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Uber Black Friday Results. UpViral To Blame!

October 20, 2018 by 1 Comment

So, you're a local business owner or marketing agency and you're looking for amazing Black Friday results using viral marketing hacks. So, sit back and take in this brief (7 min) article that lays out the secrets to success, step-by-step.

In fact, inside this Black Friday Results article you're going to get:

The simple plan that blends two proven techniques into one for unprecedented results
The four simple web pages you'll need to be ready for launch
The list of basic and easy-to-use digital tools that will make your Black Friday Results out of this world!

The simple plan that blends traditional marketing and viral marketing for Uber Black Friday Results

Here's a quick overview of the customer journey through a series of web pages and marketing messages. And, since the image below might appear complicated at first review, I thought I'd spend some time below breaking it down into simple steps and the 4 easy-to-build pages that'll give you amazing Black Friday results.

Uber Black Friday Results UpViral Funnel Diagram — The Super Simple Viral Funnel That Makes All This Work

As we move forward, I've broken down the diagram below into two very easy to understand smaller groups.

JOURNEY ONE: The Viral Journey & How To Build Gobs of Great Leads For a Fraction of the Ad Spend of The Other Guys

First things first, if you'd like to read more about viral marketing you can…

>> Read my "Viral Marketing: The Ultimate Guide" – blog post. It's so popular it's ranked #1 in Google!

Okay, so back down to business.

local business black friday results with a viral funnel — This highlights the first part of the customer journey and the 2 pages that really matter.

In this diagram, you see a series of elements that deliver highly-targeted traffic to precisely designed pages.

The 2 simple pages that are critical for viral marketing and black friday success — See the two pages marked as "1" and "2", that's what we're talking about in this section.

VIRAL PAGE ONE: The Lead Capture Page

This is the first and most essential page in every marketing campaign. For our example, we selected a giveaway of a physical product. And, I've even given you the exact page we recently used on a very successful sweepstakes. In this sweepstakes we generated hundreds of leads in the first few days – all with free traffic!

UpViral Lead Capture Page Example for Great Black Friday Results — Hint: For amazing Black Friday results, do a giveaway that pre-qualifies your customers

As you can see above, THE 4 CRITICAL ELEMENTS TO THIS LEAD CAPTURE PAGE include:

Strong. Relevant. Benefits-Driven Headline – this type of headline prequalifies anyone that might enter into your giveaway. And, having a list of prequalified leads is the name of the game!

Actual Product – this is one of the most overlooked features to any viral campaign. Those that visit your page want to see exactly what they can win. And, for you digital product owners, this means you'll have to be creative and do actual product mock-ups to get the best results.

Authority / Proof – if your going to generate a ton of buzz with your viral campaign, you're going to want to make sure that it's a proven product or service. And, nothing provides this type of confidence like social proof! So, grab some testimonials, reference where else the product or service has been talked about, or show logos of highly-respected brands that have used or reviewed the product.

Simple & Effective Call To Action – let's face it, we're all distracted online. That's why you're going to want to make your call to action and entry form drop dead simple. Don't over-complicate it with too much information or small buttons. Make it a no-brainer!

Once you've crafted your lead capture page, you're going to want to develop the second (and last) page of the viral campaign.

VIRAL PAGE TWO: The Share Page

This page confirms that your visitor entered the campaign, repeats the major benefits, and (most importantly) incentivizes your leads to share the campaign with their friends.

UpViral Share Page Example for Physical Product — The Share Page: Without this your new leads won't make your offer go viral

There are TWO ESSENTIALS TO MAKING YOUR SHARE PAGE AMAZING…

Remind Them! Yes. You might think this is a waste of time. But, we've found that when people come back to this page to get their stats and links to share again, they find themselves reviewing the page to remind themselves why they're going to the trouble of sharing! It's strange, but true.

