4 Digital Marketing Tools Every Small Business Owner Needs
4 Digital Marketing Tools Every Small Business Owner Needs
Key take-aways
These days, you need more than a website or social media page to market your business online. In fact, the bigger your digital presence, the better. The good news: Small businesses have access to a number of free or inexpensive tools that can help you grow your digital footprint and reach more potential customers — and it's easier than you think to get started.
1. Google Analytics
2. Google Ads
3. Google Business Profile
4. Google Digital Garage
What is Google Ads?
Google Ads is an advertising service by Google for businesses that want to display ads on Google search results and its advertising network.
Try Google Ads nowIncreasing your online presence doesn't mean you need to spend thousands of pounds on banners, emails, and social media.
1. Google Analytics
Having a website is great for any business, but figuring out whether it's attracting new customers is more of a challenge. Google Analytics is a powerful and free product that tracks all kinds of information about who visits you online and how they interact with your website, including:
- The city or country visitors are browsing from
- How long they stay on your website
- Which pages they visit the most
- Where they click through from
- What parts of your website they click on
- The most common routes visitors take through your website from page to page
Use Analytics data to make smart decisions about the way your website is structured and how you market yourself online. For example, you may change your site's design to make it easier to visit the most popular pages. Or you may learn that a large portion of your traffic comes from social media posts on a particular platform and decide to post there more often.
You can also filter data based on a particular day, week, month, or whatever time period you wish to look at. This can help you gauge your website's performance over time and determine whether changes to your marketing strategy are having the desired effect.
To get started in Google Analytics, follow these steps.
For more tips on how to get the most out of Google Analytics, visit the Analytics Academy.
2. Google Ads
Investing in an online advertising campaign is a great way to promote your website online. You can do it with Google Ads, an online advertising tool that helps you attract people searching for products or businesses like yours.
The process is simple: you write your ad copy, pick the keywords you'd like to target, set a daily maximum budget, and select your campaign's start and end dates.
Data from Google Analytics can help you develop a strategy for your campaign. Google Ads allows you to customise your ads to reach people in certain locations or entering certain terms into a Google search, for example. If Analytics tells you that most of your customers are from Surrey, for example, you can capitalize on your popularity there by advertising in that region.
For more tips to get started on Google Ads, visit this introductory guide.
3. Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile is a free online listing for your business that appears when users search for your company on Google or Google Maps. It presents them with a quick summary of key facts, including:
- A short introduction explaining what your business does
- Business address
- Business phone number
- Opening hours
- Website URL
- Google reviews
- Social media links
Because this information is displayed so prominently it's important to make sure it's accurate and up to date.
Creating a listing will help you build a trustworthy and communicative brand by allowing users to see who you are, how to reach you, and what others think about you. Using Google Business Profile also provides you with information about the people who search for your business, including who clicked your website URL and the phone call button, or who checked your address on Google Maps.
4. Google Digital Garage
There is always more that businesses can do to stand out online, and that's why it's important to keep learning. If you'd like to pick up more digital marketing skills, Google Digital Garage offers lots of free courses in an easy-to-follow format.
Here are some of the topics you can learn about:
- Making the most of social media
- Selling more products online
- Turning data into insights
- Building an online shop
- How to be noticed with search ads
Increasing your online presence doesn't mean you need to spend thousands of pounds on banners, emails, and social media. There are plenty of free and inexpensive ways to do it. Get started with the tools above and use them as a resource as your business grows.
Sign yourself up today
- 1. Create an account
- 2. Set your budget
- 3. Write your first ad and decide where it's going to appear
