What Can Google Answer to Help You Grow Your Business?

Happy National Small Business Week!

On Monday, we gave you five tips to empower your business with online tools and resources. Because it’s National Small Business Week, we’re also taking the time to reflect and find additional ways we can help businesses like yours. Online marketing and technology products may not central to why you started your business, but they can be central to growing your business.

In honor of National Small Business Week, we want to answer your questions about online marketing and technology products designed for small businesses. We want to hear what’s on your mind about how you can use technology to start and run your business. Your question could be about using technology and online resources in general or about Google products and services specifically.

If you have something to share, head over to our Google Moderator session where you can add a new idea or you can vote on ideas that have already been submitted.

We’re excited to hear from you and we hope you’ll take a few minutes out of your day to let us know what you’d most like to hear about from us. Just by sharing what’s on your mind, we get a better sense of what we can improve and where we can help make things easier and more efficient.

And if you haven’t already checked out some of our existing resources, take a few minutes to visit:

• Google Places
• Google AdWords Small Business Center
• AdWords Online Classroom
• Google Apps for Small Business

Posted by: Leslie Hernandez, Product Marketing Manager, Google Small Business Team

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Click. The AdWords newsletter: May 2011

Your website is your face to online customers - are you greeting them at the door with a smile? Your site should engage with new customers, make it easy for them to find your product or service, and maybe earn you a little extra revenue. This month we share some quick strategies to help you get the full value from your website. Happy reading! The Google AdWords team P.S. Have some feedback about this newsletter? Please let us know what you think. In this Issue MAY 2011, VOL 3 MONTHLY FEATURE Make the most of your website ADWORDS INSIGHT You make the rules SMALL BUSINESS SUCCESS Maximize income GOOGLE HIGHLIGHTS Anatomy 101 Your AdWords Account   MONTHLY FEATURE Make the most of your website You already know that an online presence is an important tool for building your business. Indeed, advertisers often ask us what they can do to improve their websites. We talked to some of the experts here at Google and they offered these suggestions: Learn the basic rules of an effective site Whether you're a tech expert or a novice, here are some simple design tips to help you create a compelling site: Pass the 8 second test. A visitor should understand the purpose of your website within a few seconds. Tell them what's in it for them. Highlight tangible benefits that potential customers can gain from your product or service. Will they be able to save money? Time? Buy a one-of-a-kind gift? Use compelling images. Help visitors to your site take the steps towards making a purchase. Make those steps clear and easy to reach. Don't guess... test! Which image or call to action will lead to more sales on your website? Free tools like Google's Website Optimizer make it easy to test different versions of your site and view the results. Can you tell which webpage version below performed better? Version A Version B Universal Technical Institute redesigned their website using Website Optimizer, and saw a 300% increase in conversion rates (read more). Make extra money from your site Your site's most important job is to promote your business and make it easy for potential customers get the info or product they want. But you can also make extra revenue by using Google AdSense to show relevant ads on your wesbite. It's free and quick to set up (you can even use your AdWords account to sign in).   ADWORDS INSIGHT You make the rules We know you're busy, so we've created a new AdWords feature to save you valuable time—Automated Rules. With Automated Rules, you can tell your account what to do in advance. For example: you can set your budget to be higher on peak shopping days and lower during the rest of the week. You can also automatically change your bids for keywords based on their click-through or conversion rates. Ready to try it? Visit our Help Center to watch a quick video about Automated Rules or to get detailed instructions with screenshots. Set a Rule Now     SMALL BUSINESS SUCCESS Maximize income TeAch-nology.com, a web portal for teachers, found a hidden source of revenue on their website. A longtime AdWords advertiser, founder Paul McKee noticed his ads showing on other education sites, and was impressed with how well the ads matched the content. He wanted to try showing ads on TeAch-nology.com as well, to explore how much revenue he could earn. He tried Google AdSense, a free, easy way to earn revenue by showing relevant ads alongside online content.  McKee found that AdSense ads drove 8 times more revenue than other forms of contextual advertising did. AdSense now accounts for 50 percent of company income. "We don't have a full-time ad sales team," McKee noted. "AdSense takes care of itself, allowing us to focus on running our business." Read more about using AdSense to complement your AdWords account, and see if you can maximize revenue from your online content.   GOOGLE HIGHLIGHTS Anatomy 101 You may be used to zooming in and out on Google Maps to discover the world around you, from a neighborhood park to a hotel across the country. With Google body browser, an educational tool from Google labs, you can explore the human body in the same way. Start off with a clickable, rotatable, 3-d image of a person. Drag down the slider to see layers of the human anatomy revealed: muscle tissue, bones, organs and nerves. Wondering what that femur you broke while ice skating looks like? Use the search box, which lets you find and highlight specific parts of the body.     YOUR ADWORDS ACCOUNT ADWORDS RESOURCES     Sign in Now AdWords Online Classroom Inside AdWords Blog AdWords Seminars AdWords Help Center

