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Caguas partners with Google my Business to benefit town’s small operations

The Municipality of Caguas announced the integration of the town’s small and medium-sized businesses into the Google My Business platform to guarantee greater visibility for them in the digital universe, in addition to boosting the city’s economy.

Mayor William Miranda-Torres said the initiative’s goal is to increase sales for municipal businesses by 1%, which would represent $50 million in new revenue that, among other benefits, would allow the “sustainability and creation of new jobs and a technological presence that ensures a promising future for Caguas.”

During a presentation, Miranda-Torres explained that during the COVID-19 emergency — and prior to that, Hurricane María — online tools such as videoconferences, sales, consultations, education, and remote work, “became very relevance to uphold the economy, which allowed that a large part of the businesses could keep their operation in the new normal that surprised us at the beginning of 2020.”

Commercial activity generated about $5 billion in Caguas in 2020, “a figure that will undoubtedly increase with this new initiative to boost commercial visibility,” he added.

This integration with Google my Business, coordinated by the municipal Economic Development office, formalizes the presence of the town’s businesses in the two most important search platforms: Google Search and Google Maps, whose metrics reflect that four out of five people turn to these search engines to find local information.

Initially, there will be 2,500 businesses listed, but joining the Google my Business program will be open to any operation in Caguas, town officials said.

“We started the project by researching the digital reality of the city’s businesses. We established whether they have an account on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, if they have a website, as well as if they have created and optimized their Google My Business account,” said Zamia Baerga, the town’s Economic Development secretary.

“We’ll provide each business with their information, and we will offer 12 free seminars during this year for them to learn more about the existing platforms and strategies to increase their clientele and, finally, we’ll create or improve their listing on Google My business,” she said.

Meanwhile, Pedro Juan Hernández, president of Digital Presencial LLC, the company that is in charge of the implementation, said “the fact that a business has its data correctly integrated into the platform significantly increases its opportunity to expand its clientele, sales and profitability.”

“However, more than 60% of entrepreneurs have not been able to learn or take the time to integrate the data of their businesses, losing a great opportunity. So, we’ll take care of creating, updating and optimizing the information of all of the businesses that are registered at the municipal level free of charge.”

Exact geolocation, hours of service, phones, images, videos, offers and keywords are being uploaded by each business, improving its position in the most important search engine globally, he added.

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This story was written by our staff based on a press release.
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