In general, self-promotion and marketing can be among the toughest challenges for new business owners to master.

All of the new skills one must acquire through either self-education or hiring experts to all the costs with advertising and promotional material is enough to stress anyone out.

Luckily, the owners of small and medium-sized enterprises now have a new tool at their disposal to make this somewhat tricky part of running a business a lot smoother.

We're talking about Google Small Thanks, a new tool by the tech giant Google to help out smaller companies succeed at marketing. This article will cover what it does and all the opportunities it can bring to your business.

What is Google Small Thanks?

It's no secret to the tech-savvy business owner or marketer that Google Reviews are one of the best ways to increase local visibility and boost your search result rankings. According to Rocket Digital, "When a person scans the search results for a local product or service in Google, the business listings that include customer reviews present greater credibility and, naturally, receive more clicks."

Therefore, what Google Small Thanks did was give you a way to make use of the positive reviews people left for your business and make them easier to share as an image or even video as a form of promotion.

This was done by searching for your business on the Small Thanks website, which would bring out your best reviews in a list of cute designs that you could use for social media, newsletters, or your website.

Google My Business Marketing Kit

You may have realized that we have been speaking of this wonderful tool in the past tense for a while, which may be getting you worried whether it still exists or not.

We are happy to put your worries to rest when we say that yes, the tool is still available and operational for everyone, only its name has been changed from “Small Thanks With Google” to “Google My Business Marketing Kit,” although its main service remains the same with a few added options which we will cover later on.

A new feature has also been added to help businesses produce their COVID-19 updates regarding curfews, lockdown, and other difficulties caused by the current health crisis.

Content Types

The most incredible allure of Google Small Thanks is that you can produce content for your marketing campaigns with credible sources that point towards your business at the click of a button. This feature in itself is already quite useful, but they also give you a large selection of content forms to choose from, some of which are even printable, including:

Posters

You can have a client review, invitation, or slogan integrated into an original, AI-designed poster, which would be printed and sent to you. Posters are among the most tried and tested forms of marketing, with examples of their usage going back to Ancient Egypt, yet their effectiveness is unquestionable.

Posters set the mood for your establishment and help put the client in a desirable state of mind. For example, if you own a bookstore, you could have several posters quoting famous authors, or better yet, the work of your clients. It's a great way to build your business's identity while decorating it with stylish, professional-level designs.

Stickers

You can also produce stickers to go on car windows, vending machines, backpacks, water bottles, and much more. Stickers are great marketing because they can spread the influence of your brand almost indefinitely.

When done correctly, people will carry your subliminal marketing wherever they go, generating curiosity and interest for your business. Just think about it: Someone is walking down the street and sees your logo on a car, they would go down some blocks and sit at a café in front of someone with a notebook, and there it is again, they'd buy a water bottle before leaving and once again your sticker is there.

It's only a matter of time before they find you.

Social Media Posts

The designs created through Google Small Thanks can also be saved digitally and used in social media and advertising. Since this asset's production process is so quick, making new content for social media and your website can be at record speeds, which will significantly increase your online presence. Since these images will be using real opinions for real people, the reviews provide a great degree of authenticity.

Videos

There is also the possibility of using Small Thanks for producing videos that promote your business with either your slogans, data, or customer testimonies. These videos come with their effects, animations, and resources, all of which are of exceptionally high quality and can be downloaded in different formats to be shared all over the web.

AdQuadrant has demonstrated recently that video ads have a much higher engagement rate than other formats making it one of the mediums for getting the point of your business across.

Benefits for Small Businesses

As we have established earlier in this article, backlinks are a great way to signify your authority in a particular subject. As more and more people run into backlinks to your website, you only solidify this position.

For example, if your website is commonly associated with history articles, people will be more prone to search for you when they have a history related question.

Free Marketing

One of the best forms of marketing out there is free marketing, and Small Thanks offers a load of marketing services for no cost. It can reduce the price of one of the essential marketing stages, which is content production. You click one button, you personalize the content, and there you have it.

This is especially advantageous for small businesses that don't have the capital to invest in content creation from companies or independent professionals.

Aimed at Small Businesses

While big companies may dominate most outdoors and traditional advertising, everyone is equal in Google Maps, where convenience is the rule.

The whole design behind small thanks is aimed directly at small to medium-sized businesses that rely on the local market.

Google Ads Compatible

Google Small Thanks is fully compatible with Google's ads, and the two tools work seamlessly together. This enables you to use the content made through Small Thanks on your ads and reap the benefits of exposing your best customer reviews to the world.

Making You Easy to Find

Tell us if the following scenario sounds familiar: You are at a park with your friends or significant other when the sun starts to go down, inviting a chilly breeze into the air. You decide to finish off a wonderful day by going to the bar, but no one knows the area enough to recommend one. What do you do? Google it, of course! And showing up first in the results can make all the difference in the world. Small Thanks actively helps customers to find you by linking your reviews with Google maps.

Useful Information

These designs from Small Thanks with Google were made to display helpful information about your business with potential customers elegantly. This information can be simple things like a contact phone number, social media, location, and other things people tend to look for when interested in a business. Another creative way to use this is also to inform your clients about your business's opening and closing time clearly and fashionably.

Business Authenticity

Whenever people give a business their best review, what happens in effect is that they are vouching for that enterprise's quality and honesty, something that significantly facilitates earning the trust of new customers. In effect, they are saying, "I had a great experience with this product or service and would recommend it to anyone willing to give it a try." Making such a statement known to a more significant number of people can only benefit your business.

Small Thanks is an excellent tool for any small or medium-sized business looking to make promotion as cheap and effective as possible because it uses one of the most prolific and valuable natural resources in Marketing: Real Opinions.

At the end of the day, there is simply no better marketing strategy than good old word of mouth, and any tool that knows how to make good use of it is worth the try.