40% increase in sales, virtually overnight

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Scott Imbrie, CEO and Co-Founder of Original Skateboards. His passion is longboarding, a popular new form of skateboarding that also blends elements of surfing and snowboarding. Scott started Original in 2002 with his brother, Brad. The brothers began selling longboards shortly after Scott's 20th birthday, when Brad was just 17. Original distributes its products in most surf, skate, and snowboard shops on the East Coast of the United States and in many other areas around the world.

When my brother, Brad, and I first started Original, we were a small company in an unknown sport. We realized right away that we needed to connect with a broad spectrum of potential longerboarderss to introduce the world to longboarding. We also needed to connect personally to our customers and show them an entirely new kind of product. If we could find a way to do both of those things, on any scale, large or small, we felt we would be successful.

We theorized that by creating videos that viewers connected to on a more personal level, we could generate interactivity between our customers and Original to build brand awareness. With this mentality, even a small amount of exposure could be profitable. If we could achieve a large amount of reach while maintaining personal connection, we might be able to see big results at a fraction of the expense of traditional broadcasting. We integrated ourselves as characters, and filmed our first project.

In June 2007, we discovered YouTube. It was the solution that would allow us to share our videos with the world. We uploaded our first project and kicked our small business into high gear. Upon uploading, sales jumped 40% and steadily climbed.

Our YouTube channel now has over 105,000 subscribers. We refined our business model with online video at its core, and our business has continued to grow exponentially.

Find out more about how YouTube has driven our success as a company.

Posted by Serena Satyasai, Marketing Manager, The YouTube Team

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SMB Week Canada Wrap-Up: What’s a Small Business to Do?

Chris O’Neill, Managing Director for Google Canada, recently spoke at the 10th annual Small Business Forum organized by Enterprise Toronto. In his address, he highlighted a few essential steps all small businesses and entrepreneurs should be pursuing to grow their business and reach new customers.

So before you get caught up in the hustle and bustle of the holidays, take the opportunity to make sure you’re using every online tool available to you that can help you make the most of this shopping season. There’s no time like the present to engage in these five things:

• Establish an Online Presence: 20 percent of searches on Google are related to location, so it’s important for local businesses to have a presences on the web. A website does not need to be complex to serve its purpose. Creating a user-friendly, well-structured website will also help search engines like Google find and index it easily. Google Webmaster Tools provides a free and easy way to make your website more Google-friendly.

• Use Free Marketing to Reach Customers: People search Google.com and Google Maps to find local business, so make sure your customers know where you are and what you’re all about by claiming your free Google Places business listing. In addition to sharing your location, phone number and business hours, use Google Places to engage with customers by providing photos, video, coupons, public responses and more. You can also take advantage of free marketing opportunities by posting content to social networking sites, such as YouTube.

• Know Your Customers: To understand why some visitors aren’t converting, get website analytics data and learn what potential customers are doing on your site. Google Analytics is one of these analytics products, and it’s a free and powerful tool that can help you answer questions about the effectiveness of your content, how engaged your users are with your site, where they abandon your shopping cart and much more. With the right data in your hands, you can make smarter website design decisions and also make sure that the money you spend on advertising is actually delivering the results you want.

• Advertise Online: Online advertising is targeted, measurable and flexible. Products such as Google AdWords allow business owners like you to connect with your target audience at the exact moment they search for your products or services online. With AdWords, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad is taken directly to your website. You also get actionable analysis and performance information, so you know how to refine your ad copy or the keywords that trigger your ad to appear on the search results page. Plus, any business can be up and running in 15 minutes.
• To find out about all our advertising tools and products, visit our Google for Advertisers site for Canadian businesses.

• Embrace the Cloud: Web-based applications, such as Google Apps, are helping to streamline productivity and ensure that your business is running efficiently. Your employees can collaborate on documents in real-time and access them from anywhere, whether they’re on the road or at the office. This suite of online products also helps businesses spend less time and money managing email and other IT services, giving them the ability to focus more on what they do best: creating quality products and services, and sharing them with customers. Best of all, you can get started with Google Apps for free!

Posted by Andrew Swartz, Small Business Blog team

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Google Places now more widely available in Asia

[Cross-posted from the LatLong Blog]

People often use the Internet to look for businesses in their nearby vicinity. For example, a mother in Karachi might be trying to find a dentist for her teenager, or a young professional in Colombo may find himself in need of a computer repair shop. People also go online to research places they might visit when traveling, such as a dive shop in Palau, a backpacker hostel in Kathmandu, or a cooking class in Phnom Penh.

Because of this increasing trend in which people search online to find local establishments, business owners all over the world are realizing how simple and easy it is to reach their target customers through free business listings on Google.com and Google Maps. We’ve been gradually expanding access to our online database of local information, called Google Places, and it has recently become available to businesses and locations in 30 additional countries in Asia.

Example of business listings displayed on google.com

If you haven't already claimed your free listing in Google Places, doing so can help ensure that customers see accurate information about your business, and increase your likelihood of being found from desktop and mobile devices - even if you don’t have a website. With your free Google Places account, you can:

• Be found: Verify your information to make sure people can find you on Google
• Stand out: Engage customers with photos, coupons, custom posts on your Place page and more
• Get insights: Use info about your listing to make smarter business decisions

Any business located in a region where Google Places is available (now more than 100 countries) can sign in to Google Places at any time to claim or update their listing. And for those of you specifically located in South Asia (Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Maldives), Southeast Asia (Macau, Cambodia, Myanmar, Brunei, Laos), Western Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan), North Asia (Nepal, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Mongolia), and the Pacific (Fiji, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Guam, Papua New Guinea, Northern Mariana Islands, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Samoa, American Samoa and Palau), we warmly welcome you and invite you to check it out!

Posted by Andrew McGlinchey, Product Manager

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