Five ways to grow your business this Small Business Week

Susan Brown, owner of Los Angeles gardening store Potted, recently updated her business listing on Google. Susan says, “Putting your business on Google lets people find you easily. Your directions are right there, your hours are right there, what you sell is right there.”

Thanks to her decision, Susan has seen more customers walk through her door: “So many of the customers that come in here find us on Google. As a small business, you want to use every opportunity to help your business grow.”

National Small Business Week is one of those opportunities. So from May 4-8, instead of three cheers, we’re giving you five—five simple ways to get your small business online and growing.

Celebrating National Small Business Week with Google

A handful of bright ideas and quick-fixes, all five ways are doable in a week or less and will help you throw a digital spotlight on your business all year round.

1. SHOW UP ON GOOGLE

Check to see how your business shows up on Google. Then, claim your listing so that customers can find the right info about your business on Google Search and Maps. When you claim your listing this week: You could be one of 100 randomly selected businesses to get a 360° virtual tour photoshoot—a $255 value.

2. LEARN FROM PROS & PEERS

Get business advice from experts and colleagues in the Google Small Business Community. They're ready to chat! When you visit or join this week: Share your tips for summertime business success and we'll feature your tip in front of an audience of 400K members.

3. WORK BETTER, TOGETHER

With professional email, calendars, and docs that you can access anywhere, Google Apps for Work makes it easy for your team to create and collaborate. When you sign up this week you’ll receive 25% off Google Apps for Work for one year.

4. CLAIM YOUR DOMAIN

With a custom domain name and website, Google Domains helps you create a place for your business on the web. When you sign up and purchase a .co, .com or .company domain this week you could be one of 1,500 randomly selected businesses to get reimbursed for the first year of registration.

5. GET ADVICE FROM AN ADVERTISING PRO

Learn how you can promote your business online and work with a local digital marketing expert to craft a strategy that’s right for your business goals. When you RSVP this week you’ll get help from an expert who knows businesses like yours.

While these resources are available year-round, there’s no better time to embark on a digital reboot.

For more information, visit google.com/smallbusinessweek.

Wishing everyone a happy and productive Small Business Week!

PS: To join the conversation, use #5Days5Ways and #SBW15 on G+, Facebook or Twitter.

Posted by Rachel Sterling, Product Marketing Manager, Google Small Business Team

Helping small businesses reach new customers with Google Shopping

Cross-posted with the Google Shopping Blog.

When it comes to attracting customers, small businesses know that showcasing their products online can help them get in front of more people -- even when their physical store doors are closed. In fact, one-third of small business owners said new or existing clients engaged with them through their e-commerce websites at least once daily.¹

But getting started with a website is just the beginning. Google Shopping helps small businesses like you tap into the power of customer intent to reach the right people with relevant products ads, when it matters the most. Here’s how two local businesses, Paper Culture and PUBLIC Bikes, used Google Shopping to gain a competitive edge and spark shoppers’ interest across the country by leveraging their strengths: unique designs and inspired products.

Paper Culture uses Shopping ads to connect with design lovers online
Unique, modern design is a top priority for Paper Culture, an environmentally-conscious stationery company that sells 100% post-consumer recycled cards, coasters, and other personalized products online. To complement their AdWords text ads, Paper Culture turned to Google Shopping to put their product designs front and center, and reach new customers with rich, visual ads that jump off the search page.

“One of the toughest challenges for us as a small business is that we don’t have the brand of our larger competitors,” says Chris Wu, CEO and co-founder of Paper Culture. “Google Shopping helps us tell our story through showing searchers our unique product designs, right on Google search.”

By coupling customer intent with Google Shopping’s image-focused approach, Paper Culture was able to highlight their designs in a cost-effective way -- ensuring that each shopper that clicked on a Google Shopping ad was an already-interested buyer. Through Shopping campaigns, Paper Culture decreased their cost-per-lead (CPL) by 50%, and saw 3x ROI overall when compared to their other online channels.


PUBLIC Bikes reaches more searching cyclists with Google Shopping
Multi-channel retailer PUBLIC Bikes is in the business of selling colorful, trendy city bikes with a mission to help people fall in love with urban biking. But as a small business that designs, manufactures, and sells their own merchandise, the team often found themselves short on time and resources.

“With a small team, it’s challenging to do everything we want to do and get our brand and products out there,” says Dan Nguyen-Tan, founding executive of PUBLIC Bikes. “We need a way to scale our marketing efforts and get in front of potential customers where they can discover and engage us. That’s why Google Shopping is so important: it helps us reach customers looking for our products across the country.”