Posted by Jenn Karakkal, AdWords Small Business Team

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Google's 2010 U.S. Economic Impact

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog.)

This week is National Small Business Week, an opportunity to celebrate the spirit and ingenuity of small businesses like Everblue, a start-up in North Carolina.

Everblue was founded in 2008 by veterans Chris and Jon Boggiano along with fellow entrepreneur Grant McGregor. The brothers’ goal was to make the U.S. more energy independent by helping people get certified in sustainable building practices. With old-fashioned hard work and some help from Google AdWords, their business has quadrupled in size. They now have 80 full time employees and instructors, and this year alone they’ll train tens of thousands of people—architects, engineers, electricians and others—to build smarter and greener.

Chris and Jon Boggiano, veterans and co-founders of Everblue, a training institute for sustainable building.

Today we’re announcing that Google provided $64 billion of economic activity to businesses, website publishers and non-profits in 2010. This is an 18% increase from the economic impact total in 2009. Here’s how it works: for every $1 a business spends on Google AdWords, they receive an average of $8 in profit through Google Search and AdWords.

We’re proud that Everblue and over one million American businesses use our advertising services to tell consumers about their products and services. Learn more at google.com/economicimpact.

Posted by Claire Hughes Johnson, Vice President, Global Online Sales

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Celebrating small businesses and integrated, easy-to-use web tools

Posted by Joanne Schneider, Google Apps
Small Business Team

In honor of National Small Business Week, we’d like to take time this week to share ways that Google Apps and the Google Apps Marketplace can help small businesses work more productively and efficiently.
Today, we’re highlighting a few of the Small Business Web apps in the Google Apps Marketplace, and how our customers run their businesses on them every day. Google shares the Small Business Web’s dedication to providing tools that have enterprise-grade functionality, as well as align with small businesses’ priorities.

Apps that work together
Particularly for companies without a dedicated IT team or person, the list of necessary business tools can quickly become unmanageable. Web apps that provide deep integrations with Google Apps and with each other are especially useful for growing businesses that don’t have time to manage multiple, distinct applications.

Olark lets customers live chat with website visitors directly from the Gmail interface through Google Talk, and provides easy access to chat transcripts. Peter Macaulay of KitchenwareDirect.com.au says, “The ability to live chat with customers without leaving the Google Apps interface is a huge productivity advantage. The simple and elegant implementation meant we were up and running in a matter of minutes. Staff members are easily able to set their availability for chat, enabling them to easily multi-task.”

WORKetc is another app that makes Gmail into the front end workspace, but for CRM, project management, and customer support. It let’s you easily share emails related to particular projects with relevant team members without forwarding or copying other email addresses. D. Hogan of Varis Energy says, “Any emails that need to be shared with my team get tagged in the WORKetc gadget that is built right into Gmail. This immediately lets everyone else who is assigned to a project or lead have access to the new information from the received email.”

Access all the time
As compared to larger businesses, small businesses are even less suited to managing servers, and tend to have many employees on the road or in non-office locations. Accessing their data and documents from anywhere, on any Internet-connected device is a core benefit of using web-based tools like Google Docs. OfficeDrop digitizes paper documents to make them text-searchable in Google Docs.
Greg Skidmore of Belpointe Asset Management says, “Each month we send a box of paper files to OfficeDrop and have them scanned directly into Google Docs. If I have a document that I need scanned right away, I use OfficeDrop’s scanning software, ScanDrop, and upload it immediately.”

