Getting a business off the ground can be extremely difficult even for experienced entrepreneurs. Google can take away some of the headache with just a few of their free (or extremely reasonable) resources.
Get started by opening a Gmail account. Gmail allows you to create filters to organize your personal and your business email messages. It's also really easy to organize your contacts into groups. Rather than spend a lot of money on an email newsletter service, it's a good idea to send your customers a weekly newsletter simply by opening an email and sending the email to the group of your choice.
Another free resource that you can use to promote your business is Blogger.com. Whether you are starting an online or offline company, it's always good to maintain some sort of presence on the internet. Blogger.com is a free service and whatever your niche, you can promote it with a blog. With a full range of customizable templates, even the novice can use a blog to get their business off the ground. Write content regularly with helpful info pertaining to your niche and people will begin to take notice. Over time, a blog can direct lots of traffic (online or offline) to your site (website or physical site). In addition to writing content regularly comment on other people's blogs who may have a similar niche as you. They may be competitors, but there is mutual benefit in establishing a network with other like-minded entrepreneurs (the same principle is at work when you see a half dozen drug stores on the same block). Use Google Reader to organize all of the blogs you read so that you can keep up-to-date on what's going on in your niche.
Once you've created a blog, use Google Analytics to help you see if you are increasing your traffic. You can even see which key words people are using to find your site and then increase your mention of those keywords to bring even more traffic. Analytics will be a great resource to help you improve your blog.
Google doesn't only have free blogs to fuel your entrepreneurial spirit, they also have free websites. Google Sites allows you to build a site for your startup and makes it easy to collaborate with others. There's no longer a need for everyone on the team to be in one place at the same time, Google sites allows multiple collaborators to contribute to the finished product and help build a dynamic, customizable, user-friendly site that will attract people to your business. Incorporate Google Docs and you will be able to work on a project together in real time whether you are in a different room or in a different country. Or you can create a document and then let your colleague revise or add to the content.
Google Calendar is another tool that can be used to share information with customers or colleagues. Load all your data into your Google Calendar and make it available to the public as another way of helping customers find you. Allow colleagues to add events to your calendar and even change things on each others calendars. Set alerts so that you never miss an appointment or an opportunity again.
Finally, Google offers some great tools to promote your business. Adwords allows you to purchase advertisements that will be viewed on other people's sites. Millions of people are placing Google Ads on their sites and Google matches your content with theirs based on keywords. You get to chose which keywords will be used to place your ads and you get to set how much you want to spend each month. After you've used up your money, Google will stop showing your ad. The only time you pay is when someone actually clicks on your ad and comes to your site. You can even narrow the placement of your ads to a certain geographical region and/or a certain age demographic. If you want, you can even place these ads on your blog or Google Site through Adsense to make a little bit more money for yourself.
Google offers many other free services that can be beneficial to the entrepreneur. Hopefully, these resources will get you well on your way to creating a successful business.