Every NZ small business owner wants more leads. Most are overwhelmed by the number of channels and don’t know where to focus. Here’s a practical framework for thinking about it — and a starting order that makes sense for most businesses.

Understand where your leads are coming from now

Before you add a new channel, understand your existing ones. When you get a new enquiry, do you know how they found you? If you don’t have a way to track this — even just asking people “how did you hear about us?” — you’re adding to something you can’t measure. Fix that first.

Common sources for NZ small businesses: Google (organic search and Maps), referrals from existing customers, Facebook/Instagram, Google Ads, directory listings, and word of mouth. Each behaves differently and rewards different approaches.

The recommended starting order

1. Google Business Profile. Free. High ROI. If you appear in the local map pack when people search for your service in your area, that’s free leads. Start here if you haven’t already.

2. Your website. Not “do you have one” but “does it actually convert”. A website that’s slow, hard to use on mobile, or unclear about what you do is costing you leads every day. Fix conversion fundamentals before spending money driving traffic to it.

3. Ask for referrals. Systematically, not occasionally. After every good job: “If you know anyone who could use our help, we’d really appreciate the referral.” Build it into your process. Referral leads convert at a much higher rate than cold traffic.

4. Google Ads (if budget allows). If you have $1,000+/month to invest and your website is in decent shape, Google Search Ads targeting high-intent local keywords is one of the most direct ways to generate leads online. Set up conversion tracking, build a negative keyword list, and monitor weekly.

5. Content and SEO. A longer-term play but compounds over time. Blog posts that answer the questions your customers ask, optimised for local search terms, build organic traffic that doesn’t require ongoing ad spend. Two good posts a month, published consistently, will outperform most one-off content blitzes.

6. Meta Ads. Best for businesses with strong visuals, a clear offer, and a budget of at least $800–$1,200/month. Effective for building awareness and capturing demand you didn’t know existed. Less suited to emergency or urgent-need services where Google Ads wins.

The thing most businesses skip

Follow-up. Most enquiries don’t convert on first contact — they convert on the third or fourth touchpoint. A CRM (even a simple spreadsheet) that tracks every enquiry and flags which ones haven’t heard back yet can dramatically improve how many quotes turn into jobs. The discipline of following up is more valuable than any new marketing channel.

There’s no single magic channel. The businesses that consistently generate good leads online are doing a combination of things reasonably well, measuring what’s working, and doing more of it.

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The post The complete guide to getting more leads online for NZ small businesses first appeared on NZ Business Alliance.

Most NZ small business owners don’t have a marketing team. They have themselves, maybe a part-timer, and not enough hours. AI doesn’t replace marketing knowledge — but it does mean one person can now do the output that used to require three.

Writing ad copy faster

Google Search Ads require multiple headlines and descriptions. Meta Ads need compelling hooks. Writing five variations of the same thing is tedious and often results in most variations being weak. AI is excellent at generating quantity, which you then edit down to quality.

Try this: tell an AI tool (ChatGPT or Claude) the name of your business, what you do, your location, and who your target customer is. Then ask for 10 Google Ads headlines of under 30 characters each. Pick the three best, edit them into your voice, done. What used to take an hour takes ten minutes.

Creating blog and social content

Most NZ small business owners know they should be publishing content — tips, case studies, behind-the-scenes posts — but never find time for it. AI can draft a first version from a bullet-point outline, which is then much faster to edit than starting from scratch.

A useful workflow: jot down five things you’d tell a customer face-to-face about a topic. Paste that into an AI tool and ask it to write a 400-word blog post in a conversational tone. Edit for your voice, add any specific details the AI couldn’t know, done. Publish. Repeat.

Better customer follow-up

Most leads don’t convert on first contact. The business that follows up consistently wins. But writing individual follow-up emails is tedious, so most people don’t do it. AI makes it easier to write follow-up templates that feel personal rather than generic.

Ask an AI to write a sequence of three follow-up emails for a quote you’ve sent — the initial follow-up, a second nudge a week later, and a final check-in. Customise the specifics, save them as templates, and deploy them every time. This alone can meaningfully improve your close rate.

Research and competitive intelligence

Wondering what your competitors are doing, or what questions your target customers are asking online? AI can help summarise publicly available information quickly. Ask it to explain what questions people commonly have about your type of service, what objections they raise, and what they look for in a provider. This can directly inform your website copy, FAQ section, and ad messaging.

