With their hands in practically almost all aspects of business, it’s no surprise Google has created a tool for business owners to manage their business’ online presence. Google My Business (GMB) is a great tool to help customers easily find your business and understand your product and services.

What is Google My Business (GMB)?

Google My Business (GMB) is a free business listing software from Google enables business owners to provide accurate information about their business. This information will include the business’ location, map and directions, company photos, products and services, reviews, contact details, etc.

However, Google My Business (GMB) is now officially known as Google Business Profile (GBP). Google has announced plans to retire the GMB app sometime in 2022 entirely. As one of the world leaders in innovation, this comes as no surprise since this is not the first time their tools will be experiencing a name change.

Since the tool was first launched in 2005 as Google Local Business Center, this would be the fifth time it has been rebranded. However, its purpose and features have often always gotten better with each round of rebranding.

To know everything about Google My Business (GMB) and how to set up your account, you can go through our Google My Business – Beginners’ Guide.

How to Generate Leads with Google My Business (GMB)

The primary function of any business is to make a profit. An excellent way to achieve this is to ensure continuous sales by attracting paying customers. Therefore, for any company needing an online presence, generating leads is the holy grail to the business’s survival.

A good way to start is by understanding and then taking advantage of the benefits offered by a business listing tool like Google My Business (GMB). Here are a few effective ways to successfully generate leads with this software tool:

Incorporating Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the best ways to track the traffic your business gains from the business listing towards its main website. This way, you can know whether your business listing on Google My Business (GMB) is sending new customers to your business or not. It also helps you reposition yourself and strategise better on how to improve lead generation.

With the help of an Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) code, you can have custom URLs to allow you to track the exact area of your business website where you’re getting the least and most traffic, as well as their bounce rates.

Checking and Tracking Performance and Insights

Google My Business (GMB) is much more than just a listing to show your business’s online presence. Google offers a lot more opportunities to generate leads by tracking your business profile performance and insights. It is a versatile tool that allows you to check performance and view insights over a selected period.

Here are some performance metric interactions you can monitor to help you increase your business lead generation.

Searches

Although you cannot directly manage search queries, the search metric measures and tracks the search queries that prospective customers use to find your business. In other words, your business will have a search metric when your business listing shows up upon specific search queries being made. This helps inform you about what prospective customers are searching for and how to position your business better to provide the related products or services.

Users Who View Your Profile

This performance metric helps measure the total number of unique views your business profile receives over a given period. This shouldn’t be mistaken for the total number of visits to your business website. Instead, the metric focuses on unique visitors that have clicked on your business listing on GMB to find more information about your business.

Direction Request

As the name suggests, this metric tracks the unique number of visitors that request direction to your business. This should help you know the number of customers trying to locate your business’s physical location.

Calls

If you have added your business phone number to your business profile, this metric will measure the number of calls your business gets from people who have clicked on the Call button on your business profile.

Other performance metrics that can be monitored to improve lead generation include food orders (if you’re into such services), bookings, messages, website clicks, products, and total interactions.

Completing Your Business Profile

According to Google, prospective customers are 2.7 times more inclined to acknowledge your online business as a reputable one when it has a complete business profile. In addition, local customers are 70% more likely to visit a business with a full profile than one without. Furthermore, 50% of surveyed customers are more than willing to make a purchase from a business with a complete online business profile.

This speaks volumes in the area of trust and reputation. A complete business profile takes into account the business hours (even when changes are made), photos of the business, products or services, etc.

Location Verification

As a follow-up from the previous point, verifying your location makes it easy for local customers to find your business. Too often, we are focused on expanding the business nationally and internationally while failing to capture the ever-ready local market. By verifying your business location, prospective local customers will likely want to visit your business.

Incorporate Relevant Keywords in Your Profile

Keywords play a crucial role in SEO and, therefore, the ranking of your business in SERPs. By including relevant keywords in the description of your business, Google can easily rank your business when queries are submitted using your chosen keywords. However, it’s vital that you do not practice keyword stuffing to avoid getting penalised.

Encourage Reviews and Answer Questions

For most people, allowance for reviews and how well a business addresses its customers are the deciding factors on whether they’ll make a purchase or not. As humans, we’re wired to want to learn from others’ successes and failures. Therefore, encourage your customers to give their honest reviews about your products and services.

Intentionally engage customers’ questions and provide answers for clarification. There are few things as powerful as an organic interaction between a business and a random customer. Keep the reviews and responses as up-to-date as possible.

Use Real Photos and Videos of Your Business

Another way to build trust is to have a visual representation of what you offer. For example, if your business is a local restaurant, you should have pictures (even a 360° view) of the outside of the restaurant. This makes it easy for local customers to identify the location and also for other visitors to find it.

Your menu and best dishes should be displayed for all prospective customers to see. Then, when they’re satisfied with how the food looks, you should have an engaging review and Q&A sections to let them learn more about its taste and so on.

Conclusion

Giving your business an online presence is the first step to generating leads. However, it has to have a wider reach for more people to have access to the company. By listing your business on Google My Business (GMB) (now Google Business Profile), prospective customers can see what you offer and easily reach out to your business. There are a lot of benefits to using GMB, and in this article, we have discussed some of the ways you can use it to increase lead generation for better business success.

