With 2013 around the corner, we’ve collected the top 13 tips for you to get your business ready for the new year. We've been posting one tip each day on the Google+ Your Business page, and we've collected the first five tips here. Start getting your business ready for 2013 now, and stay tuned for the next set of tips!
Tip 1: Create new holiday promotion ads in AdWords
It's the busy holiday season and we want your customers to find you online! Often, businesses that advertise with Google make edits to their ad text to promote a holiday sale or deal to bring customers to their website. While we recommend advertising these promotions, here's a little tip we want to highlight:
Don't jump straight into your ad that you have running and click to edit that ad. Saving changes to an existing ad causes the ad to go under review which, depending on the number of ads that you have in your account, can cause an interruption in your ad delivery. Instead, we recommend creating a new ad with the holiday promotion in addition to the generic ad that you already have. Once the new ad gets reviewed, you can pause your generic ad and let the holiday one run -- delay avoided!
Tip 2: Use referrals data in Analytics
If your business has a website, do you know how your customers are finding it? You can use referrals information in Google Analytics to see how people got to your website.
Analytics shows traffic coming from around the web, so not just other websites but from social media as well. Is a lot of your traffic coming from one social media channel? Maybe you want to spend more time posting there. You can also see how many new visits came from a certain source, if you want to target customers by using different content depending on the channel.
To find data on referrals, just sign in to Google Analytics then click Traffic Sources > Sources > Referrals. Don’t have Google Analytics set up yet? Learn how to get started at http://www.google.com/analytics/
Tip 3: Track packages in Google Search
Does your business receive lots of packages? Don’t worry about wasting time going to multiple websites to track them. You can find out where FedEx, UPS and USPS packages that you've ordered are by typing the tracking number into Google. Simply enter the tracking number into the Google Search box and when you click enter, you'll see updated shipping information for your packages.
Tip 4: Get you daily agenda in your email
You may not have a personal assistant, but you can still have your agenda delivered straight to your email with Google Calendar. To receive the daily notification, go to Calendar and select “My calendars.” Click on the dropdown button next to the calendar you want to receive an agenda for, and then select “Reminders and notifications. Check the email box next to “Daily agenda” then “Save” and you’ll start to receive a overview of your day to your Gmail address every morning! Learn more
Tip 5: Import slides into Google Presentations
Just because your business has old Power Point slides that you need doesn’t mean that you can’t use Google Presentations. All you have to do is import the file and you can transfer whichever slides you want into the presentation. When you have a Google Presentation open, go to Insert > Import slides... > Upload to add files from your computer. Or, instead of Upload select Presentations to copy slides from an existing Google Presentation. Learn more
Tip 1: Create new holiday promotion ads in AdWords
It's the busy holiday season and we want your customers to find you online! Often, businesses that advertise with Google make edits to their ad text to promote a holiday sale or deal to bring customers to their website. While we recommend advertising these promotions, here's a little tip we want to highlight:
Don't jump straight into your ad that you have running and click to edit that ad. Saving changes to an existing ad causes the ad to go under review which, depending on the number of ads that you have in your account, can cause an interruption in your ad delivery. Instead, we recommend creating a new ad with the holiday promotion in addition to the generic ad that you already have. Once the new ad gets reviewed, you can pause your generic ad and let the holiday one run -- delay avoided!
Tip 2: Use referrals data in Analytics
If your business has a website, do you know how your customers are finding it? You can use referrals information in Google Analytics to see how people got to your website.
Analytics shows traffic coming from around the web, so not just other websites but from social media as well. Is a lot of your traffic coming from one social media channel? Maybe you want to spend more time posting there. You can also see how many new visits came from a certain source, if you want to target customers by using different content depending on the channel.
To find data on referrals, just sign in to Google Analytics then click Traffic Sources > Sources > Referrals. Don’t have Google Analytics set up yet? Learn how to get started at http://www.google.com/analytics/
Tip 3: Track packages in Google Search
Does your business receive lots of packages? Don’t worry about wasting time going to multiple websites to track them. You can find out where FedEx, UPS and USPS packages that you've ordered are by typing the tracking number into Google. Simply enter the tracking number into the Google Search box and when you click enter, you'll see updated shipping information for your packages.
Tip 4: Get you daily agenda in your email
You may not have a personal assistant, but you can still have your agenda delivered straight to your email with Google Calendar. To receive the daily notification, go to Calendar and select “My calendars.” Click on the dropdown button next to the calendar you want to receive an agenda for, and then select “Reminders and notifications. Check the email box next to “Daily agenda” then “Save” and you’ll start to receive a overview of your day to your Gmail address every morning! Learn more
Tip 5: Import slides into Google Presentations
Just because your business has old Power Point slides that you need doesn’t mean that you can’t use Google Presentations. All you have to do is import the file and you can transfer whichever slides you want into the presentation. When you have a Google Presentation open, go to Insert > Import slides... > Upload to add files from your computer. Or, instead of Upload select Presentations to copy slides from an existing Google Presentation. Learn more
