The Ocean Agency

Today, we had the wonderful honor of receiving a letter from the all powerful Google in the mail (yes a letter!). Between July 1 and September 30, Google users found our business listing 19559 times, making us a Google “favorite place”. Ok, so it’s a little exciting that Google has singled the Ocean Agency out as a high search volume business, but what’s the real point of the Google new favorite place system? How will it impact online business marketing?

1) Mobile Search

Google has recognized the growing power and widespread use of the mobile internet and is attempting to engage people on their mobile devices. Especially when it comes to searching for business listings, restaurants, or directions these are natural things to search for on mobile devices.

Each favorite place listing has a “QR” code attached that takes the mobile user directly to the businesses’ Google listing.

Great way to spur the use of mobile Google search.

2) Geo-location

Watch out. Google knows us early adopter folks are having fun with Foursquare, Gowalla and a few others. With Google’s favorite places mobile program they are setting the stage to create contests, coupons, and scavenger hunts with Google engineering behind it. This means amazing usability and simple design.

3) Augmented Reality

Imagine walking down the street and having a coupon code from Google pop up based on your mobile search for “ice cream” on Google Maps.

How about holding your phone up, and the places with Google business listings appear with a rating, user reviews, and daily deals?

While the Yelp Iphone app has tried to harness augmented reality technology, Google will definitely do it better.

4) Deals, Coupons, User Generated Content

Why do you follow a business on Twitter or Facebook? Generally, it’s to make yourself privy to special discounts, offers, and hear about brand happenings first.

So the Google favorite places program encourages businesses to create a profile where they can post coupons, deals, pictures and video. So for all us social media deal and contest hounds, will the Google favorite places program draw us away from following brands and businesses on social media profiles? Maybe.

5) Measurement

How do you measure mobile social media networking?

Well, while social media is amazingly important for branding, PR, and customer satisfaction, when it comes to pure social media marketing businesses want to see the bottom line. They want traffic, engagement, and sales.

With the favorite places business profiles, Google has made it easier than ever to track that “bottom line”.

It’s pretty easy to imagine a world where coupon codes, special offers and deals are integrated into your overall website analytics.

Imagine if you could tell a client: 240 people came to your store after finding your Monday special via Google maps on their  mobile phone.

While we can obviously track social media contests, coupons and interactions — a direct integration into Google Analytics could revolutionize the way we measure online marketing efforts.

These are just my initial thoughts after recieving the Google Favorite Places invite, how do you think it will impact online business marketing?