What is listing management?
Listing management is a software tool that is designed to scan the vast number of directories and websites on the Internet to ensure your business listings are correct.
Did you know?
There are over 1600 apps, maps, search engines, directories, and social media networks that your customers use to search for your business? Many of these are familiar to you such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yelp, Facebook and others that are probably not so recognizable such as 2findlocal, AroundMe, and Citysearch.
Your business will surely come up on most of these directories and you will want your information detail or business listings, such as name, phone number, and address to be accurate and complete.
Just as you wouldn’t think of having a negative first impression for your place of business such as a locked front door or no onsite parking, you would want your online presence to be as positive as possible. Here is an example for a restaurant’s proper business listing on the “Find It Fast” directory:
53% of small businesses have online business listings with missing or wrong addresses or phone numbers!
If your information is incorrect, out dated, incomplete, or duplicated, your customers and potential customers could be confused or turned off about your business.
If you are still on the fence about using listing management, the following are 7 compelling reasons for adding it to your marketing plan:
- Your customers search for local businesses – you will be seen as a big player in the marketplace when your listing comes up in a local query.
- You can fix your all of your business listings for any changes in real time—this is if you have new holiday hours, new phone numbers, new location(s).
- Your customers are everywhere on social media— your customers will see your business listings on social media where you will stand out with rich content (photos/videos).
- You have centralized control of your listings from one place—all you need is to publish once or update once. A Senior Executive at Berkshire Hathaway: “We physically move about 10-15 % of our 65 office locations annually, which means we need to have a centralized platform to be able to cleanly say, “OK we’ve made this change and it has been changed everywhere”.
- Get rid of bad listings—you have instant access to your listings to see which ones need correction.
- Listing management contributes to higher SEO rankings—According to Search Engine Watch, the more your name, address, and phone matches what you provide to Google, the higher you will rank.
- Managing your business listings manually is far too time consuming and unrealistic.
Listing Management is one of the simplest and most inexpensive actions you can take for your business. Clients will be more attracted to your business when they see that your information is up to date and trustworthy.
Do you think it’s time for you to get started?
Would you like to find out if your business listings are correct?
Would you like to find out how easy it is?
Give us a call at 619-481-6511, send me an email to eve@lightpostdigital.com, or leave a comment on this page. We would love to hear from you!
Blog Post by Eve Dimesky
The post How Do Business Listings Help My Small Business? appeared first on Lightpost Digital.