The definitive resource for google marketing tools: the complete guide. Covers strategy, tactics, and real-world examples.

Neil Eneix

on Uncategorized •

August 09th, 2021

If you’ve ever used the internet, then you might have heard of a website called Google. Of course, you have, who hasn’t? Since it was founded back in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the search engine has become easily one of the biggest sites on the internet, with over 3.5 billion searches being made on it every day. So, it’s no surprise that Google marketing tools have become such a popular alternative all over the world.

In fact, it has become so widespread, that the word Google has become a verb in its own right, often used to replace ‘search’ when people are browsing the internet. None of Google’s other competitors in the search engine business even come close, as Google dominates with a 69% market share.

Due to Google’s sheer size and presence on the internet, it has become a tool that almost no user can live without.

Its role as the go-to search engine has essentially made it into the main highway of the internet, which every user has to travel on.

With so much traffic going through Google every day, it also means the search engine has a huge amount of useful data for marketers.

This, therefore, makes it invaluable to a marketer as not only can it get them in front of millions of consumers, it also allows them to target the right people who are more likely to make a sale.

It’s crucial that every digital marketer makes use of Google.

Without it, your campaigns will struggle to even get off the ground. Remember, Google is also so much more than just a search engine. It’s an analytics tool, a mailing platform, management software, and lots more. You need to think beyond just where you end up on search results.

But with so much on offer from Alphabet’s developers, it can be hard knowing exactly where to start and what you need to boost your marketing.

Fortunately, there are plenty of marketing tools available for use with Google. Using these tools can help give your business an edge in an already very competitive digital marketing field. To help guide you, we’ve put together this handy list of our favorite Google marketing tools to give your campaigns the boost it needs.

More Helpful Reading: https://www.fannit.com/blog/google-ranking-check/

What Are the Best Google Marketing Tools?

As we mentioned earlier, Google has grown from being just a search engine to so much more.

This is great news for you as a business owner as it means there’s so much more that you can do with it to reach customers and generate leads.

Here are some of the best Google marketing tools out there to help you navigate your Google marketing strategy and help your business grow.

1. Google Ads (Formerly Google AdWords)

One of the most popular and well-known Google marketing tools is Google AdWords, now known as simply Ads.

Google AdWords is Google’s pay-per-click advertising offer. The way that PPC works is that it allows you to bid on certain keywords.

For example, if you sell bicycles, you could bid on the keyword ‘bike stores near me.’

That way when somebody searches that keyword, your site’s link will appear at the top of the search results page.

One of the great things about PPC however, is that you only pay if it actually drives traffic to your business website.

If a user ignores the link, even though it is at the top of the page, you won’t have to pay anything. It’s only when they actually click on it that it will cost money.

The clue is in the name.

Google AdWords also offers additional targeting beyond just keywords, such as location, if they’re using a mobile or desktop browser, and more, to make sure you’re reaching the right consumers.

More Helpful Reading: https://www.fannit.com/blog/google-ads-pricing/

2. Google Keyword Planner

If you’ve decided to make use of Google Ads, but are having difficulty deciding on the best keywords to use for your campaign, Google does offer some help.

The Google Keyword Planner is designed to assist you when finding keywords, by offering keyword ideas, and is available if you already have an Ads account.

Keyword Planner works like this.

You tell the tool what area you want to own, and it offers groups of keywords that are related to it, and lets you get deeper into the term. For example, if you could type in Public Relations, and the tool would offer keyword ideas such as ‘PR agencies’, ‘best PR strategies’, ‘why do I need PR’, and so on.

It will also tell you how much a keyword is trending, i.e. which keyword is currently the most popular.

Keyword Planner will also tell you the approximate cost of each one if you are to include it in your PPC campaign.

3. Google My Business

If you’re keen to get your business on Google’s search results, and you definitely should be but do not have the budget required to run a PPC advertising campaign, there are still options available.

Google My Business is a free Google advertising service that any business can sign up for.

All you have to do is claim your Google My Business spot and your business will be included on any relevant search queries for local search results.

Google My Business is therefore a simple way to make sure you get noticed. You don’t even need an account to do it.

So for example, if you are a hairdresser located in Seattle, you can claim your listing, so the next time somebody does a Google search for ‘hairdressers in Seattle’, your business will be listed along with its address thanks to Google My Business. It will show up on Maps as well, pinpointing your address to potential customers.

4. Google Trends

Google Trends is an excellent free Google marketing tool that helps to let you know which topics and phrases are trending in real-time.

Trends can provide quite in-depth analytics as well, by showing how certain keywords have trended over a set period of time, how their popularity fluctuates by location and lets you compare them against each other.