Add a Bonus! If you're really trying to goose your campaign, then simply sharing for extra chances to win the prize isn't good enough these days. In fact, what we've found over time is that if you offer two additional prizes, you get great viral results. The first bonus goes to the person that earns the most points. The second bonus goes to the person the referred the front end prize winner. This way, you get your audience motivated to share. If they don't win the random prize, they get a chance to refer the random prize winner. And, if they still don't get those two, they have a chance to earn the prize with the most points. Win! Win! Win!

So, that's it for the viral page, but what about…

JOURNEY TWO: The Special Offer For Uber Black Friday Results

After you get the leads from your viral campaign, you're going to want to send them directly to a special offer. And, since Halloween is just around the corner, think Black Friday. If you're reading this after Black Friday, don't worry, there's a whole list of occasions that make for great sales days!

Here's the part of the customer journey we're going to build next…

There are only 2 pages you need to build this Black Friday offer. If you're clever, you can do this in a single page!

PAGE THREE: The Black Friday Special Offer!

It's simple and effective. One message. One emotion. One way to save! Here's an example from our friends over at Unbounce. With this example you see an offer the right customer just can't refuse. And, it's only available for a limited time.

Source: Unbounce. (https://unbounce.com/landing-page-examples/cyber-monday-landing-page-examples/)

The TWO ESSENTIAL PIECES TO A GREAT BLACK FRIDAY offer page are:

Limited Time Offer – this one has a countdown timer. It creates a sense of urgency and limits your customer's ability to get this offer anywhere else or at any other time.

Special Access – to get to the order page, you have to use a coupon code and click a special link. While I don't like having to do both, it creates a little "hoop" for someone to jump through to get the offer. I'd rather just have a special check-out page only available to people that come through the Black Friday offer link. And, at whatever time you specify, you can make the page go away or the pricing on the page to jump to normal retail.

PAGE FOUR: A Simple Thank You Page or Order Tracking Page!

Whenever you spend money online, you'd like to know how to get your stuff. So, you'll want to do the same thing for your customers. And, our friends over at AfterShip have some really great examples of tracking pages. Here's one.

AfterShip example order tracking page for great Black Friday results — Source: AfterShip. (https://www.aftership.com/customer-stories/wish)

Now that you've seen how 4 pages can boost your Black Friday results, you're probably wondering how to get the tools we use for our client's campaigns.

The list of basic and easy-to-use digital tools that will make your Black Friday Results out of this world!

Plan Your Campaign – there's no better tool on the market than MarketPlan.io for planning and collaborating on your campaign. It's the same tool we use to show our client's what we're doing and have them be part of the solution. (click the image to visit the MarketPlan.io website)

Use MarketPlan.io to plan your campaign for amazing Black Friday Results — MarketPlan.io: The coolest marketing planning tool on the planet

Create Your Viral Campaign – there are a number of tools on the market that do this well. Each of these options has its pros and cons. But, we regularly use UpViral. (click the image to visit the UpViral website)

use upviral to get great black friday results — UpViral: Our go-to viral lead generation platform

Create Your Special Offer Funnel – page builders seem to be a dime a dozen these days, but if you want to connect directly with the planning tools and analytics without having to learn new tools, then do what we do… use ConvertPages – it's amazing! (Click the image to visit the ConvertPages website).

ConvertPages builds amazing funnels for out of this world black friday results — ConvertPages: A unique tool that manages the entire funnel with conversion tools unlike any other platform.

Send Traffic To Your Campaign – we're partial to sending email messages to drive traffic. While we manage pay-per-click campaigns for our clients, we leverage our viral campaigns and huge email list to send free traffic to start the viral process. You can grab a special FREE account of MysticMailer here. Yes, it's a bold face offer for our own email platform. What else would you expect?

Use MysticMailer to get great Black Friday results — MysticMailer: Get email freedom and complete control over your own deliverability.

Local Business Guide to Black Friday (2018)

October 14, 2018 by Leave a Comment

If you're pissed off that you missed out on last year's big local business haul during the Christmas rush, then you're going to want to take 5 minutes and read your Local Business Guide to Black Friday!

