Google My Business (GMB) is a powerful tool that can increase the revenue and customer satisfaction of your business if used correctly.

Despite this, many businesses have failed to tap from this gold and still think of it like it’s a phonebook. Or perhaps find it unnecessary since they have the needed information on their website.

In fact, a study shows that 56% of retailers haven’t claimed their Google My Business (GMB) listing.

This alarming fact shows that most local businesses are ignorant about how GMB makes vital information about them available to their potential customers.

It Doesn’t End With Google My Business

Unsurprisingly, many retailers are lagging behind across other platforms when it comes to claiming listings.

The study by BrandMuscle equally found that only small percentages of local retailers have claimed listings on other top listing platforms.

Here’s a breakdown:

• 33% on Yelp
• 19% on YP.com
• 21% on Yahoo business listings.

The Issue Of Managing Google My Business and Online Directories

Another alarming fact is that only about 23% of local retailers manage their online listings actively. Also, it revealed that about 57% carry out this activity themselves. This can be very tasking for retailers who are new to local SEO.

Be that as it may, there’s a disparity in how effective it is to employ an agency to manage listings or manage it themselves.

According to the study, 37% of local affiliates who rely on a vendor/agency to manage their listings agree that it’s “extremely effective.” However, 38% of those who practise DIY management say their method is “ineffective.”

Local retailers often seem over-confident about the accuracy of their local online directories.

However, recently run tests with a location data management tool points out that there’s a good chance that local retailers may be wrong about the novelty of the data.

From the study, we know that a lot of local retailers are unsure about what to do with their online business directories.

They don’t know if they should run the listings themselves, hire an agency to do that for them or simply stay off online listings altogether.

We can say that this reluctance on the part of local retailers is as a result of the complexity of the work that goes into local online marketing. This cuts across multiple digital media platforms, not just Google My Business.

In total, about 57% of local business owners manage their business directories themselves, 25% of them employ the services of a vendor to manage their digital marketing campaigns, and 18% are corporately managed.

The same study went ahead to divide the stats by media as well. It showed that email marketing was the digital marketing media that was most managed by local retailers themselves. There was a general reluctance self-manage mobile target display and paid searches.

Businesses Prefer Agencies Managing Their Online Directories

It’s easy to deduce from the study that most local retailers will not self-manage their Google My Business among other local online listings. Some reasons for this are:

• Local retailers rarely have the margin for failure. They want to know they are equipped to manage their online business directories before trying it out. One complaint that kept coming up was the lack of guidance, resources and time.
• They only want to use the right methods, and they’ll rather let agencies choose for them.
• Corporate organizations are known to dominate the digital marketing space. This makes it terrifying for small business owners to try new approaches without former expertise.

For these reasons, many local retailers are missing out on the benefits they can gain from utilizing online business directories. Nevertheless, they still have the option of hiring agencies, like ours to help them manage their listings. Our team of experts are trained to effectively manage your digital marketing campaign.