Chances are you use Google daily, as a search engine – but it offers much more than that to marketers. Mentioned here are only 3 of its many marketing tools. Starting with the one you may already be using…

Google My Business

Best part – it’s free advertising! All you need to do is claim a Google My Business listing for your business to be featured in the search results. A lot of people don’t realise that it is this listing that shows up on Google Maps and is what helps you appear in the ever important ‘local’ results. 

A couple of tips:

• Select your industry wisely – sometimes there is more than one description that fits the nature of a business, however be sure to use the one most commonly used in your industry otherwise your competitors may show up in search results for the most commonly googled terms and you may not! Do a quick search to check how the top competitors in your industry have displayed their information on the listing
• Be sure to include all the address information that would be relevant to a local search and if possible add the key suburb to the end of the listing title 
• Actively manage your reviews – Reviews are also managed (responded to or reported) from inside the Google My Business tool. How many reviews you receive depends on how much you encourage them as well as the type of industry you are in. Industries that attract spontaneous reviews (e.g. hospitality) need to keep an eye on these regularly. Similar to sites like Trip Advisor, reviews are posted from within a Google users account, so you can't edit reviews yourself, just respond to them. The key to maintaining a good average is to ensure you have plenty of great ones to water down the not so good ones. Clients utilising this strategy have been able to raise their scores from around 2.5* out of 5 to 4*. It is also critical to respond to negative comments to demonstrate that you care and take an interest in working with feedback – prospective customers will be reading not only the reviewers comments, but how you handle them.

Google Reviews

Already mentioned above, Google Reviews is not a separate tool, but a part of Google My Business, however it can still be used as a marketing lever in its own right. Encourage reviews by creating a link that you can use to make it easy for people to post reviews – they simply click on the link, login to their Google Account if they aren’t already and it will take them to exactly where they need to be to leave a review for you. Here is a Google help page taking you through how to create the link.

Ideas for sharing the ‘invite review’ link:

• Add the link to your email signature either via some call to action text or button
• Feature it in email newsletters or a specific email to invite reviews
• Any other place that you may typically invite feedback – e.g. receipts, customer surveys, after a chat bot interaction

Google Alerts

Setting up a Google Alert will help you monitor online mentions of your brand or any other words you want to keep track of (e.g. competitors). After you have set up your alerts you will receive email notifications with links to the relevant URLs that mentioned the words you are monitoring. It is a great (and free!) way to maintain your business’ reputation online as it allows you to promptly respond or take action.

You can set up a Google Alert here. If you would like some help with identifying marketing tools for areas that will help you step up your game, get in touch.