Before today’s digital ecosystem, local small businesses had a hard time growing their brand. Word of mouth and traditional advertising was the only way to go. And the high cost of advertising meant they did very little of it.
However, a small business can now let everyone (including a global audience) know who and where they are with digital technology. And one of the tools which makes this possible is Google My Business.
So how effective is Google My Business in allowing small local businesses to increase their presence? According to a new report from BrightLocal, a typical business receives 59 actions from their Google My Business listing each month. Google identifies an action as a website click, call or direction request from users.
In order to find out how effective Google My Business is, the study explored the listing of 45,264 local businesses in 36 industries. The average business is found in 1,009 searches per month, with 84% of these coming from discovery searches. This comes out to 157 direct searches each month, and 852 discovery searches.
“Google My Business continues to grow as a transactional layer of the internet for local businesses.” So, you have to include it in your digital toolbox.
[Small Business Trends - Michael Guta - {edited}]