Google Posts: What are they, and how do they work?

Thanks to the power and usefulness of Google Maps, Google has long been one of the most important local listings platforms for small, medium, and large-sized businesses. Now, they’ve introduced a new feature: Google Posts.

In this blog post, we’ll review what Google Posts are, what they contain, and how we’ll be rolling this new feature out to our clients.

What was in Google Maps and Google search prior to the introduction of Google Posts?

Google Posts is only the latest feature to be introduced by Google, and is a part of a continuing legacy of Google—as a search engine—trying to connect customers (read: those searching) with businesses, and the information that Google perceives customers needing.

Managed through a platform called Google My Business, detailed sidebar cards appear when someone searches for your business or clicks on your business through Google Maps. You’ve probably seen this on just about every Google search you’ve done in the past few years or so.

Over time, Google has added more and more elements and features to these cards: interior photos, exterior photos, maps, reviews, links to websites, hours, phone numbers, and more. Google Posts is just the latest addition to this much larger feature.

What are Google Posts?

With Google Posts, the world’s foremost search engine is marrying elements of its popular Google AdWords program with Google Maps. This gives the businesses we work with additional ways to reach and connect with the potential customers who are searching for them online.

Here’s the change: when you click on a company now on Google Maps, you’ll also see several posts in a slider.

As you can see in the example above, these posts can contain any number of things. They can be special offers with a price and “Buy Now” call-to-action attached to them. They can advertise an event, show off a new product or service, or encourage customers to take any other sort of action (e.g., reading a white paper, sending them feedback, writing a review, etc.).

When the customer clicks on the post previews shown above, they’ll be taken to a full post with a full-sized image.

How are we rolling out this feature?

We’re contacting all of our clients today to let them know more about this feature, and we’ve already begun the process of launching posts and scheduling further beta tests to evaluate best practices for the creation of posts.

Some of the questions that we’re testing this week: what are some of the factors that led to a successful post? How will post performance be measured? And, what combination of images, content, and call-to-action work best for what clients?

All of this work to integrate Google Posts into our client’s campaigns as quickly and effectively as possible fits with one of our core beliefs as a company: in the world of internet marketing, it’s important to be flexible and willing to make fast changes to our client’s benefit.

If you’re interested in learning more about 5 Fold Marketing—or want to learn more from our team about our work with Google Posts—contact us online or give us a call at (480) 939-3203.