Image generation for social media

Tools like Canva’s AI features and image generators built into ChatGPT can create custom images for social posts and ads. You don’t need a designer to create a product mockup or a promotional graphic. The quality has improved dramatically and for social-sized images, it’s often good enough.

The NZ businesses getting the most from AI marketing tools aren’t trying to automate everything — they’re using AI to handle the repetitive, time-consuming parts of content creation so they can focus on strategy, relationship-building, and understanding their customers.

Have an AI question? Our free AI Chat page is open — ask anything about AI for your business.

The post How NZ small businesses are using AI for marketing (and you can too) first appeared on NZ Business Alliance.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is free, powerful, and almost universally ignored by small business owners after the initial setup. That’s a mistake. Here’s what to actually look at and why it matters.

What GA4 tells you

At its most basic, GA4 tells you how many people visited your website, where they came from, what pages they looked at, and whether they did anything useful while they were there (like fill in a form or click your phone number).

That information has real practical value. If 80% of your traffic comes from organic search but almost nobody visits your services page, something’s off. If you run a Google Ads campaign and see a spike in traffic but zero enquiries, your landing page needs work. The data tells a story — you just need to know where to look.

Setting it up

Go to analytics.google.com, create an account and a property for your website, and follow the setup wizard. If you’re on WordPress, install the “Site Kit by Google” plugin — it handles the GA4 connection without needing to touch code. For Squarespace and Wix, there are built-in Google Analytics integrations in the settings.

Once it’s installed, GA4 starts collecting data from that point forward. There’s no historical data before installation, so set it up as soon as possible even if you’re not ready to dig into the reports yet.

The three reports that matter most

Traffic acquisition. Shows you where your visitors came from — organic search, direct (typed your URL), social, paid ads, referral (another website linked to you). This tells you what’s working and what isn’t. If you’ve just started an SEO push and see organic traffic growing month over month, it’s working.

Pages and screens. Which pages get the most views, and how long do people spend on each. A page with high traffic but very low average time spent usually means people aren’t finding what they expected. A page with long dwell time is content people find genuinely useful.

Conversions. This is the most important one — but it requires setup. You need to define what counts as a conversion for your business (form submission, phone click, purchase) and set up conversion events in GA4. Once that’s done, you can see exactly how many conversions each traffic source is generating, which justifies (or doesn’t justify) what you’re spending on ads and SEO.

A monthly routine that takes 15 minutes

Once a month: check your total sessions vs the same month last year (is traffic growing?). Check your top traffic sources (what’s sending the most people?). Check your top pages (are the right ones getting traffic?). Check your conversions (how many enquiries or sales did the website generate?).

Fifteen minutes. Written in a notes app or a spreadsheet. Over time, this builds a picture of what’s working for your business that no amount of guessing can match.

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The post Google Analytics 4: what it tells you and how to actually use it first appeared on NZ Business Alliance.

You don’t need to understand how AI works to use it. You just need to know what it’s good at, what it’s bad at, and where to start. Here’s a practical guide for NZ small business owners with no tech background.

What AI actually is (in plain English)

AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Microsoft Copilot are text-based assistants trained on enormous amounts of information. You type a question or a task, and they respond in natural language. Think of them as a very well-read colleague who types fast, never gets tired, and doesn’t need to be paid by the hour.

They’re not magic, and they’re not infallible — they sometimes get things wrong, and they don’t know your business the way you do. But for a growing set of tasks, they’re genuinely useful.

What NZ small businesses are using AI for

A Xero survey found 61% of NZ SMEs are already using AI tools. The most common uses: writing (emails, social posts, website copy, quotes), research (summarising information, comparing options, drafting FAQs), and customer communication (responding to enquiries faster, creating templates).

The average NZ business owner using AI saves the equivalent of one full working day per week. That’s not a small number.

The tool to start with

Start with ChatGPT (chatgpt.com) or Claude (claude.ai). Both have free tiers that are good enough to get started. Paid plans (~$30–50/month NZD) are meaningfully better if you end up using them heavily.

Don’t try to use five different AI tools at once. Pick one, use it for one specific task — say, drafting your weekly social media posts — and get comfortable with it. Once that’s easy, add another use case.

Five tasks to try first

1. Write a first draft of anything. Quote cover email, Google Business Profile description, Facebook post, job ad, website About page. Give the AI some context about your business and what you need, then edit the result. It’s almost always faster than starting from a blank page.

