Over the past few months, Google has been more and more focused on the Google My Business platform. These changes lead me to believe that they’re aiming to make Google My Business like a social network for businesses. The quality of your business’s online assets and reviews are already ranking factors, so it’s not a leap to think that Google My Business will affect ranking in the future. So what does that mean for your marketing efforts? Existing customers will only stick around if their experience in interacting with you is one that builds trust. Retention is also about focusing on building a robust on-boarding process for existing customers. And small business owners have already begun to use cloud-based technology to improve their internal systems and processes. Use Video Content Everywhere We’ve been talking about content and we’ve been talking about video separately for years, but I think 2019 is going to be all about video content. Short form video content, in particular, is an important marketing trend. They continue to come out with new tools and products that make it easier for anyone to produce short and engaging videos that can be used for any and all marketing efforts.
‘Tis the season for end of year lists and content that’s looking to trends in the New Year. Rather than run through all of the ins and outs of what I see coming up on the marketing horizon, I’ve decided to focus on what I see as the four most important marketing trends for 2019.
If you’re a small business owner or a marketing consultant who works with small business teams, these are the trends you can’t afford to ignore.
1. Get Up to Speed on Google My Business
Google has been trying to crack the social media and small business ad platform code for a while. Some attempts, like Google Plus, have not worked, but it seems like they may have finally found their sweet spot with Google My Business. This is a tool where local businesses can advertise and consumers can find nearby businesses on mobile devices.
Over the past few months, Google has been more and more focused on the Google My Business platform. It’s become more feature-rich and useful for business owners, and I think it’s likely that it will become a sort of social CRM tool in the near future.
What do I mean by that? In addition to the features like leaving reviews, finding directions, and making suggestions to edit the page, Google has recently added a feature where people can follow a Google My Business page. Not only that, Google’s recently introduced an app just for their Google My Business product.
These changes lead me to believe that they’re aiming to make Google My Business like a social network for businesses. This serves local business owners well. When someone starts to follow your company on Google My Business, that’s obviously a strong indicator that they’re interested in what you have to offer. This provides yet another channel for you to identify hot leads and connect with your fans.
If you’re running marketing efforts for a small business, then you should be paying close attention to all of these developments and additions to the platform and keeping pace with them accordingly.
Eventually, I anticipate that a business’s Google My Business platform will become a ranking factor in Google searches. The more followers you have on your page, the higher you’ll rank in search results. The quality of your business’s online assets and reviews are already ranking factors, so it’s not a leap to think that Google My Business will affect ranking in the future.
2. Focus on Retention
There’s an awful lot of work that goes into generating leads. It’s time, it’s money, it’s effort. This means that retaining leads is really where a business’s bread and butter lies. Research has shown time and again that it’s cheaper to sell to an existing customer than to go out and…
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