I wrote this article because I read a story in the Wall Street Journal titled "Retailers Rush to Fill Holiday Hole Left by Toys ‘R’ Us" and it dawned on me how many opportunities local businesses owners (like you) were missing. And, I wanted to get out in front of that calendar so you're not rushing around at the last minute trying to take advantage of Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

After this fast read of the "Local Business Guide to Black Friday (2018)", you're going to be able to:

Get the boost to your bottom line that you've always wanted at the end of the year
Scrape together an amazing, and profitable, Black Friday offer (even if you're in a service business)
Get instant access to the game plan that makes this "checklist" easy

And, if you're anything like me, then you're reading this article as you're skimming the internet or jumping on a plane or maybe even in the line ordering a cup of coffee. So, do both of us a favor and bookmark it – you're going to want to keep coming back.

Now, let's get started…

Get the Boost To Your Bottom Line That You've Always Wanted at The End of The Year.

Let's face it, consumers are a funny bunch. They overspend every year on purpose! They have a list that they're starting to develop in their own heads right around Halloween and by the time the turkey coma of Thanksgiving is gone, they're ready to dive in.

So, as a local business owner, how do you take advantage of the Black Friday excitement, even if you don't have the advertising budget of the big brands?

You Can Get Huge Black Friday Results On A Shoestring Budget

I'll bet one thing that continues to piss you off year after year is that your competition, you know, the big box stores and the online mega-sites are out spending you in advertising! And, deep down, you know that's the name of the game.

In fact, I was doing some business coaching in North Carolina about 5 years ago and I remember a workshop I was in where we specifically told everyone in the room a secret to winning in business.

"The secret to winning in business is knowing how to spend more to get customers than your competition." – Bob Dunn, Mountain BizWorks

But, I'm here to tell you, we should have rephrased that!

CORRECTION: The secret to business is really knowing how to get high-valued customers in the door cheaper than your competition!

With this approach, you get more to your bottom line than the big dumb companies that spend their advertising budgets on stuff that doesn't work. That's why we're putting it right here in the Local Business Guide to Black Friday.

If you're looking to make the most of your Black Friday push, then you're going to want to:

Craft an offer that's out of this world (more on this below)
Plan the campaign – I know this is the part that drives local business owner's batty. That's why our business has been so successful! We do all the planning for you as you provide direct input and get to see on the inside. It's like being in the huddle, but not having to be responsible for executing every position of the play. It's amazing! And, if you're interested in us putting your Local Business marketing campaign together – just give us a call at (828) 367-7809, or schedule some time that works for you here: http://pix.waldrop.link/discovery-call.
Grab your customer list and start communicating – this means you're going to want to dive into your accounting system, that little email list that you've been building at the register, and the email requests for more information that have come in along the way. And, if you're still looking to build a list of leads then you'll want to dive into our Viral Marketing Expert Fixes 4 Local Lead Generation Mistakes article too!
Leverage technology to make life easier – email marketing still returns a higher ROI than any other method. And, as we get more technically focused, text messaging is a great alternative too. It's fast, simple and really inexpensive. If you're looking for a robust email marketing system at pennies on the dollar, check out MysticMailer!

Scrape together an amazing, and profitable, Black Friday offer (even if you're in a service business)

One common misconception is that every Black Friday offer must be a doorbuster. But, it doesn't have to be. In fact, it may be a bundle of your regular products or services that only becomes available once per year. Or, it might be your best selling product or service with a simple bonus. No matter how you slice it, you'll want to make it unique and exclusively available during Black Friday.

Get Instant Access to the Game Plan That Makes Your Local Business Guide to Black Friday "Checklist" Easy

As you see in the diagram above, we've already laid out the gameplan. So, let me spend the time here to walk you through the key components. So, once you've got your offer sorted out, all you have to do is (here's your checklist):

Build a Simple Lead Capture Page – this page is designed to pique the interest of your ideal customer and have them put in their contact details for more information. This means that they're pre-qualifying themselves a good lead.

