There are a lot of options out there for you to market yourself. Having a website is big. But you should also consider Google My Business… a largely free service.

Using local Google map marketing can be quite invaluable to your business. But you have to know how to use it to be able to properly reap the rewards. Here’s what you need to know.

Setting It Up

The first thing you need to do is register. You can do that by searching for Google My Business and clicking the link. From there, you can input your company name, what type of business it is, its location, office hours, and what type of people you service.

After you do that, Google will send you a postcard with a code. Expect that to take three to five business days. Once you get that and enter that on the site, you will be good to use all of its functionality.

The Next Part

Once you unlock Google My Business, you can do things like uploading photos of your business. They can be anything from exterior shots of your office building to the interior showing you or your employees. Would-be customers can see these, and it can help them decide to proceed to your site.

You can also upload promotions for anything from your latest blog post to a particular special. This involves your uploading text and a photo or video to accompany it – make sure that it’s your own or a royalty-free image. Otherwise, you might get into copyright trouble.

As far as the frequency goes, you can do this daily, several times a week, or once a week. It all depends on what you want to do. There is an archive that people can scroll through, so it’s not like it will immediately disappear.

Analytics

You can always check on the health of your Google My Business page to see things like how many people have gone to it in the previous month, three months or even longer. You can see how many people called your number, what the busiest time was with phone calls, what phrases people looked for to find you, whether people asked for directions to you place. It’s quite a useful tool to use.

This is far from an in-depth look at the site, but you can take a look for yourself to see what it can do for you. You will likely be happy with what you see with what they offer.