Google Plus Local Business Expert On the Importance of Goals

When you start out to Optimize Your Google Plus Local Business Listing, Start with the End in Mind

We know it in our knower, but as marketers it is easy to forget.  Every marketing decision is going to cost time and treasure.  That time and treasure has many pulls on it, and not just within the marketing department.  Any time spent on finding the secrets to ranking on page 1 for Google Places or optimizing the effort on google Plus Local Business is time that could be spent with clients, employees, or, what a concept, family and friends.  

So what do we marketers forget?  Any serious analysis or review of goals.  Most entrepreneurs that I work with don't have clear goals laid out for their personal or business lives.  Assuming they do have business goals, they rarely have detailed goals for growth or profits or how to determine priorities.  Of course, just by stating that, it becomes obvious that my own personal observation of how decisions are made week-to-week or month-to-month within the context of companies having goals is almost non-existent.

Given this reality, most small business owners would do well to start at the beginning and think clearly about what they want for themselves and their family in general, and from and for the business.  If you'd like to consider that idea, please read the first of my new series: 101 Marketing Secrets from a Serial Entrepreneur one of my other blogs, http://www.Help4SmallBusiness.blogspot.com.

Whether or not you have goals for the business or even for the marketing aspect, you should truly stop before you begin any new marketing effort.  And given the importance, complexity and difficulty of Google Places Optimization and Google Plus Local Business Listings, being clear on the goal may be the most important thing you do.

What might such a goal set look like?

1. In our business, we consider a high ranking on Google Places to be equal to or more important than any other online effort, and about as critical as our email blast campaign in terms of ROI.
2. We must rank in the top 3 for Google Places under our top 3 keywords
3. We should rank in the top 7 for Google Places under our top 10 keywords
4. Our own city and zip is the most important, but half of our cost should be devoted to surrounding cities, in particular, Lincoln.
5. With an overall marketing budget of $3000 a month, we can afford $900 a month for this effort (Or about what our Yellow Page expense used to be).
6. With about 8 hours a week to devote to all marketing efforts, we can devote about 2.
7. The social aspect of Google+ Local needs to be addressed.  We should immediately devote ten hours and $200 to study what our goals and objectives should be.
8. Goals should be met within six month

With a goal set like this you are now able to wisely make decisions about what to do in house, and what to find suppliers to help with.  You are also able to measure results which will help to determine if the methods you are using are working or need to be changed.  Of course, often the goals also need to be reviewed and changed.

Does this help you think about how to prepare for a new campaign?  What methods do you use that might help others be better at setting goals?

Our next post will cover the strategies that might arise out of this goal set.