2. Respond to a tricky customer email. Copy in the email you received, explain the situation, and ask for three draft responses at different tones (apologetic, firm, friendly). Pick and edit the best one.

3. Summarise a long document. Annual report, supplier contract, council policy — paste it in and ask for a plain-English summary of the key points. Huge time saver.

4. Come up with ideas. Blog topics, promotion ideas, product names, FAQs your customers always ask — AI is useful as a brainstorming partner. Even if you don’t use the ideas directly, they often prompt something better.

5. Create templates. Ask it to write an email template for following up on unpaid invoices, a job brief template, or a welcome email for new customers. Done once, used many times.

What to watch out for

AI tools can “hallucinate” — they sometimes state incorrect facts confidently. Always check anything factual before you rely on it or send it to a customer. Don’t put sensitive customer data or confidential business information into a public AI tool. And always read and edit AI output before you use it — it’s a first draft, not a finished product.

The businesses getting the most out of AI aren’t using it to replace themselves — they’re using it to handle the tedious parts faster, so they can focus on the parts that actually need them.

Want to get hands-on AI advice for your business? Visit our free AI Chat page — ask anything, get a plain-English answer.

The post AI tools for NZ small businesses: where to actually start first appeared on NZ Business Alliance.

You can have great SEO, run good ads, and have thousands of people visit your website — and still not get many enquiries. The problem isn’t the traffic. It’s the website. Here’s how to diagnose it.

What a good conversion rate looks like

The average website conversion rate across NZ industries sits between 2% and 3% — meaning 2–3 out of every 100 visitors take the action you want (make an enquiry, book an appointment, buy something). Trades and services businesses that target high-intent traffic often achieve 3–6%. If yours is below 1%, something’s broken.

The most common culprits

It’s too slow. Over half of all website visitors leave if a page takes more than 3 seconds to load. Test your site at pagespeed.web.dev — Google’s free tool gives you a score and specific things to fix. A slow site costs you both rankings and customers.

It’s not mobile-friendly. Over 55% of NZ web traffic is on mobile. If your site is hard to navigate on a phone — tiny buttons, text that requires pinching to read, forms that are fiddly to fill in — most mobile visitors will leave without contacting you.

The call to action isn’t clear. Every page on your website should have one clear thing you want visitors to do next. Not three things, not six — one. If it’s not obvious what to do next, people do nothing. Look at your homepage right now. If a stranger landed on it, would they know immediately what to do and why?

There’s no social proof. Reviews, testimonials, case studies, client logos, industry certifications. These are trust signals. Without them, you’re asking a stranger to contact you based on nothing but your own claims about yourself. That’s a harder sell than it needs to be.

The contact form asks too much. Name, email, phone, and a message field is almost always enough. Every extra field reduces how many people complete it. Save the detailed questions for when you actually talk to them.

Quick wins to try this week

Run your site through Google’s PageSpeed Insights and fix the top two issues it flags. Add your phone number in large text in your website header — click-to-call from mobile is one of the most common conversion actions. Put your best review or testimonial on your homepage above the fold. Reduce your contact form to four fields maximum.

These aren’t glamorous changes. They’re the blocking-and-tackling of website conversion, and they consistently make a real difference.

How to measure whether changes are working

Set up Google Analytics 4 on your site — it’s free, and it tells you which pages people visit, how long they stay, and where they drop off. Set up a conversion event for your contact form submission so you can track actual enquiries, not just traffic.

Once you have data, you can make changes based on evidence rather than guesswork. That changes the whole dynamic — you stop wondering if something worked and start knowing.

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The post Why your website isn’t converting — and what to do about it first appeared on NZ Business Alliance.

Every social platform can change its algorithm, restrict your reach, or disappear entirely. Your email list can’t be taken from you. For NZ small businesses, building an email list is one of the most valuable long-term marketing investments you can make.

Why email still beats social for small business

When you post on Facebook or Instagram, maybe 5% of your followers see it. When you send an email, a well-managed list will see 30–50% open rates. The people on your email list chose to be there. They’re already interested. That’s a completely different level of engagement to someone scrolling past a sponsored post.

Email also has the highest return on investment of any digital marketing channel — consistently around $36 for every $1 spent. For a small business with a limited budget, that matters.

Building your list

The best email lists are built slowly and honestly. An offer in exchange for an email address — a useful guide, a discount, early access to something — works better than just saying “sign up for our newsletter”. Nobody needs another newsletter. They need something useful.

