How findable is your business?
Now more than ever people are using search engines to discover new experiences, as well as re-acquaint themselves with trusted favourites, and you want your business to provide accurate information on all of those platforms they’re searching on. If there is a wrong address or phone number on one of the major search engines, you’ll be disappointing a large number of potential customers.
80% of consumers lose trust in local businesses if they see incorrect or inconsistent contact details or business names online*.
So this issue goes beyond just being find-able, it’s the accuracy of that information that is even more critical. I may be able to find you online but are your opening hours correct? Is that the latest menu? And do you have the easiest way to book right at my fingertips?
If not you could be losing me as a customer, or worse still annoying me enough to pen a bad review (more on that later).
So forget about SEO, Facebook Pixels and Google Ad words for the time being. Let’s take a moment to get back to basics and audit the information that is freely available on the web for accuracy.
Google My Business is a free and easy-to-use tool for businesses and organizations to manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Maps. If you verify and edit your business information, you can both help customers find your business and tell them your story.
With Google accounting for 80% of all desktop search traffic then it becomes a no-brainer of why your listing needs to be as accurate as possible on Google My Business. If you need more reasons then check out this blog.
Need some motivation to get started? Consider that 2.5 billion people use Facebook every month, and more than 140 million other businesses already use Facebook to connect with that massive audience. So log-in and check to see that your info has the right opening hours, contact details and latest specials. If you haven’t got a Facebook Page for your Business then Hootsuite have developed this handy step by step process.
The Australian Tourism Data Warehouse is the national platform for digital tourism data, providing content for tourism operators and distributors.
Why is this important? Well if your business provides a service to a visitor in any way shape or form then it is worth your while to list here. This is a single source of truth that then gets published by over 250 online distributors. Not only do they include Destination Marketing Organisations such as Tourism Australia, the NSW state tourism organisations and local tourism organisations including our own Coffs Coast website. The ATDW information is also distrubted by small, medium and large corporates.
Listing with ATDW does take time as your listings do need to be reviewed by the state tourisim organisation, but this just means that the quality and integrity of the information is upheld to the national standards. Which is what we are banging on about here – accuracy of information. So worth the effort.
The Tourism industry is a vital industry on the Coffs Coast. The area welcomes 1.6 million visitors each year and is home to over 830 tourism businesses. Our Industry and Destination Development team helps promote the Coffs Coast – the Coffs Harbour and Bellingen local government areas – to potential leisure and business tourism visitors. And all of our marketing “call-to-actions” lead back to the coffscoast.com.au website. So if you aren’t listed there then you are missing out! Our marketing the team is constantly developing for content television, radio and digital to market the destination. So people are being drawn to the Coffs Coast website to make their travel decisions. As mentioned we pull our data from the ATDW site so if it needs to be updated there – get cracking. Otherwise you can submit a listing directly to the team by following the instructions on our website.
Bookings
Taking bookings doesn’t have to be complicated, but now more than ever it does have to be rigorous as the NSW Government will have strict rules about the number of people dining in-premises and being able to contact them later.
As mentioned earlier the first thing check is if your contact phone number is correct and find-able!
Depending on the type of business you are running and what kind of platform you are using for your website could direct the decisions you make about using an online booking system. First check if your website platform has booking capabilities.
And don’t forget about customer reviews…
Reviews not only have the power to influence consumer decisions but can strengthen a businesses credibility. Monitoring your reviews is a whole different ballgame. This is something that you need to be across on a regular basis. Don’t leave those bad reviews fester.
Reviews have the power to gain consumer trust, and they encourage people to interact with your business that leads to increased spending in your business.
This is a whole other topic so check out this blog on why are customer reviews so important.