Mark Daniels: Google - helping customers drive 177 miles to find me...
Online marketing, we're told, is now the only way to advertise. "Where would you look if you were trying to find somewhere different to go for a meal?" a sweet young girl from Yellow Pages asked me when she tried to sell me a listing on yell.com for £350 recently.
She was a bit put out by my suggestion that to find a decent pub I tend to just get in the car and drive to a village to see what's about, but she did have a point: the Internet is awash these days with services and solutions that we can all use to help better our business.
I use social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to promote what's going on at my pub, but they're also great resources for talking with other publicans and finding out new tricks you might just have forgotten.
Then there are online "mind mapping" tools, such as mindmeister.com, which are great for making sense of business plans, event strategies and so on.
But when it comes to actually 'advertising' on the Internet, getting your pub's name to appear in lights in search engine results, the waters get distinctly murkier. And, some would have you believe, a lot more complicated too. And complicated means expensive.
Doesn't it?
The little-known Local Business Center, from Google, actually makes getting your business' listing to appear on certain parts of their website quite easy - and inexpensive. After all, these days when we want to find something we simply 'google' it. The service is provided free of charge by Google and is quite easy to use. Just go along to Google's Local Business Center page - www.google.co.uk/lbc - and sign-up.
You'll then be asked to Add Your Business, and from there on it's a case of filling in the boxes as you want them to be filled.
The service allows you to put up to ten pictures on your listing, your telephone number, address and website. It also allows you to detail special features your business might offer, or your opening hours. You might even find there's already a listing there, and that it just needs to be edited.
The result is that if somebody, for example, goes to the Google Maps page and types in "Pub near Your Town", a list of pubs - including yours - will be offered to them. If you've put as much detail in to your pub as you can, along with photos, you'll make your establishment look more attractive to people who might then want to find out more, even if you don't show up right at the top of the listing.
The best bit, however, is that now the Local Business Center also provides statistics, meaning you can pop along to the LBC page at Google any time you want and have a look to see how many people visited your website - including whether anybody asked for Driving Directions to your establishment, and even where they were driving from. It's a great metric for working out how far people might have travelled to get to you.
The beauty of it is that it's quick to set up, too. Within minutes you can have a full listing ready; Google will then ring you to confirm that it's a valid listing (an automated voice will give you a passcode to put in on the last page) and abracadabra, you're good to go. It's so quick that you'll be back to sweeping up that dust in no time...
The listings do take a short while to go live on the site properly, and once they're live you really need to leave 48 hours before looking as all the statistics are provided with a 24-hour delay.
But do be warned: Google does leave visitors the chance to 'write a review' after their visit. Best put on those extra big smiles and that warm welcome, just in case you find somebody put the wrong Chippenham in to the system and travelled 177 miles for their Sunday lunch.
It actually wouldn't be the first time that's happened to me ...
