Run a business? Then you need to join this Apple service

Apple just gave smaller enterprises a chance to compete on a more equal basis with larger concerns with three nice improvements to Apple Business Connect: Business Caller ID, brand identity in Mail, and custom business logos for use with Tap to Pay.

Together, the three tools mean that smaller businesses — now including enterprises that do not work from a set location — can deliver a more professional-seeming degree of service. For example, a small plumbing company can show its logo and contact details when making a call to a customer’s iPhone, or attach its brand identity to emails and messages received by clients so they can more easily identify genuine communications.

The solution also makes life much harder for phone scammers, as it adds another barrier to prevent them pretending to be bona fide enterprises. 

What is Apple Business Connect?

Apple Business Connect appeared in 2023, supplementing then existing integrations with Apple Maps that let brick-and-mortar businesses make themselves visible. The service then let business owners claim, edit, and manage location place cards and customize what business information appears in Maps (or in services that use data drawn from Maps, including Siri). Spaces called Showcases let business owners display images, offer online ordering, and provide other information to help draw attention to their business.

Apple’s system also offers an Insights page that provides historical information about how, and how many times, customers have already found you. This provides you with aggregated insights into what customers sought as they found you, a heat map to show you approximately where your customers are based, and the number of views your existing listing (if one exists at all) already generates via Apple’s system.

What are the new features in Apple Business Connect?

The new features build on those tools and widen the service so that it can also be used to promote businesses that lack a physical location. Any verified business can now create a consistent brand and location presence, using the following tools:

Branded Mail: Businesses can display their brand name and logo in emails to customers, so they become more visible in Mail. Business users can sign up today, and the service will go live with the release of iOS 18.2.

Tap to Pay: The brand name and logo can also be made visible when accepting payments through Tap to Pay on iPhone, so customers know they’re making a payment to a trusted and verified business.

Business Caller ID: This feature means that when a business calls a customer’s iPhone, the business name, logo, and department will appear on the inbound call screen. This should help customers know which calls to respond to and help blunt the ongoing wave of annoying spam calls. This feature won’t be available until next year.

What are the benefits of Apple Business Connect?

The beauty of the service is that it is made available online and via Maps and supporting applications to over a billion people using iPads, iPhones, and Macs. Once a customer or potential customer gets to your business listing, they will find the information there easy to use and access, while your control of that listing lets you work to communicate the benefits of your business to that potential customer.

The added advantage of the Showcase section is that this can be tweaked to provide special offers, including one-time and time-limited offers, to help you win new customers once they reach your card. You can also monitor and optimize the performance of your listing and draw some SEO benefits from the existence of the information in the Apple ecosystem.

“We’re excited to offer all businesses — including those without a physical location — the ability to create a brand that appears across the Apple apps that over a billion people use every day,” David Dorn, Apple’s senior director of Internet Software and Services Product, said in a statement. “We designed Business Connect to empower businesses to present the best, most accurate information to Apple users. With today’s updates, we’re helping even more businesses reach customers, build trust, and grow.”

While an Apple Business Connect listing won’t necessarily transform your enterprise, it is free, simple, and far more likely to generate new business than the lack of any listing at all. In the future, these listings may become the basis of some kind of ad placement service within Maps.

How does my business join Apple Business Connect?

Access to the service has been widened to include owners of virtual, online, and service businesses, as well as the brick-and-mortar businesses it already supported.

Business owners can sign their operation up to Apple’s service using their existing Apple Account (as Apple ID is now called). They can also create a new Apple Account for their business to use when signing up for the service.

Signing up is a straightforward process:

Visit the Apple Business Connect website from any smartphone, desktop, or laptop.

Register using the relevant Apple ID.

Apple will verify the business.

Once verified, the business owner can claim any physical locations and begin updating and personalizing their place card.

Businesses can also manage their location presence at scale through listing management agencies like DAC Group, Rio SEO, SOCi, Uberall, and Yext.

The information is then made available via Maps, and through Apple and third-party apps that make use of data held in Maps.

Apple has provided extensive guidance to help you make use of Apple Business Connect.

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