With over 60,000 search queries per second, Google serves as the most popular search engine in the world. But for professionals, marketers and businesses, it’s much more than a search tool. It’s a foundation for success.
Whether you’re focused on building brand awareness, bringing more traffic to your site or increasing online sales, Google can help accomplish your most meaningful goals.
Here are five of the best Google marketing tools you should be leveraging for your business.
Google My Business
No matter how minimal your digital marketing efforts may be, every business should have one component established: Google My Business.
Google My Business (GMB) is an easy-to-use tool that allows businesses to be more discoverable online and offline. The tool makes it easy to improve local search visibility, while also providing important company information for potential customers: description, store hours, directions, reviews, and website links. Recent updates even allow businesses to show posts, events and promotions, too.
It’s important to not only claim and verify your listing, but also to keep it updated as company information or locations change.
Google Optimize
Google Optimize is a split-testing platform that allows users to experiment with their websites. Through the on-page visual editor, you can easily A/B test creative designs, content changes, calls-to-action and more. The tool integrates with Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager, meaning your efforts are all tied together and tracked.
Some experiments the tool can explore include:
Which headline works best?
What are desktop versus mobile results?
Which target audience is showing the highest engagement rates?
Where should the checkout button be?
Once you run tests, Google Optimize will show real-time results—providing insights for how you can increase the experience for the user. Not only does the tool allow you to explore what design resonates most with users, but also helps you achieve higher conversion rates over time.
Google Ads
Google Ads, formerly known as Google Adwords, improves the visibility of businesses through multiple channels. By building campaigns around specific audiences, advertisers can promote product and service ads to the users most likely to click on them.
These ads can come in the form of different campaign types:
Search: Google Search Network allows advertisers to bid on keywords in order to appear in search results. Bidding operates on a cost-per-click (CPC) model, which is determined by the competitiveness of your keywords and your overall quality score. Since ads can instantly appear at the top of the page, it’s often an easier, quicker process than organic search optimizations.
Display: The Google Display Network extends beyond search engine results—allowing advertisers to place ads on Google Partner websites. Instead of text-only ads, display ads come in the form of visual banners. Reaching over 90% of global internet users, display has one of the largest audience reaches (and cheapest cost-per-clicks).
Shopping: Google Shopping ads appear at the top of regular search results to serve users looking to buy. These ads contain clear product offerings such as descriptions, images, cost, specials and reviews. Since these types of users have a higher purchase intent, shopping ads see a higher conversion rate than text-only ads.
Depending on your digital marketing goals, Google Ads can help improve search ranking, target specific audiences and increase conversion rates through a platform that only charges you when users click on your ads.
Google Search Console
Formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools, Google Search Console is a tool that helps users monitor their website’s presence in Google.
If you’re interested in your highest traffic queries, website pages, and average position in the platform, Search Console is the tool for you. By gathering and reporting on organic ranking as well as paid search results, users can understand their strengths and areas for improvement. With this information, content specialists and SEO experts can recommend strategic updates to improve performance. It can also help site administrators resolve errors and site load issues.
Google Analytics
So you’re interested in creating campaigns, building awareness and increasing website traffic—but what about the results?
That’s where Google Analytics comes in.
Google Analytics is a free tool that tracks and reports on website traffic. It analyzes behavior, reports on your goals and provides you with the information you need to improve the site’s performance. The best part? Once it’s set up, the tracking is automated.
Some of the key insights provided through the tool include:
Demographic information: age, location, interests, browsers and devices.
Traffic analysis: how are users arriving to your website?
Digital marketing: linked google ads performance, social media results and more.
Website behavior: top searches, popular content, time on site, exit pages and more.
Ecommerce results: goals, transactions, shopping cart behavior, etc.
Remember: it’s important to not only understand which metrics matter most to your business and your marketing goals, but to take that information and use it to improve your website presence and digital marketing efforts.
While Google offers endless different tools for businesses to take advantage of, the platform still requires knowledgeable specialists to manage campaigns, optimize performance and provide valuable insights. At clevermethod, we make it our job to help clients build digital experiences, market their businesses, and see direct results—while staying up-to-date with the latest trends and changes in the platform.
Which tools are you currently taking advantage of? Which would you like to learn more about? We’d love to help your brand get to where it needs to be. Connect with us on Twitter or drop us a line to get started.