If you are new to digital marketing, or if you have been doing it for several years, you might be aware that Google has a Marketing Suite of software to help you market and improve your website, digital ads, performance, and more. They call it… The Google Marketing Platform.
What Software and Tools Does Google Provide?
First, I would like to mention that we are going to focus on the free software that Google provides in this article. Google has a variety of software that you can use, but here is a list of programs that they have developed that you can use for digital marketing purposes for free:
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is the go-to analytic system to monitor traffic on your website and mobile apps. Most people are aware that this tool exists, but those who are just starting into digital marketing we’ll give you a little more insight.
With this tool, you can view visitors origins, the keywords used to find your website, engagement, time spent, demographics, and more. This tool can be used in many different capacities.
First rule of marketing, YOU ARE NOT YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE.
Use this tool to understand your audience better. That can be done by looking at your visitors gender, age range, and location and interests. All that information can help you better shape your website and services to cater to that audience.
Interested in finding how where people came from and which pages they click on while they’re visiting? The Behavior page will show us all this and more. It’s helpful to see what people are interested in, and help you better organize your website to accommodate that information.
Google Search Console
Formerly known as, Webmaster Tools, Google Search Console helps you with the performance of your website, locate broken links, index your site to Google’s Search Engine and more.
Adding your site to Search Console tells Google that your site exists. If we don’t add our site to Console, then it takes a while for Google’s Spiders to find find your site and bring back all the URL’s to their system. This will immediately get you indexed on Google for people to start finding your website.
Google Ads
The biggest question people ask when it comes to digital marketing is, “How can I get people to my website?”.
Organic traffic takes a lot of time and effort to achieve, however, Google Ads allows you to get your website to the top ranking spots in Google Search immediately.
What are the advantages of Google Ads?
Marketing has changed in our world. Back in the day (any time before 2006) the way to advertise would be on TV, billboards, bus benches, flyers, mailers, etc. All that work just to get the word out there.
People are hunters now. They know what they need and they search for it on Google. Ancient times, people would have to read a billboard driving 75MPH down the highway and try to remember your business phone number. What a waste of money. Investing marketing dollars is key to a businesses success, and with the help of Google Ads you can target only those people searching for you.
Best part about this, you only pay for the click on your ad. Which is where the term “Pay-Per-Click” comes from.
Creating an effective ad campaign takes a lot of hard work. You have to collect data and research to see how people are hunting, or searching, for your business.
Here at Jovian Studio, we setup Google Ad campaigns for any sized companies and refine them month over month. If you’re looking to create an effective ad campaign with proven results, contact us today for a free consolation!
Keyword Planner
Inside Google Ads is a tool to help you find keywords that are specific to your industry, service, product or good. This tool has been phasing out for sometime, and they have been transitioning on their AI to provide keywords based on your companies information your provide beforehand.
All-in-all, I still find this a great tool to use as you are building out ads, content for your website, and suggestions to help people find you on the internet.
Trends
Who is your target audience? Figuring out that information will help you reach your audience, and with Trends we can find out that information. Get creative and enter multiple keywords that you think people would be using to find your business, and compare them to each other.
These keywords will show you which states are searching those terms and you can filter those by a time range. With that kind of information, you can create specific content or ads in those locations with those keywords.
Optimize
Have you heard of the term A/B testing? A/B testing allows you to test multiple versions of something to see how people respond. For example, let’s say you created a landing page and you’re not sure if people would respond to an orange button or a blue button. How would you be able to know which one people would click on? Or what if you wanted to test a different layout of your landing page entirely?
Optimize allows you to create multiple versions of a single page on your website and then digest that data to show you which version converts better.
Create the alternative version and let it sit for about 30 days to review the performance. Repeat this each month and find something to change about your website. Colors, images, text, etc.
As you are consistent with this, your site will evolve into a converting lead machine.
Tag Manager
Organize all your third party integration without having to touch any code. Nothing is more helpful then having everything stored in a single location.
On top of that, you are able to create actions and or events to trigger data collection. As much as I would love to dive into that, it’s only used in unique situations. Let me know how you have used them in the comments section below.
My Business
My Business is moving to Google Maps. At the time of this article, it is called Google My Business, which is where you go to add your business profile to Google Maps and Search.
Providing your business information allows people to see what days and times you are open, your phone number, website, reviews, etc.
Connecting Analytics, Console, My Business together, you will boost your rankings in Search. All this data helps Google help you. Get rewarded by providing them as much information about your business as possible.
That’s a Wrap
Well that was a load of information. I hope that this has given you an idea of what each tool/program can help you as you fight your way through the internet.