small business

What Will You Do With Your Google Maps Business View Tour?

So you have a really cool Google Maps Business View Tour (GBV) of your business location….now what are you going to do with it? By now I hope you have a Google+ Local page all dialed in for your business. I will talk about his a little in another article if you need help to get G+ going. In any case your Google+ page is where your GBV tour will be installed. Once your tour is installed there is plenty you can do to drive customer interest to your business. Remember this is part of Google Maps. This tour is available to the public from anywhere in the world as part of that system. In effect you now have a Google Map wandering through your business. Google Maps is the largest mapping system on the planet and huge numbers of customers use it everyday to find the goods and services they are looking for. By having a solid listing on Google Maps you increase your business’s online visibility dramatically. Google Maps, if used properly can be a huge contributor to your local searches. In other words it will help your local customers find you faster and more efficiently. Your GBV tour contributes by taking maps right inside your location, by letting customers see you as a brick and mortar store and by setting you apart as an actual location in the community that they can enjoy going to. Google+ and Google Maps is like having a global, interactive phone book listing on steroids, only people actually use this listing everyday. I have small business clients that have been using these Google tools for a year or so and are getting a consistent 7ooo to 8ooo hits a day on these pages. Oh yeah, did I mention most of this Google stuff is free!

This is Gatorwraps in Ontario, CA. www.gatorwraps.com

View Larger Map This is the restroom view. These guys create some awesome graphics and vehicle wraps.

Embed Your Google Business View Tour

The next step is get your Google Business View tour out there for all to see. How? You will want to embed this tour into your webpages. Why? Google Maps is the tool of choice for everyone with a smartphone or a computer. Remember Google’s goal is to map the whole earth. They have made a pretty good stab at it. To separate your location and make it stand out you need to give your map a clear identity. Brand it for yourself so customers know who they are dealing with. By embedding you have it right in your own webpages. When you embed a tour you are also providing driving instructions and address information at the same time. Another reason is like most tools the more you use them the more powerful they becomes in servicing your needs. By embedding your tour in your webpages you are creating links with Google Maps straight to your front door. As you might imagine this can attract more than a little attention online. Some of my small businesses clients contend that they are using Google+, Google Maps, GMBV and You Tube so efficiently that their local organic searches (unpaid searches) are doing better than their paid advertising.

View Larger Map This is the shop view. www.gatorwraps.com

Here are a few embedding ideas:

Embed into as many webpages as you wish. It doesn’t cost anything and it’s easy! You can start your tour on a given webpage in any view you wish. For instance, if you are a Eye Doctor, maybe you start a tour in your lobby looking at the glasses displays on the front page of your website. On a different page you can start the tour looking at your receptionist’s front desk, still another in an exam room and so on. The examples on this page illustrate the idea for you. Car Dealers like to show off their Customer Lounge, children’s play areas, Service Department, showroom and maybe parts. Sometimes on the same page, often on different pages.
Embed the tour into your Face Book pages so customers can get familiar with your business.
Embed into pages like Wikipedia if you use them.
Embed into blog pages if you are a blogger (there are many online benefits). Depending on your subject embed your tour into your post (article) with a view to focus on that material and link it to your social media pages to lead back to your business.
Along with embedding and linking to social media some clients have invited customers to look for points of interest within the tour and comment on these. In effect they are inviting them into their shop location. Others have used Social Media, Email and so on to invite customers inside their location via their tour as part of a “scavenger hunt” with some sort of prize attached. Maybe even concluding the hunt with a visit to the store or office.
Some business owners now actually use various overlays along with their GBV tours that create hot spots, add menus and even background music from within the tour. Thus they can connect to shopping carts, contact pages, sales desk and so on. These overlay programs when embedded into webpages dispense information as a customer virtually walks the location. This allows the customer to interact with the business even buying product directly from the tour. Retailers of all sorts love these overlays.
You can ask businesses you work with to embed your tour into their page as well. Most businesses have pages for links. Why have just a link if you can let customers interact directly with your location on those pages. If you are a wedding venue you might have planners run tours of your location on their websites. Maybe flower shops, bakeries or photographers might do the same for you.
If you are an event venue or wedding venue embed your tour so as to attract attention to various appealing aspects of your location. For instance the pool, the lounge, the chapel, the garden or patio….you get he point.
For emails where embedding becomes not so feasible try using Google Url Shortener ( http://goo.gl/ ) create links to your tours and invite customers to check them out. Then you can track the link when logged into you Google Account.

