5 Reasons to Use Google My Business - Restaurant Success Guide
COVID-19 has brought the restaurant industry to a grinding halt and it's been a tough time for the industry. Hopefully, with a vaccine, with better screening and the virus losing its virulence, the F&B industry will bounce back.
As the industry awaits a reopening, this is perhaps the best time for it to make sure it is ready to thrive as patrons start thronging back to their favourite eateries. One of the biggest marketing elements in a restaurant's survival strategy will be how to Google My Business (GMB) for restaurants. Google small business has helped small businesses to get more customers from local searches and it has helped restaurants too in appearing in local searches.
Surprisingly Google My Business is largely ignored by restaurateurs. While restaurateurs do not mind spending a huge amount of money on Social Media, most are completely aware of the incredible benefits of Google My Business. One of the key marketing tools for restaurants will be how to appear on more local searches and get more customers and footfalls.
The best part of Google My Business is free, pretty easy to use and can bring you tons of footfall.
GOOGLE MY BUSINESS
What's Google My Business. It's a free service offered to bonafide businesses that comprise multiple offerings. You can add your events, specials, offers, photos through this service. It is a powerful tool and can drive tons of traffic to your website and store.
Whenever someone is searching for your business or businesses similar to yours, Google displays business profiles. One can even make reservations with the new feature introduced. It's also very easy to maintain and update. One can also access analytics (and, it's pretty detailed), set up AdWords in a few clicks, and one can respond to reviews by customers thereby increasing customer engagement.
I have noticed that my customers attract great, very focused targetted traffic from Google My Business.
HOW EASY IS GOOGLE MY BUSINESS
It's so damn easy to set it up. All you gotta do is sign up here and fill up a form. Google verifies your business and then you go live. That is all there is to it.
It is also incredibly easy to update your account. It takes just minutes to add a new post, offer or event. You will get notifications as soon as there is a review posted by a customer and you can respond to it easily and quickly.
So, the top 5 reasons why every restaurateur should be using Google My Business are:
- It's Free - If it's free then it's a no-brainer. Go ahead and use it without shelling out any money.
- Gets You Business - Can get you business and traffic to your website for free.
- It's Easy - Incredibly simple to use and update. You won't need an external agency to manage it for you.
- Analytics - You have access to some pretty cool analytics which tells you how much traffic you're getting and how you compare on the click-through-rate/impressions etc.
- Google My Business is Here to Stay - This is here to stay and may (in my opinion) reduce the importance of services like Yelp and Zomato. It's always a good idea to enter the game early on and get that advantage.
So, go ahead and start focusing on your Google My Business and get the advantages that it has to offer!