Google My Business (GMB) is becoming more and more important to small businesses and franchises that want to market to local customers. That’s because your local listing can be one of the first things that show up when customers look for you. It can even help improve your company’s local SEO.

You’re probably familiar with GMB’s main features. You list your business on it with your address, contact information, website, maybe a few photos, and your hours of operation. However, you may not be familiar with some features they’ve released within the past year and how these features can improve your Google My Business page.

By using these 3 features, your customers will have more opportunities to interact with your business so you can stand out from your local competition with your listing.

#1 Products Catalog – A Great Way to Showcase Your Merchandise

The products catalog lets you showcase all of your products and group them by collections. To add a product and/or collection, go to the Products tab on the left of your Google My Business’s profile.

Once you’re in the products section, you can start building products and collections.

A product is a single item you sell, while a collection is a group of products that are tied together. So if you sell pet supplies, you might have a pet food collection and a separate pet accessories collection, each with products in those categories.

For each product that you list you can add:

Product image
Collection
Product name (optional)
Additional details (optional)
Price (optional)

If you sell dozens of products, start small. Choose to highlight only your most popular products first, and once those are built out you can add more.

While product posts work for most industries, there are restrictions on products for alcohol, gambling, financial services, etc.

#2 Google My Business Questions & Answer to Answer Customer Questions

The Q&A feature is another GMB feature that not many business owners are aware of. In this section of GMB anyone can ask or answer questions about your business. You may have a customer ask about your hours or about your return policy. Their question can be answered by either you or other customers.

A good practice is to set up notifications so you can quickly answer any questions that a customer might have. You can try experimenting with the Q&A by putting in a few of your most common questions from customers using your business profile. Then go back and answer those questions so customers can have more information about your store.

There are some restrictions on the Q&A section. You can’t put links to websites, email addresses or phone numbers. However, you can also report comments if you feel like someone is abusing the system.

#3 Google My Business Posts to Increase Engagement

Another Google My Business newer feature is posts. A GMB Post is a short snippet that will show up on your profile for 7 days before being retired to the posts page. Here’s an example of a product post for a shutters company.

There are four types of posts:

What’s new
Events
Products
Offers

What’s New posts talk about new things happening with your business. Events are to highlight upcoming events your business has like a Mother’s Day brunch or a yoga class. Products posts lets you showcase a featured product or up to 10 products outside of your catalog for 7 days. And Offers are where you can share promotional information like sales.

Posts can include a photo or video, short description, and button/link with a call to action. All of the posts will show on your Google My Business listing main page for 7 days before they’re retired to the posts section.

So there are your three little known features of Google My Business. Hopefully, by experimenting with some of these features, you can improve your Google My Business page and draw more local customers to your store.

Do You Need Help Managing Multiple Google My Business Listings?

If you’re a franchise or multilocation company that needs help with your GMB listings, give us a call 317-576-2855 or fill out the form below. We can help you create your listings, get added to other local directories, and manage the listings for all of your locations to you improve your listings and save time on managing them.