PUBLIC Bikes used Google Shopping to find new customers beyond their brick-and-mortar stores. Bidding by product allowed them to more easily prioritize those products that were new or on sale, turning once low-converting search terms into profit. For every $1 invested in Shopping campaigns, PUBLIC Bikes was able to see 2x the ROI as compared to their other online channels.


A new hub for retailers, large and small
Whether you’re an ecommerce business or a multi-channel business, the new Google for Retail offers a one-stop hub to learn more about Google’s solutions for retailers of all sizes.

If you’re a small business like Paper Culture or PUBLIC Bikes, we’re introducing a new Shopping Campaigns page as a go-to resource to help you get up and running on Google Shopping and make the world your storefront. Here, you’ll find product overviews, success stories, tutorial videos, and help resources to show how Google’s various retail tools work together to let you find your shoppers, wherever they are.

Posted by Kim Doan, Product Marketing Manager, Google Shopping

1. eMarketer, Do Small Business Websites Drive Client Engagement?, Feb 2015

Improving targeting options in AdWords Express

Promoting your business is about getting in front of customers in the moments that matter to them—you design your ad so you can show up to the right people, at the right time, and on the right devices. If you use AdWords Express, you simply write your ad, tell us what kind of business you want to promote, and Google does the rest.

But a frequent request we hear from some AdWords Express advertisers is for a way to narrow down the search phrases that cause their ad to show. That’s why today we’re introducing the ability to remove search phrases that may not be the best fit for your business (and add them back if you need to).

This change should provide more freedom to create ads that reach the kind of customers looking for the products and services you want to promote. For example, if you run a bakery and only want to advertise your award winning cakes, you can now remove search phrases about cupcakes or bread.

Today, we’re rolling out this feature to AdWords Express advertisers based in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Click the pencil icon inside the “Search phrases” card and uncheck the phrases you want to remove

Log in to AdWords Express to review the search phrases for your business. We look forward to hearing your feedback and making this feature available in more countries soon.

Posted by Francisco Uribe, Product Manager, Google AdWords Express

It's time to put America’s small businesses on the map

If you searched for “Dependable Care near Garland, TX” a few months ago, you would have seen a lot of search results—but not the one that mattered to Marieshia Hicks. Marieshia runs Dependable Care Health Service in Garland, and it was her business that was missing. But that all changed last month when she attended a workshop at the Garland Chamber of Commerce called Let’s Put Garland on the Map.

The workshop, run by our Get Your Business Online team, showed her how to use Google My Business—a tool that allows business owners to control the info listed about their business on Google Search and Maps—to help more people find Dependable. Marieshia added an updated phone number, hours of operation, and a description to her business listing. Within a few months, she had more customers come through the door and referrals from doctors who could reach her. This one simple adjustment made a difference. In Marieshia’s words: “It’s huge.”

Huge might be an understatement. Four out of five people use search engines to find local information, like business hours and addresses, and research shows that businesses with complete listings are twice as likely (PDF) to be considered reputable by customers. Consumers are 38 percent more likely to visit and 29 percent more likely to consider purchasing from businesses with complete listings. Yet only 37 percent of businesses (PDF) have claimed a local business listing on a search engine. That’s a lot of missed opportunities for small businesses.

With this in mind, our Get Your Business Online team set out in 2011 to help businesses like Marieshia’s get found online. We’ve gone to every state in the U.S. and worked with thousands of business owners to create free websites and update their Google Search and Maps listings. But there’s a lot more work to do to help businesses take advantage of the vast opportunities yielded by the web. So today, we’re introducing Let’s Put Our Cities on the Map, a new program to help 30,000 cities get their local businesses online.


If we want to help every business in the U.S., we need to reach businesses where they are. So this tailor-made program provides each city with a custom website where local businesses can find helpful resources, including a new diagnostic tool that shows businesses how they appear on Search and Maps, a step-by-step guide for getting online with Google My Business, and a free website and domain name for one year with our partner, Startlogic.

We’re also forming partnerships with local organizations—like chambers and small business development centers—and equipping them with free trainings and customized city materials to run workshops just like the one Marieshia attended in Garland. These local partners know the challenges for local businesses more than anyone—and they recognize the value of getting businesses online. After all, getting Dependable’s information online not only means the world for Marieshia, it means even more for the city of Garland. Complete business info can help generate economic value up to $300,000 a year for a small city or up to $7 million for a large one (PDF). So when our local businesses are online, our local economies benefit.

If you have a favorite local business—a day care, a dentist, a dry cleaner—show your support by helping them get their info online and on the map. Visit your city’s website at www.gybo.com to find out how you can get involved.