This makes it really helpful when you’re trying to decide what word to use for a blog title for example.

Just pop in all the options into Google Trends and see which one is the most popular.

Being able to see how a keyword’s popularity can be really helpful.

For example, if you notice one always spikes in July you can start planning your content for that month early. One advantage of Google Trends is that it’s completely free and available to anyone. You don’t need to set up an Ads account to use Google Trends either.

Trends’ intuitive design makes it really simple and easy to use and is one of the best free tools out there.

You can easily end up spending hours playing around with the different keywords and search parameters, so get stuck in!

5. Google Analytics

In the data-driven world of digital marketing, it’s vital that you stay on top of all statistics related to your campaigns.

Without it, you won’t be able to measure ROI, see what’s performing well, and how to report results back to your clients.

This is another area where Google is a marketer’s best friend. Google Analytics is an incredibly powerful analysis tool and is also completely free to use, so you don’t need an account.

You can use it to help your marketing campaigns by providing invaluable insight.

By using it with your website, it can show you an in-depth look into your website traffic.

You can use it to see at what times are you generating the most traffic, and most usefully, which pages are the most visited.

This helps to show which pages are working well, and which need some tweaking. If a page isn’t visited often, there’s a good chance its SEO needs improvement as users are probably not able to find it on search engines.

It can go beyond this as well and inform you of who and where your traffic is coming from.

Google Analytics provides statistics on the demographics of your visitors such as location and language they’re viewing your website on.

Google Analytics can also tell you how visitors found your website.

You can see who is coming from social media platforms such as Facebook or Instagram, who was directed from a third-party site, and how many are coming from search engines.

You can also use it to calculate the percentage of visitors who complete a conversion.

This is especially useful if you have an eCommerce platform on your website or are trying to get people to sign up for a mailing list.

More Helpful Reading: https://www.fannit.com/blog/seo-google-analytics-tips/

6. Google Search Console

Google Analytics isn’t the only useful analytics tool on offer from Google.

Search Console is also a fantastic service that can help any digital marketer. It essentially uses data from your website to help show you how your website is seen by Google’s search algorithm, which is invaluable insight for any business trying to improve its SEO.

You can use it to check your site’s health. This means it will scan your website and look for any red flags or errors that could be harming your SEO and that need fixing.

This could include things such as malware, blocked and broken URLs, crawling errors, and more.

Once Search Console has highlighted these, you can go in and get them fixed, which should help your SEO.

It can also show you what search terms and queries your website is showing up on, and what their ranking is.

This can help you know which terms you need to work harder at in order to get a better ranking.

More importantly, if there is a keyword you’re keen for your website to appear on but aren’t, Search Console can alert you to this fact and let you know you need to work on your SEO.

In fact, Search Console can offer suggestions for improving your SEO, such as tweaking your sitemap, HTML, keywords, and other factors.

Free Resource! Access Our Free SEO Website Checker & Grader

7. Google Suite

Most computer users probably grew up using Microsoft Office when working with their computer.

Programs such as Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint were the go-to software for the average office worker. However, these can be expensive and require regular updating to stay ahead of the game.

Google Suite is Alphabet’s answer to Microsoft Office but in a more accessible and flexible way.

It’s all online and can be accessed by anyone for free. There are a number of great tools within Suite so let’s go through them.

Google Docs

Content marketing is an incredibly important part of any digital campaign. Well-written content can engage your target audience in ways that traditional advertising can’t.

It also helps to provide something that the audience wants, such as information, interest, and more, meaning that consumers will be more willing to consume it.

Of course to be able to write engaging, thoughtful content, you need somewhere to write it first. Google Docs is Google’s answer to this.

In fact, this blog post that you’re currently reading was initially written on Google Docs.

It’s incredibly similar to Microsoft Word, however is entirely hosted online, and is also free to use. It also has advantages that Word lacks.

For example, Docs is an excellent way of collaborating with your wider team. If a document you’re working on needs to be seen by your whole team, you can easily share it with multiple people, who can view, comment or edit simultaneously.

This makes it great for team working, as well as for remote working which has risen dramatically in the last year.

It’s not just for writing copy either, you can also create forms and surveys to send out to your mailing list to help gather insights and data amongst your customers.

Google Sheets

For a good marketing campaign to succeed, it needs to be organized.

Ask any marketer, they’ll tell you they spend a significant portion of their time staying on top of their posting schedule, keeping track of what’s due to be published and what needs booking. In this aspect of the job, a spreadsheet is a marketer’s best friend.

Google Sheets is a spreadsheet tool that every marketer should be using.

Like Google Docs, a spreadsheet can be shared across a team so everyone can collaborate on it in real-time, making updates to schedules when needed.