View Larger Map This is the Lobby view. www.gatorwraps.com

These are just a few ideas to get you started. Honestly I am constantly surprised how creative business owners use Google Maps and GBV over and over again to promote there businesses.

Here’s the bottom line!

If you are not using online tools to promote your business you are loosing out on a lot of business. Small Business Owners shy away from things they don’t understand and/or have time to figure out. I know I ran my own store for a few decades. I wish I had these tools then, it would have saved me $1000 a month and actually got some real results. Granted this takes a little time and effort but these tools actually work….ask the big guys how they do it! For the most part the tools are free and there are so many features I can’t begin to comment on all of them in this short article. A Google Business View tour has a one time cost to photograph and install for your location. That cost depends on the size and layout of your location. The labor to shoot and install starts at $300 for a small shop. After the initial install Google runs it as part of Google Maps for free. You will have a tough time finding more powerful and effective tools at any cost. The overlay tools I mentioned are amazing. These for the most part right now are done by third party companies at a very low annual cost. Let me know if you need more information I’ll dig it out for you.

I would enjoy hearing from you please let me know if you have questions or comments. Just click here to send me a message!

Thanks, KC

You Need Good Pictures and Video – High Quality Content

Black Forest Lodge Big Bear Lake, CA 92315 909-866-2166

Why are quality pictures important in every business? ….even small business? In a word, “Image”! Quality pictures of your business, online and in every form of advertising, are what separates your business form everyone else. Pricing, customer service, products, availability, location…..all of these factors contribute to the image of your business. If you are a franchise you have it even tougher, why? How do you brand your business as different, better, more desirable than others in the same franchise? Your branding, the elements that separates you from everyone else, is the image you create for your business in the eyes of others, your customers.

The Oaks Dental Center, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320 (805) 499-1111

As a society we have become so visually oriented that the quest for Super High Definition-TV never ends. Why? It’s all about the picture the image we want to see! We are attracted to quality pictures that show us what we want to see, the way we want to see it! We quickly move away when pictures don’t appeal to us. Your advertising whether online, in print or signage becomes exponentially more power when you add high quality pictures. Video, done well, has even a greater impact! Why is this so? Sharp pictures appeal to the eyes but video appeals to the eyes and ears at the same time. Video combines two senses to capture and hold our audience. We are trained in this day and age to lock-on to a movie and follow it to it’s end! With video we are delivering a stream of many images (30 to 60 per second) along with music and words leading the viewer to a conclusion in their mind….Come Do Business With Us!

The Pines Tavern On The Lake , Big Bear Lake 92315 909-878-0506

I have a friend and client that runs a small business that caters to high end clientele in a very competitive field. They do an amazing job and have some great employees that know their stuff. His son came to me a while back and explained that he had taken a quality image with his phone and planned to use it to advertise his family’s business. The image was going to print in a classy high end magazine with sharp high gloss pages through out. Not a cheap form of advertising. When I looked at the image I was a little surprised! The content was OK, but it was a little out of focus. The color was not right and the exposure was off as well. He asked what I thought about the image. I mentioned it was a little soft and asked how was he planning to fix it? He was content with the image right out of his phone. He said, “It’s good enough!” He planned to send it directly to the publisher without any further effort.

I ran my own shop for more than 20 years. While we go out of our way to design, shape, clean and manicure our business location to cater to our client, it is not uncommon to look at our advertising material and say, “That’s good enough!” What are you saying to your customers about your business, your brand, your image?

Oasis of Mara, 29 Palms Inn, Twenty-nine Palms, CA 92277 | (760) 367-3505

Are quality professional pictures important for business? Absolutely! These are the images you want to project to customers about your business! Quality professional pictures equate to a quality professional business in our customer’s mind. Are the pictures you use in advertising just “good enough”? No, So produce images, pictures, video as good as can reasonably be produced, given the business you are in and the budget you have to work with. The return on your investment will be obvious.

Today everyone has a camera in their pocket. Usually phone pictures look like phone pictures. Out of the millions of images shot on phones occasionally you see a pretty good one. Even a blind squirrel gets a nut once in a while! Most of the time they are not “good enough” to promote your business. Crisp, sharp images jump off the page capturing your audience’s attention. There is a reason photographers spend a small fortune on equipment, software and education. Good quality material will serve you for years to come. Some high quality pictures I shot 20 years ago are still being used by those clients to promote their businesses today. To serve a client well, we have to spend time talking about who their customers are and how to make images appeal to them based on the experience of you, the business owner.

How much time and money have you put into creating your business? Do customers see you as the best in your field? Is that what your advertising says?

Reach out to me if you have questions or need help. Click Here for a link to connect.