Having managed the local online presence of major retail brands for many years we have seen significant growth in people ‘clicking for directions’ on their mobile.
Although this is not surprising in itself as more people use mobile maps, what is surprising is that the volume of usage suggest that people use Google Maps even when they are going to places they frequent such as the grocery store.
We looked into this and found that people use maps even when they know where they are going to get the fastest route.
This is an incredibly important consideration. Retail brands that ignore Google Maps are missing an opportunity.
What’s the opportunity?
When people use Google Maps to navigate to your premises, the chances are they are on the way! Take advantage of this and use Google My Business Posts to advertise in-store products and promotions.
Google Posts are the single most under-utilized feature in Google My Business today.
Multi-location brands can attract a significant number of customers interacting with their Google Business Profiles by leveraging Google Posts. We’d go as far as to say that Google Posts for certain brands will be seen more than their Facebook Posts!
To get an idea of how many Google Posts views you could get, just follow these steps.
Go to your Google My Business Dashboard and download an insight report for all your stores.
You can expect a post ‘open rate’ of between 5 and 25% of your Total Search volume!
That is a lot of eyeballs at a time that people are thinking about coming to your store.