Another important factor for a marketer that Sheets can help with that we’ve already discussed is data.

Spreadsheets are a great place to store your data from surveys and other research. Sheets has similar features to Microsoft Excel in that you can use it to analyze the data and crunch the numbers on the spreadsheet itself, yet it is also completely free.

Google Slides

As every marketer knows, presentation is everything. Well, perhaps not everything, but controlling how you’re seen is a vitally important factor in our line of work.

Whether you’re looking for new business or reporting to a current client on the results you’ve got, it helps to have a professional-looking presentation.

Google Slides is Google’s version of Microsoft PowerPoint. It works in much the same way, allowing you to create presentations for a variety of different purposes.

Also, like the rest of Google Suite, it allows for collaborative work, by letting multiple different people work on the same document at the same time.

8. Google Mail (Gmail)

In today’s digital age, email is one of the most important forms of communication.

This goes for almost every different kind of business in every industry, and beyond that, as people use it outside the world of work for socializing and more.

Google Mail, or GMail as it was rebranded, is one of the most popular email platforms out there, and for good reason.

Gmail has a very intuitive and easy-to-use user interface (UI), meaning anyone can use it, regardless of how tech-literate they are.

It also comes with up to 15GB of free data storage, which always comes in handy.

It’s excellent for small businesses too.

As marketers, communication is our job, which means that we get a lot of it! With all the emails that we constantly send and receive, it can be hard to keep track.

Gmail has really handy labeling features, meaning emails can be sorted by topic or sender.

This makes it much easier to stay on track of conversations and makes them easier to find when needed.

It also links up nicely with your Google Drive, making it even easier to share documents with contacts via email.

It’s also possible to do a mail merge from your Google Docs through Gmail, making it an excellent option for email marketing.

Email marketing is one of the most useful tools for any marketer, as it only targets those who have voluntarily shared their contact information with your company.

This shows a significant level of interest, meaning they are more likely to complete a conversion and make a sale when you target them with promotional material.

9. Google Alerts

Every marketer needs to make sure that they stay ahead of the game, and always know what is happening in the ever-evolving media landscape.

However, which so much information out there it can be hard to sift through to find the stories that are related to your campaigns.

Fortunately, this is where Google Alerts can help.

Google Alerts is another free tool from Google. It’s a piece of software that constantly monitors the web. You can use it by selecting keywords that you would like to keep tabs on.

This could be the name of their company or client, so they always know what people are saying about them.

More Helpful Reading: https://www.fannit.com/seo/reputation-management/

It can also help to keep an eye out on your competitors to help you always stay one step ahead, and react to what they do when needs be.

If there are certain topics that you would like your company or client to comment on, then you can set up an alert for those keywords, and Google will send you an email every time it finds a new result.

10. Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile is a free and easy-to-use tool for businesses and organizations to manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Maps.

To help customers find your business, you can verify your business information and edit it. This helps customers find your business, whether they’re looking for a specific address, phone number, or even a website.

It also helps you manage your online reviews, which is crucial for your online reputation management.

11. Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the latest version of Google Analytics. It’s a powerful analytics tool that helps you understand your customers’ behavior across your website and app.

GA4 is designed to give you a more complete view of the customer journey, with a focus on events rather than sessions. This means you can track everything from page views to purchases, and get a better understanding of how users interact with your business.

It also includes new features like predictive capabilities, which use machine learning to forecast future customer behavior.

This can help you make more informed decisions about your marketing strategy and improve your ROI.

12. Google Search Console Insights

Google Search Console Insights is a new experience that helps content creators and publishers understand how their content is performing. It’s a simplified view of Search Console data, designed to be more accessible and actionable.

It provides insights into your content’s performance, such as how many people are seeing it, how they’re finding it, and what they’re searching for on Google.

It also offers personalized recommendations to help you improve your content and grow your audience.

13. Google Optimize

Google Optimize is a free tool that helps you test and improve your website. It allows you to run A/B tests, multivariate tests, and other experiments to see what works best for your audience.

This can help you optimize your website for conversions, improve user experience, and get more out of your existing traffic.

It integrates with Google Analytics, so you can easily see the impact of your experiments on your website’s performance.

14. Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager is a tag management system that allows you to quickly and easily update measurement codes and related code fragments known as tags on your website or mobile app.

You can add and update your own tags for conversion tracking, site analytics, remarketing, and more.

It simplifies the process of adding and managing tags, so you don’t have to edit your website code every time you need to make a change.

This can save you time and effort, and help you get your marketing campaigns up and running faster.

15. Google Data Studio (Looker Studio)

Google Data Studio, now known as Looker Studio, is a free tool that allows you to create custom dashboards and reports. It connects to a variety of data sources, including Google Analytics, Google Ads, and Google Sheets, so you can bring all your data together in one place.

