Google Places for Business
Google Maps is not only a great provider of maps and directions, it’s also a very effective marketing tool that you can use to expose your business to millions of customers for free. If you want to use Google Places for Business to get your business listed on G Maps, then all you have to do is visit the Places for business page, just enter your Google account details and take it from there. You don’t even have to pay money in order to display your business in Google Maps, however, there are more effective ways to reach new and more customers using Google’s mapping service, but some of those alternatives do cost money.
Most business owners think that to get their businesses listed on Google Maps they have to pay a lot of money, but that’s just not true, as I mentioned earlier this service is totally free, all you need is a Google account, and I’m sure you probably have one those too.
If you want to use non free alternatives to promote your business using Google’s services, then you can use Adwords to create a search marketing campaign through Google.com, this strategy will allow you to display ads on other people’s websites, Google search results pages, and Google Maps as well. When someone sees one of your ads and decides to click on it, he or she will be automatically redirected to your own website, or your business listing at Google Maps.
You can also place ads with location extensions on Google Maps, Google search network sites, and on Google itself. This last option will allow you to display additional information about your business, therefore, the chances of getting new customers will increase greatly.
Recently Google started testing out with business photos, interactive 360 degree images of places in Google Maps, this new feature worked out so well that Google announced just a couple of days ago that images for business have been fully included to their “places for business” service. Now people can walk into your business, and they can explore the whole place using Google Maps only, now you can reach more customers in a more interactive way, this will not only help you attract more of them, it will also make your business seem more serious and trustworthy, in other words, it will increase the “goodwill” of your whole business in general.
In order to add interactive 360 degree images of your business to Google Maps, you have to hire a Google trusted photographer. To find a trusted photographer visit the new Business Photos website, there you will be able to find a big list of Google trusted photographers near your area, when you find one, you can contact him or her via email, or by phone to schedule the time and the price. Prices aren’t disclosed on the page, so I guess that you’ll just have to negotiate with these guys, who knows maybe some of you will even get their photos taken for free.
After the photos are taken, the photographer that you hired will upload the images to Google Maps, short after that you will be able to see full panoramic 360 degree images of your business on the web, the best part is that these images won’t only be seen on G Maps, users will also have access to them through Google.com and your G Places listing.
Trusted photographers are currently available in 14 cities in the USA, you can also hire photographers in France, New Zealand, Australia, and the UK. As with every other product and service that Google launches they guaranteed that soon more photographers will be available in more areas throughout the world.
Google Places for business is yet another great way to effectively market your business at a very low price, this will help your business stand out in the search results, and for that reason it will get more attention. I’m sure that smart business owners will immediately notice how big this is going to be, and pretty soon we’ll be able to explore even more cool places using Google Maps.
Via: Google Lat Long
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
The main trouble with Google Places For Business is that they take so long to correct errors when you ask them to correct them. Some Times it takes two months. Also they will put a description of the business on that has not been put on by you and has nothing relevant to your business. They don’t recognize Pizza business as being different companies, as in one case you look up one Canadian wide Pizza Co. and you get a different Canadian wide Pizza Co. both of which are Canadian owned.
Ellison, you are right! Unfortunately the service is not perfect yet, every now and then we might be able to find errors, but, as a user you can report mistakes like this one directly through the Google Maps page, this will improve the quality of the data provided by their service, therefore, you won’t be only helping yourself but others as well. In order to do so you have to click on the “report a problem” link that’s located at the bottom right corner of the maps interface, alternately, you can edit the map if you know exactly how to fix it, to do so just click on the “edit in Google map maker” link that’s located right next to the report a problem link. Hope this helps!