Let’s put our cities on the map!

Posted by Soo Young Kim, Head of Marketing, Get Your Business Online

Celebrating 30 years of .COM and the future of .DOMAINS

Cross-posted with the Official Google Blog

When you visited Google today, we’re pretty sure you didn’t type 173.194.113.18 into your browser. This string of numbers separated by periods—an IP address—isn’t nearly as easy or memorable as typing google.com. Domain names ending in things like .COM, .NET and .EDU make browsing the web and telling people where to find you online easier. Since this month marks the 30-year anniversary of .COM and several other domain endings, we’re taking a minute to celebrate these often-overlooked suffixes that have changed the way we use the web.

Though they were introduced in 1985, domain names didn’t gain much awareness and use amongst the public until the World Wide Web became available to all during the ‘90s and it became clear they were an important part in unlocking its power. Using these online addresses, people began to spread messages, start businesses and access information that otherwise would have been nearly impossible to find. Popularity and demand for these names grew so much that people were soon willing to pay millions of dollars for the perfect one.

Today there are 270+ million registered domain names; in fact, about 17 million were added just last year. To create more naming options for people online, hundreds of new top-level domains are being added, and many, like .TODAY, .NINJA and .BIKE are already available. We wrote about this back in 2012, and since then we’ve launched three of our own: .HOW, .SOY and .みんな.

As .COM turns 30, we’re looking back on the history of domain endings and all they’ve made possible. Today there are more choices than ever before for people to find the perfect name for their businesses, projects and ideas on the web. If you’re interested in learning more about this history, or you’d like to register your own piece of the web, head over to Google Domains to claim your .DOMAINS from a .COM to a .GURU. Here’s to .COM’s 30th, and all that’s yet to come in how we name destinations on the Internet.

Posted by Ben Fried, CIO

AdWords app launches on Android

Note: To use the AdWords app, you need to be an existing AdWords advertiser. Not using AdWords? See why you should consider it.

Staying on top of your campaigns just got easier

Today, we’re introducing the AdWords app, an easy way to view and manage your ads’ performance when you’re on the go. This new Android app is available globally for existing AdWords customers.

Businesses, large and small, are increasingly using smartphones to manage everything from customer support to product orders to marketing. Now, you can use your smartphone to keep your AdWords campaigns running smoothly—no matter where your business takes you.

As a companion to your desktop account, this app lets you:

• View campaign stats
• Update bids and budgets
• Get real-time alerts and notifications
• Act on suggestions to improve your campaigns
• Call a Google expert

Download the AdWords app for Android

Tommy Sands, Senior Paid Search Manager from Philly Marketing Labs, tells us, “Having the ability to quickly review and take action in my AdWords accounts when I only have my mobile device enables me to be better and more efficient at managing my campaigns. It's nice to know that I'm only a few taps away from the information I need, no matter where I am.”

Review (and make changes) on the go

Whenever you open the app, you’ll see an overview of your clicks, costs, and conversions. For deeper insights, you can view metrics by ad group, day of week and device.

Changes in campaign performance can happen at any time—now you can address them quickly, even when you’re away from your desk. For example, if you see your best performing campaign is maxing out on budget, you can make adjustments so you don’t lose out on potential sales. You can even pause or enable a campaign for a time-sensitive promotion.

You’ll also receive customized suggestions that you can act on immediately. For example, if there’s an opportunity to get more impressions by adjusting your bids, we’ll let you know so you can make the change right from the app.

Get the app

The AdWords app is now available for devices that use Android 4.0 or later. To get started, download it today from the Google Play Store. And for more information, visit our Help Center. We look forward to hearing your feedback as you bring AdWords with you on your business adventures.

Posted by Geoff Menegay, Product Manager, AdWords

Better than 1,000 words: introducing new photo tools to help you show off your business on Google

When it comes to attracting new customers, photos can both entice customers to your business when they’re browsing online and give customers confidence that they’ve come to the right place.

Starting today, you can tell us which image you’d like to appear when customers search for your business on Google. Just log in to Google My Business on the web or in the Android or iOS apps, and visit the Photos section. While you’re there, you can also give your business a fresh look online by updating your profile, logo and cover photos.

Photos you add through Google My Business can be displayed on Google Search, Maps and Google+

We’ll also guide you through adding the best photos to show off what makes your business unique. For example, hotels will receive guidance for adding exterior, room and common space photos that show guests what to expect inside and out. Cafes and restaurants can get customers drooling over their latest food and drink and provide more details with a menu photo.

Log in to Google My Business today to see suggestions of photos to add for your business.

Posted by Abhishek Poddar, Google My Business Product Manager