If this were back in the day, you’d slam your latest copy of the Yellow Pages on the kitchen table, flip it open to the “digital marketing companies” section, pick whoever looks best, and give us a call.
And life still works that way … sort of.
These days, directing clients to your business means hitting the digital marketing waves on several channels and you often need quite a complex strategy.
But we’re putting the cart before the horse.
No matter where you are with your business or organization’s digital marketing services, there’s one truth: you need a solid foundation of reliable and consistent contact information available to the public—across the whole wide internet.
When your business or organization’s information is consistent across the internet, including business directories that receive massive amounts of traffic, search engines consider your business more legitimate, which makes sense.
A solid strategy for having consistent contact information begins with your organization’s name, address, and phone number (you’ll see this called “NAP” from here on) being consistent on the biggest directories around the internet, like the Yellow Book Online Directory.
Search engines like Google, Bing, and Duckduckgo offer search results chosen to give the user, your customer, the best experience. In other words, they want their customers happy. When a customer enters a search request, hundreds of factors are taken into account to provide the best results, including your NAP information and number of citations.
If your competitor hasn’t updated all of their listings but you’re more consistent, your listing could appear in preferred placements. These include places like 1 of 3 coveted “local pack” suggestions offered when local results are needed and higher SERPs, or “Search Engine Results Page.”
This is where we’ll include one warning: it takes a lot of factors to rank highly and a multi-platform approach is almost always necessary. Consistent directory listings should be a step in a larger digital strategy.
With that being said, we know what you’re wondering: do I really have to update each one? Each time? Each ONE? And yes, you should update as many as possible, but it can be much easier than you think.
Let’s start with the 3 Directory Listings you should update right now (if you haven’t already).
Three Directory Listings to Update
The following 3 sites are the absolute bare minimum you should consistently update, and you can and should handle them yourself. Control of these master accounts makes it easier if you hire a team to help with directory listings, and it keeps the control of your organization safely in your hands.
We suggest filling these profiles out as completely as possible, including photos, logos, and holiday business hours where available.
Google Maps
Google is the undeniable leader in business listings. Google Maps is the go-to service for many people, and many other apps—like Waze and Lyft—use Google Maps to navigate and offer suggestions.
You can see why this one is important now.
Keeping your Google Business Profile, formerly known as Google My Business profile, updated gives you a slight advantage over your competitors. It also gives potential clients the most information about your business quickly, which is key in digital marketing.
Adding your business to Google Maps starts here, just click “Manage Now” or create a Google account first if you don’t have one.
Apple Maps
Love it or hate it, your Facebook listing needs to be created and have all the correct information.
You need a Facebook profile to create a page for your business or organization. If you do not have a profile, go to facebook.com and select “Create New Account.”
Facebook’s official list of what you need for your business profile is here, and make sure you touch all categories.
Updating All the Other Directories
To update your directories, open a search engine and request a list of the hundreds of available directories. Then you go down the line, manually logging in and changing them every time you have an update. Make sure and keep a record of which citations you’ve claimed and where they are along the verification process and assign consistent monitoring to an employee.
Some of these citations are also seen as more reliable, so make sure you evaluate where you should devote your attention first.
If you don’t want to go through an exhaustive list of updates, however, you find a digital marketing firm to handle your online directories. Doing this takes the work off you and that’s not all. Working with a team like Digital Fusion gives you the bonus of creating and updating new citations.
Not only do you remove the headache of doing this very critical work yourself, but you ensure brand building along the way.
In Closing
Keeping your business front-and-center in a digital age requires constant work, on several different fronts. A strong base of reliable contact information signals to clients and search engines that you are a legitimate business—that cares about the details.
Utilizing digital marketing services to create citations and monitor and correct existing ones frees you up to handle the parts of your business you enjoy.
About Channel Fusion
For more than 20 years, Channel Fusion has been delivering strategy, customer experience and return on investment outcomes for brands and their channel partners with a wide variety of solutions and industry expertise. We continue to invest in the overall ecosystem of our channel marketing offering to ensure our clients can provide their channel partners with an optimal customer experience to drive results. Our core technologies and connected platform are supported by a team of customer-centric “Fusers.”
To serve the expanding channel programs and needs of our clients, including numerous Fortune 500 companies, we formed Digital Fusion to bring ready-to-roll digital marketing bundles for franchisees and brand dealers.
Sound like you? If you’re a local business—needing local strategy—and working with the leading brands consumers want, we can help with more than rebates and incentives. Get easy digital marketing services with rock-solid ROI you can measure, all powered by dealer co-op funds. Get in touch with Digital Fusion today.