DIGITAL MARKETING INSIDER SECRETS MAY 2019 – GOOGLE MY BUSINESS UPDATES: HOW DO I CREATE A SHORT NAME & URL FOR MY LISTING? + HOW TO AUTO-HIGHLIGHT POSITIVE CUSTOMER REVIEWS FOR YOUR BUSINESS
Google recently launched a new feature that lets business owners create a short name to define their GMB listing URL. The intention behind rolling out this feature was to make it easier for business owners to share details with their customers as short names are easy to remember (duh).
This is obviously a very useful and smart feature because earlier businesses had to market the extremely long Google My Business URLs. Also, keep in mind that just like the Emails, the short names will run out very quickly, so make sure you hurry up and claim your short name before someone else does.
It can even harm you if you don’t act on time as your competitors may use those short names to their advantage. Here’s how it works according to Google:
If you’re a verified business, you can create a short name, or a custom name, for your Business Profile to make it easier for customers to find you.
When you share your short name, customers can enter the short name URL in the browser’s address bar, like “g.page/[yourcustomname]”, to go directly to your Business Profile.
Note: For bulk users, short names have to be claimed individually per listing.
Having a short name for your GMB listing will not only help you in sharing it but will also help you to get more reviews. Not to mention that it will be easy for your customers to remember those names so they are more likely to click on that link, instead of passing it away as just another promotional message/Email.
Head straight to the Google support page to know how to create, change and delete your short name. In case you spot someone else using your brand name or spot any offensive or spammy content, you can submit a report using this link.
We can not emphasize more on how imperative it is to use it and act as quickly as possible because there’s not a single reason to not use it. It will help you with a lot of your marketing efforts. So get started as quickly as you can.
The process is very simple, just follow these instructions.
- Sign in to Google My Business.
- Open the location you want to create a short name for.
- From the menu, click Info and then Add profile short name.
- Enter your short name. You can enter up to 32 characters.
- If your name isn’t available, you’ll receive an error message and have to choose a different name. Try abbreviating your name or adding other descriptions, like your location. You can also pick another word that describes your business or brand.
- Click Apply. Your short name will show as pending, and when it’s ready, it’ll show on your Business Profile.
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Now you can highlight positive customer reviews for your business easily. Google has rolled out a new feature that allows you to highlight the reviews from your happy customers. It’s called Suggested posts: Customer testimonials.
Here’s an excerpt from their announcement:
We’re happy to announce a new feature that lets you post automatically suggested reviews as customer testimonials.
In some countries, Google My Business will provide suggested posts to help you showcase positive reviews left for your business. You may get suggestions for new testimonials to post when you sign in to Google My Business, or via email notifications.
These posts are automatically suggested based on 4 or 5-star reviews recently left for your business. You’ll be able to review and edit the post before publishing it.
Here’s an example of how it looks:
Takeaway
Positive reviews are immensely beneficial to your business and bottom line. So if you have a verified Google My Business listing, you can use Google posts to highlight reviews from your happy customers. It can help you in many ways. Also, do not forget to constantly use Google posts to promote your events, products & offers. In case you are new to Google posts or thinking about how much value it will bring to your business, we highly suggest you give this article a read.
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Google My Business rolled out a Products Beta feature to some business listings last year. It allowed them to add products to their listing just like services. Google has a very easy to understand help page that explains every single detail of this feature.
Be informed that currently, it’s only available to a few businesses in select countries. Also, they have special instructions for different categories. So Make sure you read their help page before diving deep into it.
If you are eligible to promote products, you are allowed to feature your products within a Google post, which has proven to bring in a lot of sales.
But just like the service feature, you will have to add each item one at a time. And because it’s only available to retail merchants, it’s obviously a very slow and tiring process. Let’s see if they will allow bulk uploading in the future but as of now, it’s just one product at a time.
We tried searching for answers as to why it’s only available to retail merchants that also to selected few, we just found this statement:
Important: This feature may not be available to all retail merchants. We’re working to bring it to all eligible businesses.
Takeaway
If you are a retail merchant and eligible for this feature, you can see it in the products tab in the left-hand menu. And if you are eligible, the first thing you should do is to try it out right away. It is a free marketing tool and can bring in a lot of relevant traffic & ultimately boost your sales.
Is your online listing up to date? Find out your visibility score today
- Bing Ads is Now Microsoft Advertising: It’s a move to demonstrate that Microsoft is aligning Microsoft Advertising with the broader aspects of search marketing.
- Facebook has launched a new interface for Ads Manager. It will be effective from May 1. And there’s no way to switch back to the prevision version.
- Google has postponed the Video campaigns and has launched Parallel Tracking for display campaigns.
- It is possible that in the near future, product price and seasonality will be taken into consideration as new smart bidding signals in Google ads. Learn more.
- Instagram is seeing steady growth in term of ad spends and so does the newer ad formats like responsive search ads. We highly recommend reading the Marin’s Benchmark Report Q1 2019 on Most Popular Ad Formats as it sheds light on the latest trends.
- If you are running Google display ads, then be aware that there is an automated targeted setting that you need to turn it off right away. Although Google says that it targets customers who are likely to convert, but the fact that they have buried it deep in the settings says just the opposite.
- Bing Ads which is now Microsoft Advertising has launched a new call to action extension. This particular extension help you highlight the CTA on your text ads and those who have participated in the beta have witnessed an average boost of 20% in their click-through-rate.
- If you are not using responsive search ads, this article might give you some (seven to be precise) reasons to use them in 2019. And even if you decide not to, at least you will have knowledge about it and it will come handy in the future.
- Here’s an excellent guide on how to graph the new Impression and click share metrics to find data insights in your Google Ads account
- Amazon is attracting more and more advertisers as businesses are preferring to advertise directly on the E-Commerce platform rather than the search engine. Which means that they are avoiding the first step altogether and jumping straight to the second one & getting good results from it.
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