Easy to Use
Small business owners and employees often wear a lot of hats and they’ve asked for solutions that are easy to learn and use. Michael Bower of Michael Bower Digital says, “I always need to know where my money is, without wasting time organizing my paperwork. As my business grew, I was losing control of my cashflow. Both Google Apps and FreshBooks have just enough features to keep my workflow and invoicing organized, allowing me to focus on my work.”

These are just a few examples of the many Small Business Web app vendors in the Google Apps Marketplace who provide the functionality and integrations a small business needs. Over 30 Google Apps Marketplace apps have already joined the Small Business Web and declared their commitment to helping small businesses focus on what they do best. They include:

Finance Bill.com billFLO EchoSign Expensify FreeAgent Freshbooks Harvest Kashoo Outright Shoeboxed

CRM Assistly Batchbook CRM Capsule CRM Connect2Field Disqourse CRM Get Satisfaction PipelineDeals SAManage Solve360 CRM Tactile CRM WorkETC

Doc Management Box.net FormLizard OfficeDrop Collaboration MindMeister Teambox uberVU YoolinkPro

Sales and Marketing Mailchimp Olark SiteKreator VerticalResponse zferral

We celebrate National Small Business Week to recognize the importance of small businesses for promoting a healthy economy, and we’re excited to help them continue to grow and succeed through the smart use of technology.

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Five ways to empower your business during National Small Business Week

Happy National Small Business Week!

As a small business owner, you work hard every day of the year to serve your customers and communities. This is the week of the year when our country officially recognizes and celebrates you! Here in the US, we have over 27 million small businesses who are vital to the fabric of our communities, sponsor our little leagues, give character to our Main Streets, and provide two-thirds of the nation’s jobs.

We’ll be celebrating the week in Washington DC at the Small Business Administration’s event honoring small businesses, themed ‘Empowering Entrepreneurs.’ In the spirit of empowerment, we’d like to offer some recommendations on how you can strengthen your business this week with easy tools and resources.

Day One: Make sure you’re showing up in natural search results. The easiest, thriftiest way to reach people online is to have your website show up in natural search results. To ensure your most recent website can show on Google.com, submit your URL to Google.

Day Two: Make sure you’re showing up on local results. In one out of every five online searches, a customer references a location. If you have a brick and mortar business or are a local service provider, this is huge for you. Make sure you claim your online business listing with Google Places so you are eligible to show on Google.com and Google Maps.

Day Three: Evaluate your marketing plan and performance. When was the last time you reviewed your marketing strategy, or evaluated the success of your marketing campaigns? This week, set aside some time to think about your marketing objectives for the remainder of the year. If you’re new to online advertising, take this opportunity to create your first AdWords account. If you’re an existing Google AdWords advertiser, spend time evaluating the performance of your account this week, or check out useful tips at the AdWords Online Classroom.

Day Four: Join a National Small Business Week Forum. On Thursday, 5/19, the SBA will be hosting two forum discussions as part of the National Small Business Week celebrations - one on social media, and one on becoming a high growth, high impact business. Both of these forums are open to the public. If you’re too far away from Washington DC to attend in person, go here for a live webstream.

Day Five: Encourage customers to review your business online. People are frequently turning to social review sites for business information. With Google’s new +1 button, your customers can also recommend your business right on Google.com. You can also ask them to rate and review your business on Google Places.

Be sure to check back here throughout the week for updates from Washington DC!

Posted by: Lindsay Dahms, Google Small Business Marketing Team

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Showcase your business with a 360-degree perspective

When I’m looking for a restaurant in San Francisco, I always browse photos to see if the ambiance is right for the occasion. With our Business Photos pilot, we’ve been photographing businesses, with their permission, to highlight the qualities that make their locations stand out. In addition to the photos that business owners can upload directly through Google Places, these photos help potential customers get a better view of the decor, merchandise, food, and more on each business’ Place page.

Gruhn Guitars Inc. in Nashville, Tennessee, United States

We’ve also been taking 360-degree photography to help businesses owners showcase their locations further, and starting today you can experience that panoramic perspective for select businesses in the United States, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.

