Google+ Local Is Now Available Specifically For Business
Since 2007, Google has been pushing local results. This push from the world's largest search engine created a shift towards local internet marketing services. Google's attitude has always been "Play the game, or get left behind." In the last few years, Google has begun to push businesses to use Google's local business listing service, known as the Google Plus page. Google has even gone as far as to reserve prime real estate on the first page of its search results for correctly optimized Google Plus pages.
Google Has Taken It One Step Further
Google has recently taken the Google+ page one step further by creating a separate space for Google+ pages for business. Google is currently calling this Google+ Business. The ultimate goal of Google+ Business is to help businesses become more socially active online. Their approach to achieving this is three-fold. According to Google, Google+ Business will help a business:
- Be more easily found on Google.
- Interact "face-to-face" with its customers.
- Better track and analyze its social media marketing strategies.
Your Business Will Be More Easily Found On Google
With Google+ Business page, when people search locally for products and services your business offers, Google has reserved a section at the top right of the search results to include your business information, such as contact information, pictures, videos, and reviews straight from your Google+ Business page. Quite a bit of the information about your business contained on your business's page is eligible for display in the reserved top right section of results. With this innovation, customers can actually be less than a click away from learning about and contacting your business.
Interact Socially Online With Your Customers
Google+ Business allows a business to "humanize" itself by providing a means for your business to socially interact online with your customers and followers. One of the features Google+ Business offers is "Hangouts". Hangouts allow for up to 10 people to connect via video chat to your business online. Hangouts even offers the ability to record the interaction for later replay. Hangouts can be very beneficial for demonstrations, customer feedback, and focus groups. For example, if you own a business that sells kitchen gadgets, you could use Hangouts to demo specific products to an online group of customers. This type of broad-reach social interaction with customers and clients is relatively new and has amazing potential.
Better Analysis and Understanding of Social Media Marketing Strategies
One of the hardest parts for businesses with the new trend in social media marketing is analyzing and tracking return on investment. Word of mouth type advertising can be very inexpensive, but it is very difficult to attribute a customer's purchase to an online social media interaction, which happened possibly 6 months prior to the purchase.
Google+ Business offers tools for businesses to better track and analyze online social conversions. For its users, Google promises in-depth analysis of +1 recording, along with robust conversion reporting. The analysis features even include a tool called Google+ Ripples, which creates a visual representation for users to better understand, who is sharing or re-sharing information about their business. Google+ Ripples is the online version of tracking word-of-mouth advertising. Google absolutely wants you and your business to have a clear understanding of how Google+ Business helps increase the success of your business.
Google has positioned itself to be the leader in local internet marketing services. Google has again reinvented the way businesses are found online and the way businesses interact online with their customers. Google+ Business is easy to setup, and the benefits can be great. A well optimized, well maintained Google+ Business page will allow your business to be more visible on Google and increase your business's exposure. It will allow your business to better interact socially with its customers. It will also allow your business to better understand the benefits of using Google+ Business with improved analysis capabilities. Google+ Business is a necessary tool in the future online growth and success of your business.