How Google My Business can benefit B2B businesses?

Summary:

Google My Bussiness can hugely benefit B2B businesses by adopting a few simple strategies.

How Google My Business can benefit B2B businesses?

Google My Bussiness can hugely benefit B2B businesses by adopting a few simple strategies.

How Google My Business Can Benefit B2B Businesses?

Estimated Read Time: 4 minutes 

Intended Audience: Microsoft Partners, SaaS Owners, B2B Marketers

[Updated 9th December, 2020]

 

Google is continuously adding to its list of products and software platforms. Google My Business (GMB) was released and lodged into our search results without many people unaware of it. Others took their chance and utilized it to its full potential and reaped its benefits from local customers. B2B companies were a lot slower off the starting line with this feature, but what many don’t realize is that Google My Business can be hugely beneficial to B2B companies, especially in a local market.

What is Google My Business?

GMB is operated by Google and was released in 2014. This platform helps users find local businesses and answers search queries without users needed to enter websites. Google My Business has a long list of benefits for local businesses, including:

 

  • Increased customer trust

  • Expanded search engine real estate

  • Increased website traffic for businesses

  • Free advertising if done correctly

  • One-click accurate business info for customers

  • Simple location-based search engine marketing

With these benefits in mind, it is crucial for a local business to have and maintain a Google My Business profile for each location. The information included in GMB is continuously changing, but at its core, it includes company name, address, hours of operation, website and company description.

 

The customer engagement features allow customers to post photos and videos in response to any posts, announcements and menus to showcase the business from the eyes of the customers and give assurance to potential new customers. Plus, the review system allows customers to engage by leaving feedback, whether good or bad, a feature that is critically important to new customers’ first impressions of your business online.

Why is Google My Business Important for Business-to-Business?

Google My Business (GMB) assists all companies including B2B ones, purely from the style in which people search through Google currently. The most common method of search is through a mobile device, that includes employees in the business.

 

If a customer journey begins on a mobile device, it is important to optimize that through the business listing provided on GMB. If you aren’t optimized fully for the style in which most people search you are missing out on potential leads.

Google My Business for B2B Marketing
Google My Business for B2B Marketing
Another trend increasing through search is the use of voice recognition, 50% of searches will be conducted through the use of voice recognition in 2020. Over time the phone screen will be used less and less for searches through the rise in popularity of voice recognition products as Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa. People are using conversational phrases to search and will often enough be localized results. Again, if your B2B business isn’t optimized through GMB, it could miss out on high stake real estate ranking.
Voice Recognition on Google My Business
Google My Business Voice Search Advantage

Google gives businesses listed on Google My Business the advantage over the ones that are not when serving results for voice searches. So, the more work you put into your GMB and SEO, the better results you will yield from Google as part of their overall search algorithm. Simply put, you want to make it as easy as possible for Google to serve your listing as a response to your customer’s questions.

How to Optimize Your B2B Google My Business Listing

1. Reviews! Reviews! Reviews!

Customer feedback is a great assist to any sort of business, to understand how the customer perceives your business is hugely advantageous when producing strategies for your business and also the fact other potential customers can see these reviews will increase overall trust in your brand name. But, it is also extremely impactful on how Google perceives your business. Having a high number of positive reviews will go a long way to boosting the placement of your B2B business in search listings. Plus, it will also improve your local SEO, improving the odds of local customers discovering your business offering. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as sitting back and watching the review roll in. B2B companies should be mindful that to achieve more reviews and better online real estate, they will need to keep customers happy and implement an effective strategy that encourages customers to review your business on Google My Business. Note: You should NEVER buy reviews as this is extremely bad practice and is completely against Google’s terms of service. It may seem like a quick and easy win, but when discovered it will harm your ranking severely.
Google My Business - Reviews - SEM Best Practices
Google My Business - Reviews - SEM Best Practices

2. Stake your claim and shorten your name.

It is quite simple, the shorter and easier your brand name is to say through voice searches, the higher your search results will be. It is a factor always to keep in mind when naming a B2B business. Companies that have long-winded names it presents a difficulty for Google to lead users to your listing, take it from Maven Collective Marketing (but there is also something to be said for including your domain expertise in your name as well). So by helping Google out and leading them to your business listing, you will benefit from it.

3. The positive attraction with frequent posts.

Constant activity on your Google My Business profile will be rewarded with added attraction and higher results. This can be easily conducted by including Google My Business in your overall online content strategy, just as you would with social media posting. This content, like social media content, should encourage engagement with customers. Having this positive and continuous attraction to your posts will lead to Google rewarding you with better rankings.

4. Get visual

Posting images and videos on your business listing on Google My Business will allow customers and the user’s to engage better with your listing but again allows Google to reward you accordingly. Don’t be afraid to get creative in the style of your media you post on your listing as we can tell from now, the more you give the more you get from customers and Google.

5. Fully complete your business listing

This is another simple step which will be rewarded, the more accurate information you give and the quantity of it will lead to better results. Try not to skip through any information details as it is a direct point to potential new leads for your B2B leads. If a business owner meets a potential lead outside their office they would give them all the important relevant information, this should be no different.

 

Here below we have an image of our current Google My Business listing which shows our methods in practice:

Maven Collective Google My Business Example
Maven Collective Marketing on Google My Business

It's Always Time to Optimize Your B2B Google My Business Listing!

Improving your B2B business ranking on Google My Business may require some work and effort but as stated above the rewards are all achievable with some organization and a clear strategy laid out by other members of the business. This is a platform that other companies are making the most out of, so why not make it another advantage for your company?

 

Want to find out how you can use Google My Business for your B2B website? We’d love to hear from you!

 

Get in Touch with the Mavens today!

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