Monday, January 19, 2009

Marketing in the Google Local Listing Tag

01/21/09 notice: I no longer recommend marketing in the title-line of local listings as discussed below.

Last month I ran a piece on “Claim Your Google Map Listing” by the SEO for 1800flowers.com, Jordan Glogau. In that post, Jordan stressed how important it is for local florists to claim their local Google listing before an unethical competitor hijacks it for their own gain.

What follows here assumes the reader has already secured his/her listing and wants to market within the listing itself....

As many florists know, it is not uncommon to see major floral entities market product price points directly in Google’s search results by way of a Google Adwords campaign like we see here:

In an effort to stay competitive with that type of price point marketing I’ve recommended in the past that local florists should use a small key portion of their title tag title area to visually capture the same audience:

But did you know that you can also market a price point in the local listing title area? Indeed you can…

A carefully crafted tag line can not only put a competitive price point directly in the search result page, but it also makes your listing stand out as different from the rest and is likely to draw potential customers in your direction.  

Combine on all tag line marketing efforts, and you will dominate your local area search.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm curious to hear your comments on whether or not this complies with the Google Maps Business Listings Quality Guidelines?

Specifically:
"Represent your business exactly as it appears in real life. The name on Google Maps should match the business name, as should the address, phone number and website."

There are many perspectives on this, so I'd like to see what you think.

Mark McFall said...

Hi Ryan:

I too thought about that element before I posted. However, in our case, it is represented exactly as a customer would see as they drive by our store on the highway (our pull into our parking lot. In our area, Blooms & Things Florist is known for their roses that start at $19.99 and our store signage bears that fact.

On the website itself, the price point is located in the primary selling area.

In my mind, everything clears. But I do caution others not to abuse the tag line.