Here’s the last post of our blog series on how to make the most of your MapQuest business listing. In this post, we’ll show you how to gain more competitive advantages by upgrading to a Premium Business Listing.

What are MapQuest Premium Listings?
MapQuest offers two types of premium business listings – MapQuest Only and Multi-site. Both options ensure that your business listing not only reflects accurate information, but also helps your business stand out from your competition with a custom marketing message.

Custom Marketing Message in a MapQuest Premium Business Listing

Benefits of MapQuest Only Premium Listings
For only 27 cents per day, MapQuest Only Premium Listings helps your business stand out from the competition with a bright green tag and up to 50 characters of custom marketing text on MapQuest.com. In addition to the benefits of a free listing, the premium listing can help your business gain more clicks, phone calls, requests for directions, or clicks to your website. MapQuest has more than 40MM users per month and they will see your featured services, discount info or any other marketing messages when they’re searching for that category.

Benefits of Multi-site Premium Listings
If you upgrade to the Multi-site Premium Listing Package, your marketing message and listing information will not only be reflected on MapQuest, but also on 8 or more major sites including: Yelp, Yahoo!, SuperPages, CitySearch, White Pages, Yellowbook, YellowBot and LOCAL.  For about $1 per day, you can control your business listing across all of these sites from one location and ensure that your business information, such as your address, phone number, website and more, are accurate.  Rest assured that your listing is up-to-date and standing out when potential customers are searching are searching for your business.

How to Optimize Your Marketing Message
Here are some tips you can use for your premium listing Special Offer message.  You change the Special Offer message at any time and it will update on the site within four hours. You can also track the total impressions and clicks to your business listing to see how effective it is.

• Use your daily specials, like daily discount, happy hour, and latest products. These can attract more customers who are looking for good deals.
• Add your Featured Products and Services to help you get closer to your target market.
• Use your Awards as tag messages, as customers would always like to choose the business recognized as the best.
• Try your slogan or other messages to separate your business from the competition.

Success Story: Falls Motel
Falls Motel, a motel in International Falls, MN, took advantage of the multi-site premium listing allowing them to not only display accurate information across all the sites, but also highlight their Special Offer marketing message: Clean comfortable rooms at an affordable rate. You can see their listing now on MapQuest.com, Yahoo! and the other popular sites included in the package.

Sign up for a MapQuest Premium Listing today to stand out from your competitors!

Did you know you can get a free business listing with photos, videos and more on one of the largest sites on the web?  In this fourth post of this blog series about MapQuest’s Local Business Center, we’ll walk you through how to add all of this great content to your MapQuest business listing.

Business Photos and Video
Stand out from the crowd by posting photos and a video of your business!  Once you’ve logged into the Local Business Center, go to the Enhance My Listing page and add a “Storefront Photo” so that customers can easily recognize your business from the road. If you have photos of your store’s interior or other relevant photos, add these to “Additional Photos”.  Make sure all photos are high quality images and enter a brief caption describing the photos, ideally using relevant keywords in order to optimize your search engine ranking.  A YouTube video can also be added. Just copy and paste the link to your video into the text box next to the “YouTube Video” section on the same page.

Business Hours and Payment Methods
Help customers easily find your business hours by adding them to the Enhance My Listing page under “Business Hours”. Be specific so that customers know which days of the week and hours of the day you are open. You can also let customers know the types of credit cards accepted, whether you take cash or checks, and if financing and invoicing are available options, under the “Payment Methods” section of the same page.

Location and Parking Tips
Help customers find your business easily by giving them details on where to park.  These could be tips such as “Take the elevator to the 3rd floor, and go to the last door on the right” or, “Look for a blue building with a white door.” Parking can also be a source of difficulty for customers, so it may help them if you provide tips as to the best place to park, how to get there, and how much it will cost. This is also a great place to mention if your business validates parking or offers valet parking. You can make all these edits on the Enhance My Listing page.

