Google My Business Now Showcases Videos
If you’re an owner of a brick and mortar business, Google has now improved the experience of potential customers finding you online. They’ve added (drumroll please) videos to Google My Business.
Never heard of it before? We bet you actually have. When you search a business by its name, it shows up on the top of the search page and/or in Google Map. That’s your business listing. Google My Business allows you to update your listing even more easily to ensure you’re putting your best foot forward.
Where is my business shown on Google?
When someone goes to Google.com and looks for your company name, the first thing that shows up on the top right is the details to your company. This includes your company name, logo, website, description, Google reviews, contact information and hours of operation and a map if you’ve got a permanent location. Now you can add a video to this top-notch bit of web real estate. This video will also show up for all those within the Google My Business app.
How does it work?
You’ve got to start by becoming a Google My Business Merchant. Then you can head over to the dashboard and upload your video. They are currently allowing video content up to 30 seconds long. If you’d like to allow customers to upload videos to your Google profile, you can click that tab as well.
You can also enable the feature allowing customers to share videos of your business on your profile which can then be found within the customers’ tab.
How long until the video is online?
It looks like video content could take 24 hours to upload. A brief moment to wait for such valuable content but requires a little thinking ahead if it’s for a specific event.
When would you use it?
Say you’re having a sale, you’re doing a special promotion, you’re running a holiday campaign, these are always great (and time relevant) opportunities to use video on your Google My Business Page. You can also showcase your brand via video when you expect an increasing amount of searches of your business – for example, you’re attending a conference and predict a lot of people will be Googling you.
What kind of videos are best?
We’d recommend a short video with clear text that says who you are, what you do and a relevant CTA. Are you a funny brand? Do you pride yourself in beautiful design? Are you tech heavy? You’ll want to make sure the core of who you are is displayed in the first 5 seconds of your video.
Not sure where to get started? Imagine you had the option of showing a video right in your window display so that passersby could see. While we love to promote funny videos, encourage users to create content with a hook and an emotional question from the get-go, this is not that kind of video. You’ll want to keep your content more direct and simple and be sure to use the right subtitle font. Make sure you subtitle your video to reach those who have their sound muted. Next, just answer these questions: What kind of company do you have? What do you offer? Do you have any specials happening right now? Easy peasy. Then find footage that speaks exactly to that message.
For example, when we at Promo.com are creating advertisement campaigns we love playing with the element of surprise. We also love to be silly because it grabs an audience’s attention so successfully. But for a video on Google quickly showcasing who we are – we need it to be clear as day that we are a video creation platform so we need to show videos. If you sell women’s shoes – yup, you guessed it, it would behoove you to show both women and shopping/shoes. Learn how to add music to video to give your video more appeal.
Here’s an example of a video we at Promo use to showcase our business:
Ready to create a video for your Google Page? Try Promo Today!
