With the vast majority* of people using online to learn more about a local company, it’s not surprising that 18% of local mobile searches (mainly using Google) lead to a sale within one day.¹  As a result, it’s important your business is easy to find online.  Google My Business (GMB) is a local business listing platform that enables you to do so.

Following are tips for using this important tool:

Claim Your Google My Business Listing

• Create a profile from scratch or claim a business that’s already on GMB’s list.
• Update your page and verify your business with a code Google will send to your business address.

Include All the Essential Info

• Choose a category (from over 2,000 available), name, address and other essential information.
• Add a description with relevant keywords and attributes that will attract customers.

Upload Quality Images

• Add images of your storefront and/or team to help build a rapport and entice people to visit.
• Ensure the images are high quality and show your business in a positive light.

Attract Visitors to Your Page; Garner Positive Reviews

• Reviews affect your SEO**: GMB reviews with relevant keywords were the second most influential factor in rankings for local searches².
• Include signage in your store/business, add a link to review your business in your email signature and/or share positive reviews on your social media pages.

Respond to All Reviews

• Respond to all reviews on an ongoing basis, showing consumers that you’re responsive.
• By providing a satisfactory response, customers may leave a more favorable review than they did initially.

Post Content Continuously

• Google Posts enables GMB account owners to post content directly into the search engine results page.³
• Keep your listing fresh by sharing content continuously, including special offers, blog posts, events, photos, videos, etc.

“One solid way to attract visitors to your website and to your business … is by having an optimized Google My Business page.”  – Seth Rand, Founder/CEO of Rand Marketing

 

*97% of people learn more about a local company online than anywhere else.

**SEO is a set of practices used for optimizing a website’s content, structure, and other integral parts with the goal of manipulating search engines’ result pages. (SEO Tribunal)

 

Source:  smallbiztrends.com, reported by Annie Pilon;

¹A study from Glo-Globe; (moz.com);

²A study from Local SEO Guide;

³hallaminternet.com

Both U.S. and global Out-of-Home (OOH) ad growth is expected to rise at a fast pace in 2020, with U.S. Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) increasing even more rapidly.

Out-of-Home Ad Growth:

• Global: Out-of-Home is expected to see an 8.5% growth in 2020, the fastest increase in 13 years, and will continue to ramp up until 2023.
• U.S.: Out-of-Home’s compounded annual growth rate (CAGR)* will be 5.4% from 2018 through 2023.

U.S. Digital Out-of-Home Ad Growth:

• In the U.S., Digital Out-of-Home (ex. billboard, DMV, elevator, gas station) will rise even more rapidly at an 8.5% CAGR from 2018 through 2023.
• In 2023, DOOH will have a 38.3% share of all Out-of-Home media in the U.S.

U.S. Consumer Exposure:

• U.S. consumer exposure to OOH advertising is expected to rise 1% to 2.96 hours per week through 2023.
• DOOH consumer exposure will rise at a 5.1% compounded rate to reach 1.23 hours by 2023.

 

*The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is the proportional growth rate from year to year, used to calculate growth over a time period.

• Source: MediaDailyNews, reported by Wayne Friedman

“The future of the industry lies in understanding the customer’s intent.” –thinkwithgoogle.com

With the rise of voice assistants, chatbots, and conversational search, the customer journey more often starts with a question, a desire, a need, and AI-powered¹ discovery services (ex. search engines, apps, maps, etc.) are responding with more relevant, detailed information.  With this shift in consumer search behavior, following are insights for SEO² (Search Engine Optimization) strategies:

IF THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY STARTS WITH A QUESTION:  HOW DO MARKETERS ANSWER?

• To ensure your business appears in search results as the answer to your customers’ questions, manage your brand data, which is made up of hundreds of facts, concepts, and details about your products/services.
• The ideal architecture for AI-powered search and discovery services emerging today is to consolidate brand information in a single location. It must be accessible and structured to align to the changing digital ecosystem.

THE NEW CUSTOMER JOURNEY

• Search engines are retraining consumers to ask instead of search; the customer journey starts with a question, which leads to new, different questions as a part of the research process
• Google search results pages include a feature that shows what “people also ask”, with a set of questions to click on for answers, and to click through for a full search.

QUESTIONS ARE THE NEW KEYWORDS

• To keep up with the shift from keywords to questions, marketers must structure their brand data to provide direct answers, on and off the brand website.
• Question = Search = Intent: search marketing has moved beyond keywords to searcher’s intentions, and consumers’ questions state exactly what they want.

UNDERSTANDING INTENT ALONG THE JOURNEY

• To understand the customer’s journey and what’s important to them, examine their searches and the questions they asked.
• Map the journey by looking at when those questions were asked, and strategize to meet similar customers along the way.

BUILDING AN INTENT MODEL

• Build an intent model, which creates the basis to answer consumers’ questions, and identifies which search terms to target to get the best return for your customers.
• The goal is to understand and optimize marketing strategies for the customer’s path of intent.

DEMOGRAPHIC VS. INTENT MARKETING

• Demographic targeting studies who your customers are, but not what they do or how they feel. Relying only on demographics to reach consumers risks missing more than 70% of potential mobile shoppers.
• Research customers’ intent based on signals of interest in a product/service. Intent marketing is more effective at reaching and converting customers, and is reactive to their stated needs and raises fewer privacy concerns.

The customer journey starts with a question, and consumers expect answers. Provide accurate, consistent, brand-verified answers to consumer questions, no matter where or how customers are searching.

 

¹Artificial intelligence (AI):  the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems (searchenterpriseai.techtarget.com).  ²SEO (Search Engine Optimization):  the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through search engine results (moz.com).

