Is there any point to Google+ for your trade?

Is Google+ going to be the best thing for promoting your business since sliced bread?

Google+ is the new (I say new, but it's been around for a bit now) social media platform from Google.
However it has been wrongly dismissed by many business owners and that is a slight error in judgement and it will be their loss to continue to do so. 
In this post I'll explain why you should take advantage of Google+ and its +1 button (Google's 'Like') now and I'll show you how it will be a great for marketing your business whether a plumber or an interior designer. By the end you'll understand just how powerful it can be.

Which is the biggest search engine on the internet?

I've been plugging Google+ pretty much from the very beginning at first just because it was a nice new social media platform that I really liked but then I started to realise the power of it and the more I read the more I loved it, I now spend the majority of my social media time on it. Google has tried a social media platform before and it failed, but Google+ is going to succeed, they will make sure it succeeds and it already has a foothold.

Google is the biggest search engine on the internet and they make an absolute fortune from the adverts (known as Adwords Pay Per Click) that are shown to people when they search for something. However the key thing you should be interested in for marketing your business here are the organic & local display which are below the beige box at the top of a search display.

So how does Google+ help my trade business?

Obviously Google will favour it's own social media network over any other, it may not be fair but that's the way it is and I'd do the same thing. Google is bringing it's services together, you now only have the one username to login for all services and you can operate the Google services that you use from the top bar. Google whether you realise it or not has already brought Google+ and search together.

If you've got a GMail account (if you do, you have a Google+ account waiting for you), are on Google+ and performed a search, lets say for an architect, If you are following a friend or customer of an architect in one of your circles (Google's version of friends or connections) and that person has has given a local architect that they know a +1 on their website or G+ page, something great happens. 

Google takes that as a recommendation and will show you that architects website or G+ page in the search results and it will let you know by the side of the listing too, great free marketing for the architect. Can you see how powerful G+ can be for your business?
Google also now has a linking feature so with a bit of code you can link your website and page together to help get you seen in searches.

What is the potential marketing reach of Google+

Now that we know how big Google+ can be for our businesses, imagine you have 40+ customers that love your service and all of those customers have been onto your website and page, they've circled you so they receive your updates and they've given you a +1 too, when people who are following them now search for your service or product guess who they're going to see in the search?

So let's do the maths imagine you have 40 customers promoting your service, and each of those has just 100 people following them - that's potentially 4000 people looking at your company. 
Now imagine they have 500 and trust me as G+ grows this will be the norm and a low figure at that, I've been on G+ since the beginning and now have 569 people who have circled me, so 40 x 500 would be 20,000 people potentially looking at your product or service.

If we said just 1% of those people turned in to customers or clients that would be 200 new customers or clients for your business.
Would that be okay?

But it doesn't stop there, if you have lots of +1s and your customers are leaving reviews/ reviews for you on Google Local then that opens you up to everyone else who is on the internet that needs your product or service as +1s and reviews give your business more weight in searches. How does that work for silent word of mouth business 24/7?.



To your success
Paul Jennings

PS catch up with me on Google+ - you can also visit The Marketing for Trades page for regular tips.


PSS make sure you're on Google Local too, here's the link, it's free and takes about 10 minutes to set up.