You can also engage a digital marketing service provider to set up and manage your GMB account to ensure this powerful tool is used the right way and generates more leads.

So, how do you take control of your Google Business Page? The answer is that you must also create a free Google My Business account for that profile in addition to a free Business Profile.

A Google My Business account seems to be the only way to claim ownership of your Business Profile, gain management rights over it, and gain access to additional free features to boost your Google visibility.

What is Google My Business?

Google My Business is a tool for managing and optimising your Google Business Profile. So, before we get into what Google My Business is and how it works, let’s clarify what a Business Profile is.

Your Google business listing is referred to as your Business Profile by Google. Google Maps and local Google Search results include Business Profiles.

Adding a location to Google Maps is the same as creating a Business Profile, which anyone (including a random stranger or an automated listing generator) can do. Google requires only the business name, location, and category. Google will create a Business Profile for that location once they have confirmed it is not a duplicate.

Consumers can then leave reviews, upload photos, ask questions, and even answer questions on the Business Profile. Google may also auto-populate the Business Profile with information gathered from various sources on the internet.

This means that a Google My Business account isn’t required for a Business Profile to exist. And regardless of whether you created your Business Profile or not, you have no control over the data it displays or the reviews it collects.

In this case, Google My Business comes in handy. You can access, customise, manage, and enhance your Google Business Profile for free by creating a Google My Business account, which we’ll go over next.

How Can I Set Up My Google Business Profile?

1st Step: Log in to Your Google Business Profile Manager Account

You’ll automatically be logged into Google Business Profile Manager if you already have a Google account. Otherwise, sign in with your Google account credentials or create a new one.

2nd Step: Add Your Company to the List

Enter the name of your company. Click Add your business to Google if it does not appear in the drop-down menu. Then click Next after selecting the appropriate category for your business.

3rd Step: Fill in Your Location/Address

Select Yes if you have a physical location where customers can visit. Then include your company’s address. You may also be asked to place a marker on a map to indicate the location. If your company only provides in-person services or deliveries, you can list your service areas. Then press the Next button.

If you don’t provide a physical address, Google will ask you to specify your location. Then, click Next after selecting an option from the drop-down menu.

4th Step: Provide Your Contact Information

To help customers contact you, you can include your business phone number and website address. You can skip this section or not provide your phone number if you don’t want to be contacted by phone. Then click Next once you’ve finished entering your information.

5th Step: Complete Your Business Verification Process

You need to enter your address which should not be a post box number but your actual physical address. This information is only used to verify your business and is not shared with the public or displayed on your Google Business Profile.

Click Next after entering your address. You’ll be given options for verifying your account that apply to you. For example, physical businesses will receive a postcard in the mail to confirm their location, whereas service-area companies will be able to prove their business via email.

After receiving your five-digit code, you need to go on the following screen (or go to https://business.google.com/) and click Verify or Verify business. You’ll be shown a confirmation screen indicating that you’ve been verified. Click Next on that screen.

6th Step: Make Your Profile Unique

Fill in your business hours, messaging preferences, a description of your company, and photos. Click continue when you’re ready. Now, you will arrive at the dashboard of the Business Profile Manager.

You can edit your company’s profile, view insights, manage reviews and messages, and create Google ads from this page.

How Can I Use Google My Business to My Advantage?

So, we’ve identified that Google My Business is indeed not your business profile but instead a tool that you can use to improve your business profile’s visibility and effectiveness. Let’s go over the four main ways you can use Google My Business to improve your Google listing’s local marketing capabilities.

1. Interact With Customers

Consumers can interact with your Business Profile in various ways, and you can connect with them using your Google My Business account. For example, you can respond to reviews, answer questions, enable direct messaging, and set up associated alerts by responding to reviews, answering questions, and allowing direct messaging. You can even use Google My Business to post to your Business Profile, similar to how you would on Facebook or other social media platforms.

2. Emphasise Your Company

A Business Profile on its own only provides a limited amount of information about your company. However, you can provide hours, link to your website, products, pricing, attributes, and other details that distinguish your business through your Google My Business account dashboard. You can also use Google My Business to make any necessary edits and updates.

3. Acquire Insights

The Google My Business dashboard can help you learn more about your audience and local search performance. For example, in the analytics tab of the platform, you can find a breakdown of actions taken on your listing and how your photos are performing compared to other profiles in your category. It’s also worth noting that using UTM parameters and Google Analytics, you can track clicks from a Business Profile.

4. Focus on Local SEO

Google has an algorithm for ranking Business Profiles, just as it does for its ads and websites. In addition, you can incorporate keywords into your Business Profile and perform other optimisations through your Google My Business dashboard to help it rank in local results.

Conclusion

Having a complete understanding of what Google My Business is, how it works, and how to use it, you can see why using this free tool for local marketing isn’t just a good idea but a necessity. 

Get your Google My Business account set up now so that your company’s profile can stand out from the crowd and attract more potential customers on the world’s most famous search engine.