This experience, using Street View technology, includes 360-degree imagery of the business interior and storefront. With this immersive imagery, potential customers can easily imagine themselves at the business and decide if they want to visit in person.

Tenkai, Kyoto, Japan

We’re now starting to make these images available through the Place pages of select businesses we’ve photographed. When 360-degree imagery of a business is available, you’ll see an arrow appear over the thumbnail Street View image on that business’ Place page. Press the arrow to preview the storefront or interior, then click on the thumbnail to see the image in Street View.

Storefront thumbnail for Susan Avery Flowers and Event Styling in Australia

With this pilot, you'll begin to see additional photo experiences on the Place pages of a growing number of businesses. As additional imagery becomes available for more locations in the coming months, you’ll also be able to enter the interior perspective of businesses directly from the Street View images of nearby roads on Google Maps.

We’re continuing this program with businesses in select cities in the United States, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, UK, South Korea, and France. If you would like to highlight your business to Google Maps users, please visit the Business Photos site to learn more and apply.

Posted by Gadi Royz, Product Manager, Google Maps

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Accelerating diversity outreach to businesses in local communities

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

This is the latest post in our Official Google Blog series profiling entrepreneurial Googlers working on products across the company and around the world. Here, business development manager Chris Genteel tells how Googlers across the U.S. are diversifying our marketing and sales outreach efforts to help communities of minority-owned small businesses around the country build an online presence. - Ed.

In May 2009, a team of Googlers and I attended the Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Conference near our office in Ann Arbor, Mich., where we talked with dozens of small business owners. These folks were true entrepreneurs and clearly not afraid to try new things, yet many were unaware of Google’s products and services, such as AdWords and Apps for Enterprise. In fact, many of them didn’t even have an online presence.

The following Monday, two women Googlers who were new to the team and passionate about Google’s diversity initiatives busted into my office already on a mission—to help educate small businesses on Google tools in order to help them better connect with their target audience. They had attended the conference as well and decided to start a 20 percent project to increase awareness of and engagement with small, minority-owned businesses. Two months later, we proposed a business plan to Bonita Stewart, vice president of sales, to start reaching out to businesses. She approved our proposal and gave us the go-ahead to lead the initiative; it was our responsibility to find people who wanted to help.

We found our first volunteer when an intern on the team decided to make our initiative her 20 percent project, and, throughout that summer, more people were inspired to contribute their expertise part-time as well. Before we knew it, we had more than 40 Googlers working on what eventually became Accelerate with Google—a program to help minority-owned small businesses grow their online presence by working with organizations and partners who encourage the adoption of web tools within their local communities.

Throughout 2010, we traveled across the country to places like Detroit, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami, Chicago and New York to learn more about the minority-owned, small business community. Along the way, we built partnerships with leading business organizations, such as the National Minority Supplier Development Council, which already have respect and support from these communities. Our original goal was to build partnerships with minority community organizations nationwide, but that quickly developed into a larger mission to not only help small businesses move online, but empower them to be the web tools educators in their communities as well.

This May, we’re excited to be part of the Michigan Minority Supplier Development Council annual conference; they’ve been our chief partner and recipient of a grant for $175,000 to support the development of our program within its business community. We’ve trained Council representatives to be experts in Google tools like AdWords, and in turn they’ve led workshops for small business owners on how to build an online presence. We’ve built a similar partnership with the Louisiana Council by funding a $100,000 initiative to build outreach to small businesses in the area through programs such as Google Certified Partners and Trainers, which help people certify and demonstrate their proficiency in our ads tools.

All of this is just the beginning. This month marks the two-year anniversary of the initial inspiration for this project, and our team will once again be attending the Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Conference, this time with a very different perspective. A project that began as a side job has now become a full-time role for myself and one of the project founders, with our ad hoc group of Googler volunteers still helping out part-time. We’ve seen measurable shifts in online engagement with the communities we’re working with—adding more than 100 minority-owned businesses in 2010 alone—and I’m excited to keep pushing this initiative out to business owners everywhere.

Posted by Chris Genteel, Business Development Manager, Global Diversity Programs

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