Build a Simple Special Offer Page – this page includes your Black Friday offer and provides basic urgency details like how many are left or how long the offer will still be open.

Build an Upsell (or Premium) VIP Offer Page – this page gives them a special price on some of your most popular products and services. With this, you boost your profitability and they get a better deal than what they originally signed up to get.

Drive High-Quality Traffic To These Pages – what we've described above is a simple "Local Business Black Friday Sales Funnel". So all you're really trying to do now is get people to the funnel. You'll want to use pay-per-click advertising, content marketing (read blog, technical guide, videos, or other educational material), and tap into your existing email and SMS text marketing list.

Viral Marketing Expert Fixes 4 Local Lead Generation Mistakes (2018)

September 16, 2018 by Leave a Comment

viral marketing expert fixes local lead generation mistakes

You've heard that the key to victory in a local business is a location, location, location. Well, as a local viral marketing expert, I'm telling you that's a bunch of B.S.! So in this hard-hitting article, I'm going to show you what to do to take control of your future and drive foot traffic to your door at the push of a button!

In fact, over the last 30-years I've been helping local businesses, I've noticed a pattern of mistakes that are crushing the spirits of shop owners just like you. That's why I thought I'd give you the secrets to:

Creating a digital campaign to grow your list of potential customers and give you the power to drive traffic to your shop or service center at the push of a button.

Knowing the value of your marketing and quickly calculating the return on investment. This simple technique gives you the insight to stop paying for stuff that doesn't work.

Tapping into your best and cheapest advertising asset to boost your ROI. If you know how to do this, you can cut your advertising spend in half this weekend.

Going viral in your advertising campaign. Viral lead generation isn't some fly-by-night flash in the pan concept. It's the same concept that's given Apple the leading market capitalization in the world (over $1 Trillion).

Why This Article Now From This Viral Marketing Expert?

Well, I saw something that broke my heart yesterday. The City of Roseville had shut down a local roadway in the middle of the day to do some resurfacing. Unfortunately, the professional center that was surrounded by the road work is one of the worst locations in town, and this added burden puts their September profits at risk. That breaks my heart!

viral marketing expert reveals why you need a local lead generation strategy — This is the actual situation that created this article. My heart hurts for those local businesses that aren't able to serve their customers because the City of Roseville is doing road work.

So, I thought to myself…

If I had one of those businesses, what would I need to be confident that this bump in the road wouldn't jeopardize my entire 2018?

My answer is simple.

I'd want the power to push a button and have people show up at my shop in a moment's notice. I'd want the confidence to know that as soon as the City finishes the road work, I could drive a flood of traffic to my door and make up for the traffic City kept from me as they were fixing the streets.

If you're like me and want the control and confidence to know you can drive traffic to your door at a fraction of the cost of Every Door Direct or print advertising, then let's get cracking!

Viral Marketing Expert Secret To Creating a Digital Campaign to Grow Your List of Potential Customers Which Gives You the Power to Drive Traffic to Your Shop or Service Center at the Push of a Button

Before you read this section, you have to understand where I'm coming from for just a second.

I hate spending money on branding campaigns. I think it's a waste of time and a waste of precious treasure for every local business. Look! You and I both know that the profit you see in your business is thin and every dollar needs to speak for itself, so I focus on lead generation, direct response, and offer-based campaigns ** PERIOD **.

The fastest way I've found to build a list is a referral campaign. In some circles, this is called a "viral campaign." It's called that because the referrals that you get are free advertising and you get more eyes on your campaigns than in traditional one for one marketing.

In this short video, I walk you through the difference between traditional marketing and viral marketing so that you can get a better understanding. After you watch the video, I'm going to give you the key to a great viral campaign so that you can build a massive local lead list.

Shows You How to Build Your Business Faster!

The One Thing You Can Do To Make Your Digital Campaign A Winner!

