Yesterday I found myself taking a quick look at the revamped Google Local Business Center.
They’ve done some nice things to help SMBs enhance the quality of their local listings with rich content including photos and videos. They’ve also created a very nice little service that is designed to inform the SMB about the relative quality and completeness of their listing. Finally, they have introduced a “junior mint” set of free analytic tools to help SMBs learn where customers come from and what terms they search to find them.
It’s all very nice — but Google’s Local Business Center continues to miss the most important point of all:
Commerce is powered by word-of-mouth. Commerce is conversational.
While analytics are extremely useful – the simple truth is that business is more about conversations.
What SMBs really need are simple software tools and services so they can:
1. Regularly promote themselves online
2. Listen carefully to what people are saying about their business
3. Actively respond and engage customers in conversations
4. Keep track of conversations and convert them into qualified sales leads
Unfortunately, there is nothing social or conversational about Google’s new Local Business Center.
Giving SMBs control of online conversations requires significant innovation and evolution beyond traditional analytics and web 1.0 marketing tools.
The best example of such innovation is SMBLive’s new CloudProfile platform.
Feel free to contact me at matt.howard@smblive.com if you’d like to see this innovation for yourself.