Where to collect email addresses: your website (a simple signup form on your homepage and at the bottom of every blog post), your point of sale, and at the end of every job or service delivery. The in-person ask is underrated — a happy customer you’ve just done good work for is very likely to say yes.

NZ email law: what you need to know

New Zealand has the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007, which means you can only email people who have given you consent. Don’t buy email lists, don’t scrape contact details from websites, and always include an easy unsubscribe link in every email. Breaches can result in fines from the Department of Internal Affairs.

In practice, if someone gave you their email address as part of a business transaction or clearly opted in via a form, you’re fine. When in doubt, ask explicitly.

What to actually send

The biggest reason email lists go cold is because the owner doesn’t know what to send. The simplest approach that works: one useful thing per email. A tip. A case study. A lesson learned. Something that helps the reader with a real problem they have.

Keep subject lines under 50 characters so they display properly on mobile. Avoid subject lines that sound promotional. Ask a question, hint at something useful, or be direct about what’s inside.

Cadence: once a fortnight is plenty for most NZ small businesses. Consistent is more important than frequent. One good email every two weeks beats three mediocre ones.

Tools to use

Mailchimp has a free plan that works well for lists under 500. Klaviyo is better if you run an e-commerce store and want sophisticated segmentation. ActiveCampaign is a good mid-tier option. All are straightforward enough to use without technical knowledge.

Don’t overthink platform choice to start — pick one, set it up, and start building. You can always migrate later. The list is the asset, not the tool.

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The post Email marketing for NZ small businesses: the channel that never goes out of fashion first appeared on NZ Business Alliance.

Facebook and Instagram ads put your business in front of people based on who they are, not what they’re searching for. Done right, it’s one of the most powerful tools available to a NZ small business. Done wrong, it’s an expensive lesson.

Meta Ads vs Google Ads: which is right for you?

Google Ads catches people when they’re actively searching for something. Meta Ads interrupts people while they’re scrolling through their feed. Both can work — but they work differently.

Meta is generally better for: building brand awareness, products and services people don’t know to search for yet, visually compelling products, and businesses where the customer journey is longer. Google is generally better for: high-intent, ready-to-buy customers and services people search for when they have an immediate need.

Many NZ businesses run both. If budget is limited, start with whichever better fits your situation.

The NZ landscape

Facebook still dominates in NZ with around 77% of the social media advertising market share. It skews slightly older — Facebook is stronger for 35+ audiences, Instagram for 18–34. Both platforms are available within Meta Ads Manager and you can run on both simultaneously.

A realistic starting budget for Meta Ads in NZ is $800–$1,200/month. Below that, the algorithm doesn’t have enough data to optimise properly and results are likely to disappoint.

The creative is the ad

The most common reason Meta Ads underperform isn’t the targeting — it’s the creative. An ad that looks like an ad gets scrolled past. An ad that stops someone mid-scroll gets clicked.

What tends to work in NZ: video (even rough phone video) outperforms static images in most categories. Real people, real situations, real customers outperform studio-perfect creative. Local context — your actual team, your actual location, your actual work — builds trust in a way generic stock imagery can’t.

For format: 1080×1080 or 1080×1350 works for feed. 1080×1920 for Stories and Reels. Enable both placements and let Meta decide where each creative performs best — you can narrow it later once you have data.

Start broad on targeting

Counter-intuitive but true: Meta’s algorithm has become so good at finding the right audience that over-specifying your targeting often hurts performance. A lot of NZ businesses set up hyper-specific audiences and wonder why costs are high and reach is low.

A better approach: start with your country or region, set a sensible age range, and let Meta’s algorithm do the audience work. Give it a few weeks of data before you start narrowing.

Set up the Meta Pixel properly

The Meta Pixel is a small piece of code on your website that tells Meta when someone who saw your ad took an action — visited a page, filled in a form, made a purchase. Without it, Meta can’t optimise your campaigns for conversions.

Install the Pixel before you spend a dollar on ads. If you’re on WordPress, there are free plugins that make it straightforward. Once it’s installed and tracking events, your campaigns will perform meaningfully better.

Meta Ads rewards patience and consistency. Most businesses see the biggest improvements after 4–8 weeks of running, when the algorithm has accumulated enough data to know who your best customers are. Don’t judge it in the first fortnight.