Source:  Marc Ferrentino, Chief Strategy Officer at Yext; thinkwithgoogle.com; how-to-build-buyer-intent-model

PwC’s Entertainment & Media Outlook Report contains projections for U.S. advertising growth through 2023.  Following are highlights for major media:

	Online Advertising Online is expected to have a +8.4% compound annual growth rate (CAGR)¹ through 2023. Mobile online is projected to grow at a +13.1% CAGR, with wired forecast to decline at -16.6%.
	Digital Out-of-Home Advertising Digital out-of-home (ex. billboard, DMV, elevator, gas station) remains strong with a +7.1%. Out-of-home has the strongest forecast of traditional media with a +3.1% CAGR, buoyed almost entirely by digital out-of-home’s.
	Cinema Advertising Cinema is predicted to grow at a CAGR of +3.6%. Cinema advertising revenues are much smaller than box office takings, although its CAGR is higher.
	Radio Advertising Radio is expecting a slight increase with a CAGR of +0.7%. Online radio will be the fastest-growing segment at +7.1%.
	Television Advertising TV continues to grow slowly at a +0.3% CAGR, in part due to declining TV viewing. Online TV is also growing slowly at a +4.6% CAGR, below the forecasts of the past several years.
	Magazine Advertising Consumer magazines remain pessimistic with a -2.8% CAGR; digital’s +3.9% is not enough to offset print’s -8.3%. Trade magazines -1.1% CAGR expects digital’s +4.8% to make up for print’s -7.6%.
	Newspaper Advertising Newspapers are expected to see a decline with a -4.7% CAGR. Digital’s CAGR of +2.5% is not growing quickly enough to offset print’s -9.3%.

¹The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is the proportional growth rate from year to year for a business, used to calculate growth over a time period.

Source:  PwC’s Entertainment & Media Outlook, reported by Marketingcharts.com

AI (artificial intelligence) assistants*, like Alexa, could better connect businesses with customers, and new features expand Alexa’s reach.  Here are four Amazon updates for voice application developers that could change how businesses operate:

 1) Skills Recommendations

“Skills” are applications (apps) that let Alexa speak to devices, even websites, allowing users to perform more actions with voice-activated control and third-party offerings:

• Amazon’s “CanFullfillIntentRequest” interface checks location, so Alexa can answer questions like “Help me find a nearby carpenter”.
• Alexa can tap into its universe of voice apps with this interface, offering a new and growing way for local businesses to reach customers.

 2) Payments

Amazon accepts Amazon Pay for one-time payments or ongoing subscriptions:

• Curation services that recommend local activities and offer to buy tickets could also help facilitate commerce and provide convenience for users.
• With user location access extended to third-party voice app developers, businesses can complete the transaction loop by offering delivery.

 3) Notifications

Voice apps are bypassing some voice commands to interact with users through notifications:

• Notifications can be sent via an auditory noise or by animating the ring of light atop an Echo speaker.
• They’re available for a select group of skills, including Domino’s Pizza delivery updates, Washington Post news, and AccuWeather alerts.

  4) Voice Identification for Skills

If paying by voice alone, Alexa needs to understand whose credit card to use:

• “Your Voice” by Amazon is a voice identification service that provides personalization: playing news flash briefings, adding events to calendars, choosing the right number to call, and logging a user’s previous interactions with a game or skill.
• Alexa can also remember whatever you tell her, including what you recently said.

Don’t Fret/Forget! If you are a GSM client with business listings management, you are already listed on Alexa!  Since Alexa uses Google, Yelp and Bing listing data for local service/product voice searches, your business will be found if someone is searching for a service/product you provide.

 

*AI (artificial intelligence):  Conversational computers that people can interact with simply by having a conversation.

Source:  Venturebeat.com, reported by Khari Johnson.

Many internet marketing companies state that their services can get you to “number one” on Google, but do you know what is actually being done to get you there? Search engines have changed and “number one” cannot be guaranteed. Here is what you should know:

1. Getting to “number one” on Google isn’t necessarily the best goal for local businesses.
The first position on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) are paid ads. This is what is being offered to you when you hear the line “we can get you to number one on Google” (see example at right)

• People who search for local businesses tend to ignore ads, and scroll to listings and search results.
• Searchers know that ads may be from national companies with no local presence in the community.
• Nearly all clicks on ads are accidental during searches for a local business.

2. No one can guarantee that you will be “number one” on Google.
Google doesn’t allow any website to be the “king of a keyword”; it’s about showing searchers what THEY want to see, based on their prior internet activity and location at the time of search:

• Google changes its ranking algorithms¹ frequently, so what worked previously, might not work today.
• If your business/website was previously visited, you are more likely to be number one, or high up on the page, if that person does a search relating to your business.
• You might be number one for those who live around the block from you, and number five for those who live one town over. Your position is NOT static even if it looks that way when you search for
  your own business.

3. Google AdWords² is not Search Engine Optimization, so what is?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is about the content/structure of your website being tuned to peoples’ searches, not about placing ads leading to clicks to your website:

• The hit on your website through AdWords is not making it more “in demand” in the eyes of the search engines because the click did not originate from your website’s link on the SERP.
• Focus on actual SEO, so that the rankings you generate are real, with quality over quantity content that is relevant to who you want to drive to your website.
• Come up with a specific goal, such as pushing a product, service or sale and keep track of results.

Local businesses should have a unique approach when it comes to SEO, based on industry, location, and other factors. Be wary of companies making promises before getting to know your goals. Being number one on Google is not necessarily the ticket to success anymore in today’s digital landscape.

¹Algorithms: how social media platforms filter, rank and organize the content we see based on a specific set of criteria (prosperforpurpose.com).

²Google AdWords: An advertising service by Google for businesses wanting to display ads on Google and its advertising network. Businesses only pay when people click on ads; the service is largely focused on keywords. (webopedia.com).