Success Story: Play Music & Art
Play Music & Art, a small business in Canton, GA, took full advantage of their listing with a great storefront photo, video and parking info.  Take a peak at their business listing to see what’s possible in your own.

MapQuest users love business listings with photos, videos and parking tips – hopefully you’ll take a few minutes and update your listing with this great info!

MapQuest’s Local Business Center wants businesses to make the most out of their listings. We’ve gone over how to get the most out of a basic listing and how to improve SEO with keywords and categories. In this post, we’ll show you how to customize the company location on MapQuest’s maps. With the Map Marker Locator you can pinpoint exactly where the company location is and map nearby parking. Once the map location is up-to-date, our 42 million users will be able to find your business listing with ease.

Map Locator
When filling out the listing, you will be asked, “Does the business location look correct to you?” Next to the question appears a map showing a marker where MapQuest pinpointed the business address.  Take time and make sure the location is accurate; if the location is incorrect, now is a quick and easy chance to fix it.

Use the business listing tool to move the map markers for your business location. The blue icon reflects the location of your actual building and the red icon is what MapQuest uses to calculate directions.

To get started, just click on the map. From here, you can drag the marker around until the correct location has been found. The marker can be placed anywhere, even if the location is a mile off the main road, the marker can go there. This is helpful for customers who may not know there is a long driveway or access road to the location.

Ensure Accurate Directions
Click the next button to edit the access point to your location. MapQuest uses this icon to calculate directions.  This is helpful if the road to the building is in an unexpected location or if businesses prefer to direct people to a parking lot. The red marker with the car can be moved, but unlike the Map Marker it has to be placed on an road.

MapQuest’s Map Marker Locator tool is ready for businesses to use and map out their location. Companies can update, move, and zoom until comfortable with the marker location and know that every aspect of their listing is correct. Improve and update your listing today at listings.mapquest.com.

Create a free business listing today with MapQuest’s Local Business Center, giving you access to the more than 40MM people on MapQuest.com! With our Local Business Center, you can control your business listing to make sure it’s accurate and add additional information that can drive more customers to your door. In this first post of our five part blog series, we’ll show you the basic steps to help you make the most of your business listing.

Getting Started
To get started on the Local Business Center, you must first claim your business. Make sure that MapQuest has the correct information for your business location, or choose to add a new listing if it doesn’t already exist. Once you have claimed your business, it is time to enter in your basic company information. This is your opportunity to obtain free marketing and show consumers why they should choose you.  Check out our short video tutorial for more tips on how to get started.

Business Listing Name
When entering the company title for your business listing you want to make sure it reflects what your business does. It should be the exact name of your company or organization – no “nicknames” or added tag lines are needed. When people are looking up business listings on the map, this is what will be bolded when they put their cursor over your business location.

Business Listing Details
The main key here is to have all of the company information correct and clear. Be sure to double-check the phone number, website, reservation website, hours, and credit card listings for accuracy. None of this information should be a part of the title; instead, it will be in the ‘more info’ section that a visitor will see when they want to view more details about your business. The time to be creative is in the business listing description.

Business Listing Description
This is the place to market your business and where you want to be creative and concise. The business description should have your competitive advantage, and explain what you do, who you are, and why customers should seek out your business. You want to limit the amount you write while also providing enough detail to showcase your business. This is where you need to take the time to add those SEO keywords about your business to add to your search engine ranking.

Success Story: Gasthas Eichler
Gasthas Eichler, a boutique hotel in Colorado, has all the key qualities of a successful business listing on MapQuest.com. It has a clear, accurate title and the listing has all of the important company information for customers including correct address, phone number, reservations site and website. It has a great description of the business with its competitive advantage and information about specific offerings and amenities.  This listing provides enough information to spark a consumer’s interest when booking a hotel.

In our next blog post of this series, we will give you more tips on creating your business listing.  To take advantage of this free marketing now, just go to listings.mapquest.com and enhance your business listing today!