Free, easy online advertising is just a click away for your business. All you need to do is take advantage of it.

As a business owner, you have the unique opportunity to create a Google Places page to make it easy for potential clients, customers, and visitors to find information about your business. All you need is a Google User ID, and a bit of understanding of how Google Places pages work.

When you search for your business in Google Maps, a link to your company’s Google Places page should appear, as well as a marker pointing out the business location on the map. This is what people who search for your business will see. Your responsibility is to make sure that this contains all the information that person may want.

When you search for your business and click on the name of your company’s listing to view the Google Places page, you should see an option in the upper-right corner to “Edit this Place – Business Owner?” Select the “Business Owner” link, then sign in or create a new Google ID. From here, you can verify your ownership of the business, as well as add or edit information to your listing. Make sure that your listing is as complete as possible, so that people get as much information as they can when they search for you.

Once you’ve added all the information you can, encourage past and present clients and customers to rate and review your business on your Google Places page. This will make it easier for other potential clients and customers to determine the quality of your business, based on real user ratings and comments.

For more information about how you can take advantage of your company’s online web presence, make sure you check out our other article, “7 Ways to Improve Your Online Branding.”

QR, or “Quick Response,” codes are suddenly appearing everywhere. The little black and white matrix barcodes encourage savvy smartphone users to scan and find out more about what hides behind that checkered box.

Modern marketing strategists are understanding more and more about how they can help draw in tech-savvy crowds using QR codes. With the ability to provide a lot of information in just a small space, these codes encourage users to go beyond the advertisement and find information on their own.

A QR code can contain a wide variety of data, including but not limited to a link to a website, a brief amount of text, or even a full contact card to add to a user’s phone. Utilizing these codes can help you to provide easy-to-access information to interested parties with a click of a button. Businesses of all kinds are finding ways to incorporate these barcodes into their marketing, from realtors providing links to a listings website, to freelancers providing contact information to encourage easy future contact.

Be creative with QR codes. With services like bit.ly and invx.com that make it incredibly easy to generate your own codes, there’s no reason not to play with this trendy technology in your future marketing campaigns.

For more information on how you can incorporate QR codes into your advertising and marketing campaigns, contact the design professionals at Rampant Creative Group.