Online absenteeism is like sentencing yourself. The death penalty raises many debates and has many opponents. From a marketing point of view such a punishment is the lack of a store on the Internet. It is recommended to have your own website to support SEO activities, but even the use of Google My Company profile is a minimum to improve the effectiveness of your promotional activities.
Google Maps in numbers
According to Hosting Tribunal, Google Maps is the most popular travel search engine, reaching 23 million downloads in 2020. At that time it was used by over 150 million users a month and there were almost five million active websites in Maps. Generally, according to Google itself, it is used by over a billion users worldwide. The results of the Megapanel survey conducted by Gemius in January of the previous year state that Google Maps was then used by over 63% of Polish internet users, which is estimated at just under 20 million Poles. The number is impressive, but it should not be, considering the insanely usefulness of this tool in the everyday life of each of us, especially outside our homes. Google is constantly updating its resources, which significantly reduces the risk of problems down the road
How to use Google locations to increase sales in your stationary store?
Business card
Miłosz Wójcik suggests an increase in visibility, which can be achieved by using Google’s My Business tool, precisely. – Here it all starts with a business card – read online. Creating a business card is free and uncomplicated, but you need to put some effort into it.
A complete business card should have accurate contact details, information about opening hours, photos of the premises, categories of activity.
When creating a business card, the most important thing is to make sure that our company does not already have one, because algorithms do not tolerate the existence of more than one business card for a selected location. If a business card exists you can delegate the rights to it to third parties. You cannot break Google’s guidelines by entering false information. The first map portal.pl lists as one of the biggest mistakes when creating a business card the lack of a connection between a company’s business card in Google and the corresponding website, so the algorithms do not connect a given place with the owner’s website. The correct creation of a business card is important from the point of view of the customer, who is more likely to look at verified locations, with appropriate signage, information and photos.
Reviews
The essence of reviews is to assure visitors of the quality of service resulting from the choice of a particular place. In the mainstream there is even an observation that when a couple does not know where to go out to dinner, they check reviews of the establishment. Reviews are visible primarily on Google Maps, where they are a second showcase of our business. It is worth considering the way of service, so that the customer himself in admiration gave us 5 stars, but interesting flyers or posters encouraging to evaluate the premises also work. Since CTAs on landing pages can increase sales, and YouTubers are constantly asking for likes, logic seems to support such action, especially since Google is able to recommend much more highly rated locations than others. So encourage your customers to share their opinions. The operation of algorithms is similar to LinkedIn or Facebook – the more comments, photos and stars, the more people will see your business card on the map. A multitude of opinions in a snowball effect will attract other.
Google business card key in Customer Journey?
A business card informs users about the company, its location, website or products, but also gives knowledge and opportunities to solve the problem encountered. Entering a phrase repair of shoes kraków, cuisine asiatica olsztyn, or nightclub warszawa allows the companies to be displayed in search results, which are the answer to the given need.
Here lies the role of SEO, so that the business card was displayed on the appropriate keywords and was in high position. Positive reviews and encouraging photos can make a customer contact or go directly to a place. 75%. customers searching for something local on a smartphone, visits the selected location within 24 hours. In turn 60% of smartphone users contacts a company that has been displayed in search results, reads.
A business card can be an effective sales tool, but poorly thought-out business card management can hurt by driving away new customers, who will choose other establishments with better photos and more favorable reviews.
Optimizing your business card for Google
SEO is the essence of search engine based internet marketing. Maps is also a search engine and an integral part of Google, which makes things much easier. Experts indicate that the high ranking of our business card will be influenced by high recognition, high relevance of the query and distance from the user.
Recognition is for Google the number of links leading to your company, the number of shares, the total number of reactions and comments about it, which is found in the search engine will affect the recognition of the brand as recognizable. This is where a website would come in handy, which in addition to its information and sales function would act as a buffer for crawlers who would better link your position to your website, which is much easier to position. Equally important factor, or maybe even more, are comments about your company placed in reviews and stars, which improve visibility. It is important to define our offer, so we can compete with the competition on the level of keywords typed by customers. Google supports giving precise information about the profile of your business by hinting at what type of content it expects from a company of a certain type.
Google uses location for more precise advertising
All we have mentioned are actions aimed at improving the organic search results in Google Maps. While we are on the subject of location, we can read in Google’s Privacy Policy that search engines use our location (if we have agreed to it) in order to select the appropriate marketing message. Here we can find a hint to think about paid promotional activities. It will be a way out for skilled players who want to measure and scale their online activities – Google also uses data from Location history in anonymized and aggregated form to to help advertisers check, How often online ad campaigns help increase traffic to stores and stationary outlets. – we read.
Google Maps in a nutshell
When it comes to Google Maps, the most important thing is to complete the business card in detail and accurately, add a description of the company and expand its category. The data from the business card should correspond to those on our websites, if this is not the case you need to update it. Customers who often leave good reviews are a guarantee of a good position on the map, but also the return of both them and the visit of new ones. Thoughtful “begging” It can be very helpful to ask for feedback. In order for the customers not to feel left out, you have to respond to their opinion. This process also improves the visibility of a given comment. You must not forget about SEO and maintaining posts for your business card that update the situation of your business. Of course, not everything on the Internet is under our control. People, technology, algorithms, but also the location itself can play tricks. It is important to use the tools given to us in such a way as to improve your situation on the market.