Using Google Maps to Your Advantage

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I’m hoping that most of you by now are familiar with Google Maps – and if you’re not, will by the time you’re done reading this post and have some good ideas on how to use it to save time and help you with your marketing efforts.

The reason for this post is the other day we had a customer call and she was giving us all these great details about her house (all the way down the groundhog living in the backyard) and it was so crazy sounding we of course were naturally curious as to what the real story was with this property.

Now, we could have hurried up and got into our cars and drove right down there beforehand to kind of see what we should expect – but decided instead to check it out online. And it occurred to me, especially since she told us she didn’t have a camera to email us pictures, that she probably had no idea that we could see her property in great detail online. Sure enough, with a few keystrokes and clicks of the mouse, we understood immediately her woes with property. We didn’t have to spend a few hours driving – we had it all in front of us so we can be better prepared when we actually meet her face to face.

You can see how this can be a huge advantage, and if just in case you didn’t know about this little online tool, now you do. We’ll also share some of our other good ideas for using it below as well.

What is Google Maps?

Google maps started out as their version of mapquest – you can use it to pretty much get driving directions anywhere. (Visit the site here.)

It has a few features – you can look at it as a regular map with street names and landmarks, or you can use it for a satellite view or even a street view.

What Can I do With It?

Look Up Any Property: If you type in an address and then in the top left hand corner of the map where the zooming features are click on the “Street View” option you can see great details for most properties. You can see the house, the neighbors – and if the photograph was taken at an inopportune moment you may even see the inside of their garage or other details. Before you get in your car to do a drive-by, you can try there first and maybe save you some time and gas money.

Advertise On It: What better way to get local traffic than to advertise on a website with local maps? You’ll have to set up an adwords account to do this, but it’s not that difficult to get started and it may show off to be beneficial.

Put it On Your Website: Many sites are already integrating Google Maps into your site, and you can too, even without any huge account with Google. All you need is to go to the Maps main page and click on “My Maps” where you can create a map and list all the details and even links to other nearby resources. Then you just embed the code where you want to show it up on your site by clicking on the Done Button and then the link button on the right hand side of the screen. (IE: Inside a blog post like I’ll do right here:)

View Mars in a larger map

Put Pictures In Print: This is especially helpful if you are selling vacant land or estates and want to have an aerial view for your brochures or postcards. One way of doing this is to once you have the picture you want, open up a program such as Microsoft Publisher. Click the button on your computer that says “Print Screen” and then click on Paste in Publisher – you’ll have a map then that you can edit and crop to the size you need. (Make sure you can do it for whatever use you’re planning on using it for by visiting the site’s legal notices – there are some copyright concerns you should be aware of for using it in print material).

I’m sure there are many other ways to use Google Maps – and if you’ve got a creative way for using them or some other helpful tips, I’d love to hear about it in our comments section below!