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Google Ads can be one of the best ways to get customers — or one of the fastest ways to burn through money. The difference is almost always in how you set them up. Here’s what to know before you start.

How Google Ads actually work

Google Ads are pay-per-click ads that appear at the top of Google search results. When someone searches for something that matches your keywords, your ad can appear. You only pay when someone clicks it.

The appeal for small businesses is intent. Someone typing “emergency plumber Wellington” is not just browsing — they need a plumber right now. That’s a very different kind of audience to someone scrolling Facebook. For high-intent, ready-to-buy searches, Google Ads is hard to beat.

What does it cost in NZ?

Costs vary enormously depending on your industry and location. Competitive industries like insurance, legal, and finance have very high cost-per-click — sometimes $10–$30 per click. Trades in regional NZ can be much lower. A sensible starting budget for most NZ small businesses is $30–$50 per day, or around $1,000–$1,500 per month.

One thing Kiwis often miss: Google charges 15% GST on all ad spend. So a $50/day budget actually costs you $57.50. If you’re GST-registered you can claim it back, but factor it into your budgeting from day one.

The biggest mistake NZ businesses make

Most audited NZ Google Ads accounts waste 30–45% of their spend on searches that have nothing to do with the business. This happens because of broad match keywords — Google matches your ad to searches it thinks are “related”, and it often gets it very wrong.

The fix is negative keywords — a list of search terms you don’t want your ad to appear for. Setting up a solid negative keyword list before you launch saves money from day one. Review your search terms report every week in the early weeks to see what’s triggering your ads and add anything irrelevant to your negative list.

Start with Search, not everything at once

Google offers many campaign types — Search, Display, Performance Max, Shopping, YouTube, and more. For most NZ small businesses starting out, Search campaigns are the right choice. They put your ad in front of people actively searching for what you offer. It’s the cleanest, most controllable format.

Once Search is working and you understand what’s converting, you can explore other formats. Don’t try to do everything at once on a limited budget.

Set up conversion tracking before you spend a dollar

Conversion tracking tells Google when someone who clicked your ad actually did something valuable — filled in a form, called you, made a purchase. Without it, you’re flying blind. You can’t tell which keywords are working, which ads are working, or whether the whole thing is worth it.

Google’s conversion tracking setup guide walks you through it. If you use WordPress, there are plugins that make it straightforward. This is non-negotiable — don’t skip it.

Should you manage it yourself or use an agency?

At budgets under $1,500/month, agency management fees often eat too much of your ad budget to make it worthwhile. If you’re willing to put in the time to learn, managing it yourself at this scale is often the smarter move. Google’s own Skillshop courses are free and genuinely useful.

Once your monthly spend is higher — $3,000 or more — a good agency or specialist usually pays for itself. Ask for case studies, ask how they report, and make sure you retain ownership of your account if you ever leave.

Want more tips like this? Join the Alliance — free, one email a fortnight.

The post Google Ads for NZ small businesses: a plain-English beginner’s guide first appeared on NZ Business Alliance.

Local SEO isn’t magic and it isn’t complicated. It’s the set of things that help Google understand where your business is and what you do — so it shows you to the right people nearby. Here’s what actually moves the needle.

What “local SEO” actually means

When someone in Hamilton searches “plumber near me” or “best café Ponsonby”, Google shows them a map pack (the three businesses with a map pin) plus regular organic results below. Local SEO is the process of making sure your business shows up in both.

Google decides local rankings based on three things: relevance (does your business match what they searched for?), distance (how close are you?), and prominence (how well-known and trusted is your business online?). You can’t change your location, but you can control relevance and prominence.

Start with your Google Business Profile

A fully filled-out, verified Google Business Profile is the foundation of local SEO. If you haven’t done this yet, it’s the single highest-ROI hour you can spend on your marketing. We’ve written a full guide here.

Make sure your website mentions where you are

Sounds obvious, but plenty of NZ business websites don’t have their suburb, city, or region anywhere in the page copy. Google can’t rank you for “electrician Wellington” if your website never mentions Wellington.

Your homepage, your About page, and your contact page should all naturally include your location. Don’t stuff it in awkwardly — write naturally and the location will come up organically.

Get listed in NZ directories

Google uses citations — mentions of your business name, address, and phone number across the web — as a trust signal. The more consistent and widespread these are, the better.

