According to Google, they’ve already helped more than 150 million local businesses since they launched Google My Business five years ago. If you are one of those businesses, you might have noticed that GMB has very limited features, and this latest news that they have rolled out new ones is really something every local business should be aware of and should leverage from.
On the 20th of June, Google announced that they were rolling out new features to help businesses make their profiles stand out and unique. They also improve the features that can help customers easily recognize a brand when they see it in the SERPs (search engine result pages).
Boost Your Branding With These 7 Newly Rolled Out Google My Business Features
In the past five years, Google My Business has evolved to meet the needs of local businesses. From desktop to its newly redesigned and easier-to-use mobile apps, and to that update that lets people book reservation in restaurants directly from Google, we can see how much has been done to improve the quality of its user experience.
With these recently rolled out features, you can increase not only the quality of the user experience of your prospects and customers but boost your branding and increase your customers as well.
1. Welcome Offers
Your GMB page is becoming more like your actual physical store. You can now add a welcome offer to first time prospects who followed your page. According to Google, they found out that more than half of online customers are looking for an offer or discount. Thus, this welcome offers can surely attract more prospects, which can make them become repeat and loyal customers.
Try this feature now and observe an increase flow of new customers.
2. Short Business Names and URLs
This new feature makes promoting your GMB page easier. You can now claim a short name and short URL for your business just like those ones you have in your Facebook pages. You can now put your GMB page on your banner, promo materials, and even on your business card.
This feature is actually very common on other social media platforms.
It took Google more than 5 years to figure this out? Or, maybe it’s because they were stuck with Google+ before, and now that they have already let go of it, they are now focusing all their social media efforts on GMB.
3. Cover Photo
You now have the control to set your own cover photo. Yes! Very basic for a profile, but thank goodness, it’s now available on GMB! You can now highlight your brand and attract the attention of your prospects using a cover photo that showcases the uniqueness of your business.
4. New Logo Feature
Your logo will now be displayed at the top right-hand side of your GMB’s profile. This gives you more branding opportunity, but you must provide complete information first about your business before this feature will be enabled.
This feature gives you an opportunity to make your business stands out. This is very important if you want to increase your brand recall.
5. Photo Displays
Photos that you will upload on your profile will now appear instantly as a module, giving you another opportunity to showcase your branding and highlight your products and services.
Google also announced that they will be rolling out photo captions soon. Yes. They’ve just realized that business owners can’t put captions on their photo in their GMB page. Amazing, right?
6. Offline Materials
Google announced that they’re also launching a website where you can easily download and order custom assets for your store or business, such as stickers. They said this is to help promote bookings on your profile, add more reviews, and followers.
7. Local Favorite
Depending on your listing’s performance, you’ll be highlighted by Google as a Local Favorite. They want to recognize those businesses that consistently deliver great experiences to their customers. Here are the exact words that they said.
“We’ll be highlighting the top five percent of businesses in a particular category with the “Local Favorite” designation. To help people easily find and engage with these businesses, we’re also creating digital and physical badges of honor. Stay tuned for more details on these recognition categories coming later this summer.”
With these newly rolled out features, Google is aiming for more descriptive GMB profiles not only to help consumers easily find your business but also to help you stand out and showcase something about your brand that cannot be found on others. They also promised to keep improving Maps and Search to increase the quality of user experience and help local businesses succeed.
If you haven’t checked these new GMB features yet, then it’s your time to update your profile and level up your branding online. If you need help in setting up your Google My Business account, the certified Google Partners at KISS PR can help you. You may contact them directly at 972-437-8942 or fill out this contact form for a one-one consultation.
The future of SEO is local map SEO. If You want to learn how to do SEO to local map and get page 1 rank, give KISS PR SEO a call. T: 972.437.8942.