As promised, there is one thing that you can do to make your digital campaign a real winner. You can create an offer that your ideal customer can't refuse.

That seems so simple.

Well, let me break that down into two critical parts to make it easier to understand.

Part One: Your Ideal Customer.

If you're going to put together a viral campaign, you're going to want to identify an offer that you're target customer will find irresistible. Why? Well, you'd like to repel those that aren't in your sweet spot, and you'd want your campaign to generate highly targeted leads. So, the critical piece here is to describe your ideal customer. Based on what you know about them, how do you separate them from the crowd? That's the offer you want to put out into the ether to build your local lead list.

Part Two: An Offer They Can't Refuse.

Let's face it. Poor marketing campaigns are mostly losers because of the offer. It's not the picture, the headline, the sales copy or anything else that's contributing to the dud status. It's the offer!

I like to describe this as an offer that your ideal customer is willing to crawl through broken glass to get. The best part about viral referral campaigns is that you can run them as a sweepstake. So, only one entrant receives the grand prize. So you're not out the cash of the great offer to everyone. It's the bait you'll use to lure in your best customers.

Free Killer Offer Local Lead Generation Resource Guide — Grab the local lead generation resource guide that will give you a head start on your campaign!

As Your Viral Marketing Expert, I've Gotta Tell You That You'll Want to Know the value of your marketing and easily calculate the return on investment.

This simple technique gives you the insight to stop paying for stuff that doesn't work.

Do you know your average customer value? Do you know how much it costs to obtain a customer? Do you know how much they usually spend on their first transaction?

If you don't, then you're throwing money down the drain!

If you're working with a local marketing agency that believes you should be looking at likes, comments, shares, and other vanity metrics, it's time to leave them for an agency that cares about the money you're spending.

In fact, we just finished up a viral campaign where we were delivering leads at less than $0.50 each – all in. That means our fee and the advertising spend were all included. That's a massive improvement over our client's traditional campaigns. Before he met us, he was spending at least $1.50/lead plus the cost of his Facebook Ads guy.

That's why it's important to know your numbers!

Here's a quick screenshot of the metrics we track with our campaigns. There are lots of options out there to get these set up. Everything from Google Analytics to super-sophisticated platforms like ConversionFly (what we use).

viral marketing expert tools - ConversionFly — This is the super-powerful tool that we use. But, you can do a lot of this on paper if you don't want to commit to the monthly cost. Better yet, hire us to do it for you!

The short story… if you don't know your numbers, you'll never know when to throw more money into the campaign or when to stop it and regroup.

How To Tap Into Your Best and Cheapest Advertising Asset.

If you know how to do this, you can cut your advertising spend in half this weekend.

When we take on new clients, we're continually surprised at how few of them have viewed their existing customers as an essential component to their marketing. We're also surprised how much money they're leaving on the table when they start a new campaign.

In a viral campaign, word of mouth advertising is the name of the game! There's nobody better at doing that for you as an ambassador as your existing customers. That's why it's important to start your campaign by seeding the traffic with your current list.

When you do this, you send an email, letter, post-card, social media post, and video on YouTube. (okay, okay… I understand you may not have all those channels, but you get the picture).

When you goose your campaign in the beginning, you get a great response because your existing customers understand you and trust you with their friends and family. Starting with your current list gives you and your sweepstakes immediate credibility. Credibility will help push your campaign into the viral realm!

So, the next time you get ready to launch your digital viral campaign, stack the deck in your favor and send it out to your list first!

VIRAL MARKETING EXPERT TIP: Tell your list that they're getting this first so that they have an advantage to get in early and earn more extra points than the new names coming into the list. It'll give them a reason to send it out early and often!

Going Viral in Your Advertising Campaigns

So, what does it really mean to "go viral"? Well, there are a number of viral marketing experts that have different metrics. And, for the sake of this quick article, I'm going to say that success is defined as…

Going Viral Definition: You receive more leads from your referrals than you do from the direct spend you're making in your campaign.

