Can Google My Business be used for demand generation?

I'm not sure!

I'm not a demand generation specialist. My area of specialty and interest is "personal sales" or "personal selling" which involves "one to one" communicaitons between individuals in a business context.

Luckily for me, that aspect of sales means that I'm continually picking up skills which can be easily transferred to other endeavours.

I mean! Which aspect of business doesn't eventually boil down to "one on one" communications between one person and another?

So why do I write about some of these topics where I don't necessarily ahve all the chops?

Because personal selling can lend great insight into a miultitude of disciplines and scenarios.

So back to demand generation!

Demand generation is important because it gets people to pick up the phone and give us a call, or get into their cars and drive to our storefront.

Demand generation is creating interest and awareness for your product or service.

We've already established in earlier posts that this has to be done with the right audience or else we'll be cultivating interest and awareness among people who might not be ideal customers for us.

Can Google My Business be used to create interest and awareness?

Yes! In a sense.

When we create or claim our Google My Business page, we put our details out into the Googleverse we send signals out to the world at large that we are open and ready for business, and that XYZ are the things we specialize in, and ABC are the ways in which we can help our customers.

When we do this, Google continually prompts us to update our office hours, new offerings, holiday specials, change of address, and Google also does a good job of reminding us to put up photos and videos of our business.

They also are in the habit of sending us emails every month showing how many people came across our page, as well as the search terms that they used to find us.

That kind of intel in the right hands is really useful for planning your marketing and other kinds of promotions.

The only thing missing in this mix is that you're not responsible for targeting and approaching a definite market or customer base.

What you are doing in this Google My Business scenario is... you are throwing things out into the universe, takaing feedback from the process, and then optimizing your advertising, SEO, etc.

Does this kind of activity also consitutite demand generation?

I'm not sure!

Is this a good activity for everyone to do?

Definitely! Especially since for now Google still remains a dominant search engine and window to the internet.

This is the summary of the advice that I gave my students and the Evolve Africa Business Incubation Sessions in 2022.

Whether Google My Business is demand generation, or whether it can be considered some sort of marketing or not, most of us have nothing to loose by creating and claiming a Google My Business Page.

How do you create a Google My Business page? You start by Googling it!