When starting your own home business, it’s not always true that you should take all the free help you can find. Well-intentioned amateurs or friends who say they’ll help only to drop out when offered paid work elsewhere are bad news, and prove to have been a false economy.
But when that offer of free support comes from capable and reliable hands, it’s certainly worth thinking about. And when it comes in the form of free or freemium digital tools from well-established providers, you’d be daft to hesitate.
Which brings us to Google My Business: a very useful free digital marketing tool that the data-chomping corporation has provided for free for five years, but which has generally been overlooked by the small, local businesses who stand to profit from it the most. That’s beginning to change now that Google+ has shut down and more emphasis is being put on the search profile that Google My Business enables rather than the ‘social network’ profile offered to your business by Google+.
What Google My Business does is to slap that new profile of yours up on the results page when potential customers search for your product or service in your locale. This means that instead of a mere list of local suppliers and mis-hits, including – if you’ve done your SEO homework – your own website listed unspectacularly like any other, they’ll see one of those bright, professional looking panels, featuring your business name, details, directions, and photos.
This free boost for your business requires surprisingly little work on your part. Initially, you should be able to get it set up in just one session. After that, it needs to be maintained like a social network profile and the more you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it – but even an hour a week replying to questions and reviews and keeping your details update should keep it shipshape.
Establishing your Google My Business profile
Starting your profile is no more complicated than on any regular social media site. If you have your basic info, a few good images, and a snappy business statement to hand, it will pass even more smoothly.
Your starting place is google.com/business, where you can read a bit more about the service before hitting Start Now to proceed. Begin entering your business name in the form, and if it auto-completes then some sort of profile already exists for you – and you will be given the chance to claim and correct the profile rather than establishing a new one. Either way, the process is similar, unless you need to dispute the preceding ownership of your profile, which we’ll come to shortly.
It’s important to note at this point that your details can be adjusted by anyone using Google who thinks they know best about your business – although you can verify your ownership to reserve certain permissions.
Anyway, once you’ve clicked through to your named business, you are given the opportunity to add your address (very important for most businesses, but businesses run from an actual home may choose to pass) and your geographic area of work, including delivery options. Then you add your thematic area of work by choosing a business category from Google’s list. As with your business name, just begin typing and you’ll be given a list of category options.
Next you get to fill in some details about your business. The more thorough you are, the more authentic you’ll seem in search results. Include your business start date, opening times, website etc. so that search users can see at a glance what you are all about.
And finally you can add some media to make your listing look more colorful and enticing. If you have public premises, include images of the interior and exterior so that customers know how to find you and what to expect. As the business owner, you might want to include a professional-looking picture of yourself so folk know who they’re dealing with. And of course, if you have any product photos or shots of yourself in action (for example, if you’re a gardener or caterer) then they’ll add to the good impression you’re trying to create.
It’s also very beneficial to use a company logo – if you don’t have one, it’s easy to get one using an online service such as freelogodesign.
If your business name is taken
It’s possible that somebody already claimed your business by mistake, trying to be helpful, or even as an act of industrial sabotage! Thankfully, Google has simple processes in place to rectify a wrongly-verified profile. Just click Request Access when the message pops up telling you your business name has already been claimed, and follow the instructions to send a note to the claimant. Hopefully they will hand over the reins to you and you can begin your own verification process. If not, you can make an appeal and Google will run you through the process.
Google My Business is better than a free assistant: it’s free advertising! Use this handy infographic to start building your Google My Business profile as soon as you can.