Going viral means that if you're collecting 100 leads per day from your Facebook, Google or another platform Pay-Per-Click campaign and you've collected 101 leads that same day from all those people sharing your campaign, then you've gone viral!

We track every campaign and report back to you every week so that we can ruthlessly monitor the progress and continuously make improvements to give you the best ROI possible with every campaign.

Easiest Ways To Get in Google Local Business Results

September 8, 2018 by 1 Comment

If you're looking for the fastest and easiest ways to get in Google Local Business results without having to pay per click or hire a social media marketer, then this article could be worth it's weight in gold!

As you know, Google owns the Internet. That means that they own your success on the internet too! Right or wrong, if you don't play by Google's rules, you're going to find yourself buried at the bottom of the pile. Hoping. Wishing. Pleading for more traffic.

But, if you get it right, you'll be in the top results and the traffic will come to you on autopilot.

By the end of this article, you'll know:

The fastest and easiest way to get a Google My Business Listing
The top 3 things you can do to make your listing amazing
What you need to do on your website to get Google love and great rankings
How to fast-forward to great results even if you don't have 15-minutes to spare

Start With Google "My Business" As One Of The Easiest Ways To Get in Google Local Business Results

Google My Business: An Overview

Google Search, Google Maps, Google+ and one unified interface to bind them all. The launch of Google My Business, appears as a seamless solution to the chronic problem of managing your Google presence across various platforms.

The tech giant says it will help small businesses connect with their customers by assembling all their business information from Search, Maps and Google+, and managing them right at one place. To keep it short and simple, the new tool lets your customers find you across Google.

The 5 Basic Elements You'll Need To Complete For Your Google My Business Listing

Businesses can post content, track analytics, revert back to customers and launch Google Hangouts all at one dashboard. Let’s have a look at the different sections of the My Business Dashboard separately:

Business Info Editor: The Business Info Editor contains instructions on 100% completion of your profile. You can update your business information for search, maps and Google+ directly from here. The “View Your Business on Google” option allows you to see how your listing looks across different platforms on Google. Apart from this, you get options for deleting listings, reporting problems and Get Help right at the bottom of the page.

Insights: The Insights section gives information on- Visibility, Engagement and Audience. You can see the engagement on your posts depending on the content type like, text, links, photos and videos. Information on audience is again broken down into categories like gender, country etc. Some of the data is available only if you have more than 200 followers.

Reviews: This section shows you the reviews of your business on Google and around the web. You can respond back to these reviews right in the dashboard. Analytics for these reviews are also available in the Reviews section.

YouTube: Get the engagement information on your videos in the dashboard. You can also go directly to your channel from the dashboard.

Getting Started: Google says 99% of the Google Places / +Local users have already been shifted to Google My Business. Google took a significant feat of rolling out the new tool globally on the same day to 235 regions with 65 different languages.

How Google My Business Works for the Small Businesses?

1. Stay Updated: Businesses can update their information like address, contact numbers, opening hours and more on Search, Maps and Google+ at one place, so that customers can easily connect with them.

2. Tell Customers How Your Business is Unique: You can add beautiful photos and virtual tours of your business to show customers how your business is unique.

Connect With Customers: Share news, events and other updates from your Google+ page to better connect with your customers. It has become easier to make social updates from within the dashboard.

Respond to Reviews: Read and respond to reviews and stay on top of reviews from across the web. Google My Business gives a streamlined monitoring of reviews from Google and around the web + review analytics.

3. Know How People Interact With Your Business: Use custom insights and integration with AdWords Express to understand how people interact with your business. The Insights are available with more demographic information and data on views and clicks. You can get improved user insights for your business, including visibility, engagement, and audience insights.

4. Mobile Optimized: Manage all your business information on-the-go with the android app for the new tool. Google will soon be launching an app for iOS devices as well.