Key NZ directories to be listed on: Yellow.co.nz, Finda.co.nz, NoCowboys (for trades), Localist, and your industry association’s directory if one exists. Make sure your details are identical across all of them — same trading name, same address format, same phone number.

Target keywords your customers actually use

Think about how your customers search, not how you describe yourself. A builder might call themselves a “residential construction specialist” but their customers type “house builder Tauranga”. The high-intent local phrase wins every time.

A free way to find these phrases: type the start of a search into Google and see what autocomplete suggests. Those suggestions come from real searches. Use those words naturally throughout your website.

Make sure your site works on mobile

Over 40% of NZ web traffic is now on mobile. Google primarily uses the mobile version of your site to decide rankings. If your site is hard to use on a phone — tiny text, buttons too close together, slow loading — you will rank lower than a competitor whose site works properly on mobile.

Test your site on your phone right now. If it’s frustrating to use, it’s costing you rankings and customers.

Get more reviews

Reviews are both a ranking signal and a conversion tool. A business with 50 reviews will almost always outrank a similar business with 5. And when people are choosing between two businesses, reviews are often the deciding factor.

Build review-asking into your workflow. After every job, after every purchase, after every positive interaction — ask. A direct link to your Google review page makes it frictionless.

None of this requires an SEO agency. Done consistently over a few months, these basics will outperform most of what an agency does for a small business — especially in a regional NZ market where competition for local keywords is often low.

Want more tips like this? Join the Alliance — free, one email a fortnight.

The post Local SEO for NZ small businesses: what actually works in 2026 first appeared on NZ Business Alliance.

If you run a local business in New Zealand and you haven’t claimed your Google Business Profile, you’re handing customers to your competitors for free. Here’s how to fix that in one afternoon.

What is Google Business Profile?

Google Business Profile (GBP) is the listing that appears when someone searches for your business name — or for a type of business near them. It shows up in Google Search and Google Maps. It includes your hours, phone number, address, photos, reviews, and more.

It’s completely free. And yet a huge number of NZ small businesses either haven’t claimed theirs, or have claimed it but never properly filled it out. That’s a big missed opportunity.

Step one: claim and verify your listing

Go to business.google.com and search for your business. If it already exists (Google often auto-creates listings from other data sources), claim it. If not, create a new one. Verification is usually done by postcard, phone, or — increasingly — by video call with Google.

Don’t skip this step. An unclaimed listing can have wrong information — wrong hours, wrong address, wrong phone number — and you have no way to fix it until you’ve verified ownership.

Fill out every section

Most business owners fill in the basics and stop. Don’t. Every section you leave blank is a missed opportunity to match what someone is searching for.

The sections that matter most: your business description (use keywords people actually search for), your services and products (write real descriptions, not just titles), your hours (keep them up to date — wrong hours destroy trust fast), and your photos.

Photos make a bigger difference than most people expect

Listings with photos get significantly more clicks and direction requests than those without. You don’t need a professional photographer — your phone is fine. Aim for at least 10 photos to start: your exterior (so people recognise you), your interior, your team at work, your products or services in action, and a few happy customers if they’re willing.

Add new photos regularly. Google’s algorithm gives a small nudge to profiles that show recent activity.

Reviews are everything

Reviews are the single biggest trust signal for local businesses. They’re also a direct ranking factor — businesses with more (and better) reviews rank higher in the map results.

The most effective way to get reviews: ask. Right after you’ve done a good job, send a quick text or email with a direct link to your review page. Most people are happy to leave one if you make it easy. And respond to every review — positive and negative. It shows you’re paying attention.

Keep your information consistent everywhere

Google cross-checks your GBP details against your website and other directories like Yellow Pages and Finda. If your name, address, or phone number differs between them — even something small like “St” vs “Street” — it creates doubt in Google’s algorithm and can hurt your ranking.

Do a quick audit. Search your business name and check the first few results. If anything’s wrong or inconsistent, fix it.

Post updates occasionally

GBP has a posts feature — think of it like a mini social media feed attached to your listing. A post a month is enough. Promotions, new services, seasonal hours, events — anything that shows the business is active. Active profiles tend to outrank stale ones.

None of this takes long. A focused afternoon gets the hard work done. After that, 20 minutes a month keeps it humming. For a free tool, the return is hard to beat.

Want more tips like this? Join the Alliance — free, one email a fortnight.

The post Google Business Profile: the free tool every NZ business should actually be using first appeared on NZ Business Alliance.