Multi-Location Brands: Engage Your Local Consumers with Google Posts at Scale Across Locations

If you are a local business with multiple locations, Google Posts can be a great way for you to engage your existing and potential consumers directly from the local panel on Google Search and Google Maps. A feature first rolled out in 2016 for US presidential elections and subsequently rolled out across geographies and industries in a staggered manner, Google Posts are best used today to publish offers, events, products, services, and other business updates for local businesses. The best part – Google Posts get highly ranked for branded searches on Google – which translates into less effort and max visibility.

Google Posts on Search Results

Now retail chains can publish Google Posts in one go!

While the concept of Google Posts might seem attractive, they have received a muted response from businesses ever since they were launched. Businesses have traditionally stuck to Facebook or Twitter for social posts and adverts. But that has made the brains behind Google rethink their strategy to make Google Posts appealing and the latest 2020 feature updates look promising indeed. With COVID-19 impacting local businesses, Google started allowing COVID-19-related Google Posts at scale for chains – i.e. retailers with 10+ locations, via GMB API. Very soon, this was quietly rolled out for non-COVID posts too. This suddenly made Google Posts an attractive proposition for multi-location brands that could now leverage technology to publish Google Posts at scale across tens and hundreds of locations.

How chains can leverage technology to publish Google Posts at scale

With this GMB API update, retailers can publish Google Posts across multiple locations leveraging technology. That’s where Milestone Inc.’s platform comes in:

Following up with this Google Post update, Milestone has enhanced its platform capability to support multi-location Google Posts via GMB API. What that means is retail chains can now publish Google Posts across hundreds of locations in one go from Milestone’s technology platform. Compare this to how much time it would take you could achieve this without a technology layer in place – logging in to each GMB account for those hundreds of locations and creating and publishing the post.

Milestone’s multi-location Google Post feature

Drive 5-20X efficiency with Google Posts when you manage them from Milestone’s technology platform – Milestone Presence Cloud. Milestone Presence Cloud lets you create a post, filter locations where you wish to publish the post from the locations list, and publish the post across all selected locations effortlessly with just a few CLICKs.  

Filters, such as Country, State, City, etc. lets you control the Google Posts content distribution for certain geographies. 

Further, Milestone’s multi-location Google Posts comes with a Post Scheduler feature that lets you schedule a post to be pushed out to hundreds of locations on a particular date and time. 

To do so, you need to add post content, upload image, add button links / CTAs and set up the publishing schedule. 

And Milestone’s multi-location Google Posts are dynamic and can be customized for each location by Name, URL, Store Code, Address, Phone, Country, State, City & Zip using dynamic variables. 

Multi-location Google Post dashboard panel

We used the city name as a dynamic variable to customize a single post for different locations shown below: 

Hooper’s store multi-location Google Posts

And the entire publishing process of the above set of posts was done in just a few minutes.  

With this customization feature, you can make your Google Posts a lot more relevant to your local audience. For example, use Google Posts to: 

• Share offers with specific address and contact number for each location  
• Publish posts for a specific type of store (for retail chains with multiple store formats) using custom filters 
• Drive footfalls to individual location-based events, such as fundraisers or seminars as well as brand level events across multi-locations
  – such as a mega sale day 

It’s easy to re-share or delete a post across multiple locations using the bulk operations feature available on the platform. 

Finally, Milestone uses UTM codes to track each post and helps you track and gain insights on your post-performance. 

Multi-location Google Posts, powered by Milestone Presence Cloud:

To top it all, if you still don’t want to manage Google Posts on your own, Milestone can provide value-added services, such as post planning, content writing, creative design, and managed publishing. As Google attempts to popularize Google Posts, local businesses that act now will have the advantage. Grasp the opportunity and drive visibility across all your locations. To know more about our Presence Cloud’s multi-location Google Posts offering and how Milestone can help you amplify your digital presence, reach out to us at sales@milestoneinternet.com or call us on +1 408 200 2211.