If you wish to get more local customers with GMB the first step that you need to take is to get listed on the same. You can always claim a free listing and for this, you need to provide some basic information on your business such as the following details related to your business:
- name
- address
- phone number
- category of business
- website
It would also be great if you mentioned the hours of operation. But, there is one thing that you need to keep in mind over here. You should always update the information over here. If you have changed your hours of operation, moved to a new location or updated the menu of your restaurant you should let your buyers know. The second step that you need to take in this regard is to add details about your business. When customers click on your individual listing on GMB they would be able to see more details. You can also use business photos in this regard and Google would show them along with photos that the users have contributed. If you are looking for ways in which you can visually entice people to come and pay your business a visit it does not get much better than this.
The third step that you could take in this particular regard would be to improve your ranking. Google normally employs a certain algorithm to decide the order in which it would show businesses with respect to particular queries. The three main factors, in this case, are relevance, distance, and prominence. Relevance is basically the extent to which your business is matching the search query of a particular user. The best way in which you can GMB in this case is to make sure that your listing is accurate and complete.
Distance is basically an attempt on part of Google to get you the closest option that you have with respect to your location. There is not a lot you can really do in this regard. Prominence is basically an estimate by Google of how popular your business is and there are several factors that are highly important in this regard. A very important part, in this case, is played by the number of reviews your business listing has received as well as the quality of the same.
You can always use reviews in order to use GMB to your advantage. This is something that is normally ignored by bigger businesses. There are two ways to look at this – the way they are used by Google and the way in which customers see them. As far as the process of Google is concerned positive reviews always have a better impact on your ratings. This is where some companies make mistakes by taking great pains to get positive reviews. They offer benefits for such reviews. They also implicitly encourage their employees to take part in survey begging.
The best thing that you can do in this regard is to never indulge in such practices. If you pressurize your customers in any way to provide you with good reviews that in turn could affect the quality of your service in a negative way. There are always other ways in which you can improve your reputation in such a way that the customers would like. You should never be worried about a few bad reviews here and there. They can actually help your business a lot. They provide your business with a great amount of trustworthiness. If your business has received only positive reviews people would be apprehensive of the same.
In such cases, they normally tend to think that such reviews may be fake. What also matters, in this case, is your response – the content and the nature of the same. You should always handle such reviews in a positive manner and never get defensive against the same. That would tell people that you are highly receptive to feedback and that is something that people would surely appreciate about you. Any proper response would tell them that you are taking their feedback in and making efforts to get better. This is an area where bigger businesses fail.
This happens primarily because social media in these cases is handled on a corporate level. This is where a personal touch can make it worthwhile for you.
