How To: Add A Google My Business Listing Before It Opens

by | Jan 7, 2021 | Conquer Digital Academy, Digital Advertising, Google, SEO, Small Business, Training

How To Add A Business Before It Opens

If your business hasn’t opened yet, you can create a Google My Business listing and let your community know that you’ll be opening soon. Set your future opening date, engage with customers, and announce when and where you’ll be open for business.

Here are some tips for getting started with Google My Business if your business hasn’t opened yet.

Create your listing, but verify later

When you create your business listing, be sure to choose the “Verify later” option when you’re prompted to verify. Then, set your future opening date before you verify your business. That way, you’ll prevent your business from falsely appearing on Google as “open.”

To create your business listing, follow these steps. When prompted to choose a verification option, select More options. Then, under “Verify later,” click Later.

Important: For bulk verified accounts, it’s especially important to set the future opening date before verification, as your listings are instantly verified.

Set your future opening date

To enter an opening date:

  1. Sign in to Google My Business.
  2. If you have multiple locations, open the location you’d like to manage.
  3. From the menu, click Info.
  4. Click Add opening date.
  5. Enter your opening date.
  6. Click Apply.

Only the year and month of your opening date are required. You can enter a date up to one year in the future.

Once you’ve entered the date and verified your business, your listing will show up on Google 90 days prior to the opening date.

 

Engage with customers

At the 90-day mark, you can start to engage with your community. To foster relationships with customers, you can use the Google My Business features available to you:

  • Posts: Use Posts to announce your business opening. Through Posts, you can share an opening day discount or coupon with the community.
  • Photos: Post photos of your location, and keep the community up-to-date with the progress of your store from construction to opening day.
  • Merchant description: Explain what your business is all about, and let the community learn about your business straight from the source.

Once your business opens, your listing will show a “Recently opened” tag on Google for 90 days.

Source: Google My Business Help

Skip to content