As a leader in the digital marketplace, Google is constantly changing the way businesses are found on its platforms and can continuously reach the market to promote products, services, and their latest offers, events, and specials.
To compete in Toronto’s digitally-savvy market, part of owning a business in the city these days heavily relies on leveraging the latest and most effective digital marketing strategies to make your brand stand out across Google’s network, such as on Maps, now known as Google My Business, which your potential customers largely engage with.
Through Google My Business, and with the help of a digital marketing company in Toronto, you can add or claim your business listing and optimize it with the most up-to-date information that helps potential customers find your business, such as hours and location; and discover what others share about their own experience from availing of your products and services, among others. With the recent addition of Google Posts to business listings, potential customers can now also see how they can best avail of your most attractive offers.
What are Google Posts?
Google hasn’t officially given it a name, but many business owners and search engine users now see these small banners displayed under a business’ map listing, leading the new feature to be colloquially termed ‘Google Posts’.
Google Posts is a new feature under Google My Business that allows you to create content directly on Google; in just a few, short minutes, your advertisement or content is directly published on Google, and ranks highly in search results for their names.
This feature was originally launched in January 2016 for US Presidential Candidates to use. At that time, posts appeared in a card-like format. Recently, it has been extended to Google My Business, allowing you, or a digital marketing company you work with in promoting your business in Toronto to publish these card-like posts that show on top of search results for your business – much like business cards.
There’s no way to access actual Google Posts from their homepage, as these only appear within search results when triggered by a search for your brand name. When potential customers type into search the name of your business, Google Posts come up along with your business listing. With so much potential from increased visibility alone, it’s essential to keep your business’ Google Post fresh, up-to-date, and optimized with the help of a digital marketing company in Toronto.
Fresh Updates Mean Removal of Google Posts after One Week
With the great power of increased brand visibility, comes also the great responsibility of keeping your business’ Google Posts fresh and up-to-date, as the search engine giant removes these in just one, short week after they are published.
Unlike the information listed in your Google My Business listing, or even on your site, Google Posts are not meant to live on the web forever. Rather, true to their purpose of serving your customers with the latest updates on your newest offers, they are to be removed after seven days.
Think of it this way: nothing upsets your customers more than placing an order for one of your products, signing up for a service, or arriving at your store just to find out that the product or service they’re after has been discontinued, or is no longer available. In the same fashion, after a while of publishing Google Posts, they are no longer considered fresh, nor timely, and as such, would have no reason to exist along with your business listing – especially when they’re meant to boost the marketing of a limited offer.
Naturally, you’ll want a massive hype surrounding your latest product, especially if it’s to be offered on a limited basis, but after it expires, you won’t want a mob of angry customers hounding you for an offer that’s no longer available, all because marketing collaterals were not properly updated.
But even with expiring Google Posts, there’s little cause for worry. In your Google My Business dashboard, you should be able to receive a notification of a post expiring soon. With this comes the opportunity to cook up the next fresh update, or promote a new offer, simply by brainstorming with the digital marketing company you work with and arming yourself with a slew of offers your business can share. Alternatively, the Posts tab in mobile also stores all the old updates you shared, making it easy to review past updates and see which offers your customers loved and really engaged with.
As Google Posts can also be used to promote upcoming events, it’s also easy to create a hype before it and invite more guests. After the event, the Google Post quickly disappears, making it easy to mark calendars and ensure you keep promoting only your business’ latest updates.