Is Your Business Getting the Most from Google’s Marketing Kit?

The Internet may seem like the rival to brick-and-mortar businesses striving to make a buck against e-commerce giants like Amazon! It’s easy to understand the incredulity that traditional retailers show towards disbursing their dollars online. However, there are also huge opportunities for brick-and-mortar stores that want to go digital and establish their presence on search engines, map services, and other platforms online.

Optimize Your Business for Local Search and Be Found

Retail businesses have a lot to be done on the digital frontier, and it includes more than just creating a social media account. Local marketing is essential for retail success — whether you talk about pharmacies, opticians, supermarkets, gyms or electronics retailers. As we rely heavily on Google to find answers to our pressing queries, Google is becoming an integral part of how we find services and/or products in a geographical location. There are an estimated 8.2 billion local searches conducted on Google every day. Quite impressive, right? This ability to connect the right consumer (with buying intent) to the right business is what makes location marketing a great opportunity for retail brands.

Location Marketing to Boost Brick-and-Mortar Business

Location marketing aims to optimize the digital customer journey, from online search to offline purchasing. It helps to get your business location in the top search results in your area. This requires you to have an updated and accurate profile for your business locations on GMB (Google My Business) and other search engines. Brick-and-mortar businesses that integrate location marketing tools into their marketing mix achieve better online visibility for their customers. To improve your online visibility and stay ahead of the competition, you’ll need to have:

Optimized ranking and presence on the different digital platforms where customers search for brands, services or products.
Accurate information such as hours of operation, location name, NAP details, etc., which all have a direct influence on user experience.
Customer reviews that encourage leads to make a buying decision.
Location-specific information that appears on the website’s landing pages and Google My Business profile.

What is Google My Business (now Google Business Panel)?

Google My Business (GMB), which is Google Business Panel (GBP) as of 2022, is unquestionably the most effective and relevant digital touchpoint to improve your local SEO, enhance your brand’s reputation and gather more customer reviews. As per a study, 81% of customers start their digital journey through a mobile device, and they’re always searching for instant search results. Adding your GMB listing makes it easier than ever to bring customers to your business footprint. The benefits of using GMB marketing tools for small business include:

Improved search visibility
Enhanced customer experience
Increased traffic to your social channels and website

Screenshot from google marketing kit that says Freshen your feed

By allowing customers to leave reviews and entering business NAP information (name, address, and phone number), you can significantly increase the online credibility of your business. An optimized GMB page helps search engines to understand more about your business: your business profile, products/ services, location, and website (so they can crawl it for more info). The more Google knows about your business, the more your GMB listing will appear in searches.

Streamlining Customer Journey with Local Marketing

Understanding the significance of GMB and Local Marketing is one thing, but it’s always important to optimize your GMB listing and make the most of its advantages. Google is playing really smart, using increasingly new ways to ensure people keep using its marketing tools and products. It is constantly innovating new products to promote its search engine usage. It may seem like a strategy just to get and lock down more active users, but it works really well. One of its recent releases, Google My Business Marketing Kit is no exception, promoting the search engine giant while providing serious value to both local businesses and online marketers.

What Is The Google My Business Marketing Kit?

The Google Marketing Kit includes a variety of customizable templates to market your business. This includes social posts, posters, stickers, and more. Each template can be customized with preset fonts, backgrounds, and messages ready to promote your business both online and offline. The tool will use your business details and customer reviews to create a consistent and personalized marketing campaign without sending a dime! Materials available in the personalized kit include:

Flyers
Posters
Window Stickers
Social Media Posts
Table Tents — foldable self-standing signs
Ready-to-share posts

Using Google My Business Marketing Kit

To use Google My Business Marketing Kit, you will need a GMB profile that is verified. It’s important to ensure that your profile is updated with accurate business information. This information will be used by the GMB Marketing Kit to promote business campaigns and social posts. It’s always recommended to take enough time to create and manage your GMB profile, post the latest promos and updates, add photos, build a community, gather customer reviews and respond to them, and put your best foot forward. The process to have your Google Marketing Kit is pretty easy!

Search for your business name on the Marketing Kit homepage.
Your verified business name will appear in the drop-down list. From here, you can browse through different customized marketing materials that are ready to print, download, or share!
Window stickers encourage your customers to follow you, submit a review, or book an appointment online. You can download window stickers or have them sent to your mailbox.
Customized artwork for posters, ready to share social media posts, table tents, and signs, featuring your customer. Click on the “Choose Other Styles and Reviews” button to choose your favorite content and design.
If your business has great customer reviews, they can be shared as custom posts to feature and customer feedback. Select the review that puts your business in a positive light. Otherwise, select “Business Info” to choose the posts featuring your business address, hours, and more.
Then, select “Next” to move to the next screen where your selected review will be featured in different colors and layouts. Select the one that matches your brand’s voice.
Then, click “Finish” to finish the customization. The Google My Business Marketing Kit ensures that the colors, text and images will be consistent across your marketing campaign.
Once the marketing kit has been updated, you’ll be able to download it to promote your business and send a strong message to your customers.
The tool enables you to navigate back and forth to try out different styles and reviews, and download multiple marketing kits.

Final Words

In an age dominated by customer satisfaction, implementing technology-driven Google tools can drive significant business creativity and innovation for your brick-and-mortar store. It’s definitely worthwhile to leverage Google My Business Marketing Kit to build a robust social media strategy, create engaging content and build a strong customer base. It’s time to be more visible and trusted online!