Google My Business is a great way to connect your wealth management practice to prospective clients. In a previous post, I explained just exactly what Google My Business is all about. Here are 3 key reasons why you shouldn’t wait any longer to get your practice on Google My Business.

Reason #1: Produce Better Search Result Information

When you list your advice practice on Google My Business, it increases your visibility to clients by giving Google more awareness of important business attributes like who you are, what you do, and most importantly, where you are located. Here’s an example of what search results look like when not using this Google service. In this example, I did a search for “beaufort planning”.

Ok, so what, right? It produced search results and if you’re “The Beaufort Group” you’re doing a happy dance since you’re listed at the top. But what about the information it provides to the user? There’s a link, some preview text describing the firm, and the website address to their website. Is this useful or could it be better?

Now, here’s another example search I did on “veriday”.

With this result, there are 3 distinct visual enhancements between the first and second examples provided by listing on Google My Business.

• The Address information (i.e. where it reads 5450 Explorer Dr., etc.) This is inserted below the description of the website on the left-hand side. Google sources this information directly out of Veriday’s “My Business” listing.
• Interactive map. Google will automatically create this map on your behalf using the address information you’ve provided. This provides your target audience with relevant location information about your business and Google will publish images from your profile into this search result which is a great way to present your brand to the user without requiring them to visit your advisor website.
• Listing information about Veriday. This will vary from company to company depending on the amount of information provided. Everything from the address to hours of operation, to phone number. You can also have customer reviews show up now that Finra allows so. All of this is customizable.

So, what makes the result in example 2 more useful than example 1? Simple, location information and contact information are the most common pieces of content that users are looking for when searching for a business both on their desktop and mobile devices. This provides convenience and utility to the prospective client and often can result in a phone call. By presenting this information instantly to the user, it saves them time if they are looking for more immediate service, and it acts as a welcoming introduction to your practice and offers the opportunity to explore your advisor website via the link. 

Reason #2: Enhanced Mobile Search Experience

There’s plenty of data that proves why delivering a mobile experience is important for users including Google who penalizes poor mobile experiences in their search rankings. Luckily, Google has already taken this into account. Creating a Google My Business listing helps you deliver an integrated experience across smartphones, tablets, and desktops without needing to know a single line of code to do that. Notice how the same example produces a very similar experience when I perform the search on my smartphone. The location and contact information are present first in the case of “veriday”, where a Google My Business listing exists.

Note the 3 links that Google provides:

• A “Call” link. When users click on this link, it provides a single click-to-call function.
• A “Directions” link. Clicking on this link will bring up the mobile version of Google Maps and provide the driving directions to (in this example) Veriday from my current location.
• A direct link to Veriday’s website in case I’m not looking for telephone or address information. This is even more of a justification to have a mobile website since you want to maintain a consistent mobile experience for your visitors.

Reason #3: It’s Free

Yep. How about that? Google provides this service to advisor practices and businesses for free. What’s the catch? Well, it really is all about data, and the accuracy of data. In particular, location-based data which drives 1 in 3 searches performed online on Google (not including Google Maps). Google is about delivering simple and useful user experiences, hence why their search results don’t have a lot of bells and whistles. Here’s one last thought. If Google believes that the accuracy of location-based data is an important part of the search, is it safe to assume that if you have a business name similar to another business (who may or may not be competitors) in the same geographic area and only one of you have a Google My Business listing, that Google will list you higher in search results? Looking back at Example 1 of my desktop search, where “Beaufort Group” appeared higher than “Beaufort Planning”, imagine the result if “Beaufort Planning” had a Google My Business listing. How do you think that would change?

Veriday has created an Advisor Marketing platform expressly to create unique and compelling advisor websites and lead generation. For more about Veriday’s advisor website platform Digital Agent – please click here.