How to Manage Your Google My Business Page:

In order to make the most use of Google My Business and to connect with your existing and prospective customers, it is necessary to have a powerful social content strategy. Use the Reviews tool to monitor your business reviews and track the ratings for your business over time. This is also where you can respond to reviews as the owner of the business.
Monitor your Insights and use this to improve the visibility and engagement of your brand. Insights tell you how customers find your business and how they interact with your content by showing you data on different types of views and clicks, driving direction requests and website visits.
Make the most use of all creative tools and features offered by Google My Business. You can host Hangouts to chat live with your customers, or create photo albums centered on your products, services, customers and staff.

What Google Has Changed and What Haven't They Changed?

Google My Business is now the default dashboard for the users of Places for Business and Google+. This means if you log in to Google Places for Business, you will be directed to Google My Business. However, not much has changed:

Google My Business is just a business listing management dashboard update. No changes have been made to the front end of Google+ Local and Google Maps.

The update has nothing to do with any algorithmic changes. So, it will not change how you do local SEO.

This will bring no changes to the Google Places Quality Guidelines as well.

There will be no changes to bulk uploads. For businesses which have more than 10 business locations and use Google Places Bulk Upload to manage listings, you will find this has been automatically upgraded, when you log in the next time.

Apart from this, what has not changed is the management and ownership of listings, speed of updates and the verification process. However, Google says you should stay tuned in for more updates like faster updates, social features and visibility of live data.

What's Important About The Process and Google My Business?

Divider Image for Easiest Ways To Get in Google Local Business Results Article

Enter Complete Data

Your target customers want the most relevant results for each search. This means that your business needs a complete and accurate listing to be sure Google matches you up correctly. And, the more times this happens, the more confident Google is to keep showing your business to visitors. So, get this right and you'll start seeing a flood of highly-relevant shoppers at your door. If you want to know how to do this step-by-step, check out Google's tutorial.

Easiest Ways To Get in Google Local Business Results - Details

Verify Your Location

You already know that a strong bottom line is built on location, location, location! But, did you realize that Google actually sends stuff in the mail to verify that your address is right?! That's right, the king of the digital world sends snail mail too! And, getting verified is one of the easiest ways to get in Google Local Business results.

Keep Your Hours Accurate

Nobody likes to show up ready to shop to only realize that the doors are locked. And, if users are complaining to Google, then you're local business listing is going to go to the bottom of the pile. So, you'll want to enter and update your opening hours, including special hours for holidays and special events.

Manage And Respond To Reviews

Google realizes that real people run real businesses and that real people use those businesses. And, Google is in the "business" of matching up eager customers with reputable businesses. This means that you'll want to manage and respond to all reviews. And, while you're at it, show the same courtesy that you express to patrons in the store to those online. After all, everyone's going to be reading reviews to figure out if they want to buy from you!

Add photos

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then pictures of your store, the products you sell, the services you provide and the experiences your customer have is worth a thousand libraries! When you give your customers pictures of what to expect, it gives them confidence to know that they can find what they are looking for when they get there.

How Do I Make My Google My Business Listing Even Better?

This is what Google is looking for…

Relevance – All that stuff in the section above really means relevance. Relevance is just Google's fancy term that says that they want to deliver meaningful search results to your customers. And, just like you, your customers want to find what they're looking for fast. So, as you develop your Google My Business listing, you'll want to make it as specific and relevant as possible so that you get the best customers for your product or service.

Distance – Everyone's on mobile these days! And, our computers are smart enough to be able to tell Google what neighborhood we're in – even if we're using a desktop computer. So, the closest listings to your customer's location when they're searching is really important. That's one of the reasons a verified location is so important. So, be specific and get to know your neighbors!

Prominence – let's put this in layman's terms. This key trait is all about your reputation! So, if you've got an online presence, some social media, and you're connected with other websites around the world, you're going to be prominent. Even better? If you're well connected and you've got a great reputation, you're a Google superstar! So, get started today and keep up with all the great customer service you provide. The more you're involved, the better your listing!