Marketing with Google Maps

If you want customers to find you, Google Maps is a great way to advertise your business, even if you have more than one physical location. You can create a free business listing in Google Places — just go to Google.com and click ‘business solutions’, where you will find instructions for placing your listing on Google Places. When people search Google Maps, your ad will pop-up with the right keywords.

Google Boost

If you need to advertise your business in several locations, for just $50 per month Google Boost will advertise your business to people searching for other businesses using Google Maps, or even location specific searches. A Google Boost ad appears at the top of the page, or in the right-hand column as a sponsored search results. Google determines the relevancy of someone’s search enquiry and matches it to your Google Places listing — your Boost ad does what it says on the tin and gives your advert a boost!

The first thing to do is to get your free listing in Google Places then place a Google Boost ad, which will improve the chances of your business being seen. You can create your Google Boost ad from your Google Places account and it is pretty straightforward as Google Boost manages everything and you are charged per click depending on your monthly budget, which you set yourself.

When your advert appears you will be able to display information about your business such as your business name, address and phone number, your URL (which has to be less than 35 characters). You can show a short description of your business with a link to your Google Places page. Your Google Boost ad can also show star ratings and reviews and your Google Places tags.

If you are familiar with ads on Google Maps you will know that a business advert normally shows with a red marker to identify the location of an advert placed to Google Places. With a Google Boost ad, you get a blue marker instead to highlight your business location. You can use a combination of Google Places ads and Boost ads if you have different offers you want people to see and it’s a good idea to experiment until you find adverts that perform well.

You will get a dashboard with a daily report of your Boost ad performance, and this will show up in your Google Places account. You will see how many impressions, clicks and costs your Boost ad has generated along with the top keywords people use when your Boost ad pops up.