This can help you visualize your data, identify trends, and share your insights with others. It’s a powerful tool for marketers who want to make data-driven decisions and improve their campaigns.

16. Google Alerts for Competitor Monitoring

While Google Alerts was mentioned earlier for general monitoring, it’s particularly effective for competitor monitoring.

By setting up alerts for your competitors’ names, products, or key phrases, you can stay informed about their activities, news, and mentions across the web.

This proactive approach allows you to react quickly to their strategies, identify new opportunities, and maintain a competitive edge in the market.

17. Google Local Services Ads (LSA)

Google Local Services Ads (LSA) are a type of pay-per-lead advertising specifically designed for local service businesses. Unlike traditional Google Ads where you pay for clicks, with LSAs, you only pay when a customer contacts you directly through the ad.

These ads appear at the very top of Google search results, even above traditional PPC ads, and feature a Google-guaranteed badge, which can help build trust with potential customers.

LSAs are a great option for contractors and other local businesses looking to generate high-quality leads directly from Google.

18. Google Mobile-Friendly Test

With more and more users accessing the internet from their mobile devices, having a mobile-friendly website is essential.

Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test is a free tool that analyzes your website and tells you how well it performs on mobile devices.

It checks for issues like text that’s too small to read, content that’s wider than the screen, and links that are too close together.

By using this tool, you can ensure that your website provides a good user experience for mobile visitors, which can help improve your search engine rankings and increase conversions.

19. Google PageSpeed Insights

Page speed is another important factor for both user experience and SEO. A slow-loading website can frustrate visitors and cause them to leave, which can hurt your rankings and conversions.

Google PageSpeed Insights is a free tool that analyzes your website’s performance and provides recommendations for how to improve it.

It gives you a score for both mobile and desktop, and provides a detailed report with suggestions for how to make your site faster.

By following these recommendations, you can improve your website’s performance, provide a better user experience, and boost your SEO.

20. Google Trends for Content Ideas

In addition to tracking keyword popularity, Google Trends can also be a great source of content ideas.

By exploring trending topics and related queries, you can discover what people are interested in and create content that meets their needs.

This can help you attract more traffic to your website, engage your audience, and establish yourself as an authority in your industry.

21. Google Business Messages

Google Business Messages is a new feature that allows customers to message your business directly from Google Search and Maps.

This can be a great way to provide customer support, answer questions, and generate leads.

By enabling this feature, you can make it easier for customers to connect with your business and get the help they need.

Ready to Learn More About Google Marketing Tools? Contact Fannit Today!

If you’re looking to pursue a digital marketing campaign, Google really is going to be a huge part of that, so you need to know how to use it effectively.

As we’ve discussed, there are a ton of excellent marketing tools out there that can help you achieve a variety of goals on a range of different budgets.

From Google My Business to Analytics, to Speed Insights, you need to know which tools you need to use.

If you’re eager to get started with your Google marketing campaign but are hesitant on where to start, or are spoiled for choice, why not get in touch with our marketing team today? Our team of experts can let you know which tools will be best for your brand and how to create a successful marketing campaign.

So don’t hesitate and give us a call now!

More Helpful Reading: https://supermetrics.com/blog/google-marketing-platform"

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How can Google Local Services Ads specifically benefit my home service contracting business? A: Google Local Services Ads (LSAs) are designed to connect home service contractors directly with customers searching for their specific services in their local area. They feature your business at the top of Google search results, often with a "Google Guaranteed" badge, building trust and increasing the likelihood of direct calls or booking requests from qualified leads.

Q: What's the most effective way for a contractor to use Google Business Profile to get more local jobs? A: Optimizing your Google Business Profile (GBP) is crucial for local visibility. Ensure your profile is complete with accurate service areas, business hours, photos of your work, and consistent business information. Actively solicit and respond to customer reviews, as these significantly impact your local search ranking and customer trust.

Q: Are Google Ads (PPC) a good investment for a small plumbing or HVAC company, and how should I approach them? A: Google Ads can be a highly effective investment for small home service companies, offering immediate visibility for specific services. Focus your campaigns on highly targeted keywords related to emergency services or specific installations in your service area. Monitor your ad spend and conversion rates closely to ensure a positive return on investment.

Q: Beyond ads, what free Google tools can contractors use to improve their online presence? A: Beyond paid advertising, contractors can leverage several free Google tools. Google Business Profile is essential for local search. Google Search Console helps you monitor your website's performance in search results, and Google Analytics provides insights into website traffic and user behavior, helping you refine your online strategy.

Google Marketing Tools: The Complete Guide