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(1) Establish legitimacy before marketing Before tools, ads, or social media, businesses need legal footing, clarity of purpose, and basic compliance. This prevents rework later. Business plans with Google Clarifies your value proposition, target customer, pricing, and growth path. This info is often required for funding, grants, or partnerships. Visit their Skillshop to learn about Google products (e.g., Ads, Analytics) and become certified. Small Business Administration Business Guide 10-step guide to help business owners plan, launch, manage, and grow! (2) Claim your brand Even without a website, people will search online for more information about your brand. This step ensures what they find is accurate and professional. Google Business Profile A business profile on Google is essential for local discovery, and it’s entirely free. Your profile controls how your business appears in Google Search and Maps, including reviews, hours, and photos. Canva Brand Kit Lets businesses upload logos, set brand colors and fonts, and apply them consistently across all designs — essential for credible visual identity. You can also use their ‘Media Kit’ for free. Namecheap Domain Registration Owning your domain early prevents brand confusion and enables email + website later—even if you don’t build immediately. You only need to select one place to register your domain. Alternatives include Wix and 101 Domain. (3) Launch a simple website At this stage, clarity beats customization. A functional site builds trust and gives customers a place to land. Adobe Express This is the website-building tool all of my digital marketing students are trained on since it’s free and extremely user-friendly. I have tutorials I can share if you’d like to use Express to build your site. Squarespace On Squarespace, you can also include an online store and add scheduling tools. Wix Wix is commonly used by small business owners for it’s ease of use. This site also includes an AI-site builder. WordPress The tool’s drag-and-drop features, and multiple templates and widgets, make this tool attractive to first-time users. (4) Organize your assets and customers This step prevents information sprawl (i.e., customer notes, content ideas, and to-do lists exist in one place.) Notion A flexible, low-cost way to manage content ideas, basic customer relationship management (CRM) notes, task lists, and early-stage operations in one place. Discovery & Traffic SEO & Organic Discovery AnswerThePublic | AlsoAsked These tools reveal what people are actually asking about your products or services, helping you create content that matches real search intent rather than guessing keywords. BuiltWith Shows the technologies your competitors use (e.g., analytics, ads, platforms), offering insight into their marketing maturity and strategic choices. GeoImgr Adds location metadata to images, which can strengthen local SEO signals for businesses competing in geographically specific markets (e.g., Morgantown, Pittsburgh). Local Falcon Visualizes how your business ranks in Google Maps across different locations, revealing where local visibility is strong, or weak. If local marketing matters to you, this tool’s local rank tracker should be helpful. Moz | Free SEO Tools Provides accessible diagnostics (e.g., site health, keyword insights, link analysis) that help small businesses understand SEO fundamentals without overwhelming complexity. Google Search Console This critical tool shows how Google actually indexes and displays your site. You can find out what search queries drive impressions, where clicks occur, and where technical issues may block visibility. Its Insights Finder tool is esp. helpful. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) | LLM Discoverability HubSpot AEO Grader | OpenAI’s ChatGPT Merchants program As discovery increasingly occurs through AI-powered systems (e.g., ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews), visibility is shaped less by keywords or bids and more by how clearly and credibly a business’s information is represented online. Approaches such as Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and large language model optimization (LLMO) emphasize clarity, authority, and structured information so content can be accurately summarized and surfaced by AI tools. Diagnostic resources like HubSpot’s AEO Grader can help assess content readiness, while emerging programs such as OpenAI’s ‘ChatGPT Merchants’ reflect a more limited, commerce-specific pathway for product visibility within AI-driven shopping experiences. Paid Search | SEM Google Ads Paid ads, especially on Google, enables immediate visibility in search results for high-intent queries, making it useful when organic rankings are still developing. You can also advertise your business on social media (e.g., TikTok, LinkedIn), Amazon, and Spotify- among other channels. Audience Discovery & Insight Think with Google | Find My Audience Uses Google’s aggregate insights to identify high-value audience segments based on interests, behaviors, and purchase intent, useful for both paid and organic strategy. Making Better Content Canva Magic Studio AI-assisted writing and design tools help small teams create on-brand content faster without starting from scratch. GrammarlyGO Improves clarity, tone, and professionalism in marketing copy, emails, and web content with minimal effort. Powtoon Makes it easy to create short animated explainers and how-to videos for products or services. Zoom | To Create Videos Enables recording of demos, webinars, and tutorials that can be reused across websites, email, and social media. Customer Conversion Beehiiv Platform Newsletters are becoming central customer touchpoints for businesses building direct, owned audiences. Email Marketing (Kit), Email at Scale (Sender), & Conversion Tracking (Metricool) Kit and Sender enable email segmentation and campaign execution without enterprise complexity, including generous free options (e.g., “free forever”), while Metricool helps you assess how email contributes to engagement and conversion across channels. Google Workspace Provides professional email, shared calendars, and document collaboration- foundational for day-to-day operations. Hootsuite Centralizes scheduling, monitoring, & analytics across multiple social platforms. Standard includes 10 social accounts. Later.com | Instagram Stories for Business Teaches practical, platform-specific storytelling techniques that support engagement and conversion. Mailchimp A long-standing SMB-friendly platform for email campaigns, automations, and basic audience segmentation. Milled | E-Commerce Emails Allows businesses to study real-world email campaigns from other brands to improve their own messaging. YouTube Analytics Shows how viewers discover, engage with, and drop off from video content- critical for optimization. Analytics & Performance Google Analytics Tracks how users interact with your website so you can identify what drives engagement and conversions. GTmetrix Diagnoses site speed and performance issues that directly affect user experience and search rankings. Page Speed Insights | Google Provides mobile & desktop speed insights (e.g., SEO) and recommendations benchmarked against competitors. WebPageTest Offers advanced, diagnostic-level performance testing across devices and locations. Future-Proofing BBB | Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU) Established in 1974, CARU helps those marketing to children comply with federal privacy and advertising standards. Chamber of Commerce | Digital Assets The U.S. Chambers of Commerce provides a guide for small & medium-sized businesses to safeguard digital assets. FTC | Matters Related to Privacy Clarifies best practices for protecting consumer privacy (e.g., identity), including health and children’s data. This information helps brands avoid harmful or non-compliant targeting. Operations & Digital Hygiene Inkless is a free, lightweight e-signature tool that allows small businesses to send, sign, and manage documents without paid contracts or complex setup. Tools like this help future-proof operations by reducing friction, supporting remote work, and establishing professional workflows early, before scale makes change costly. Responsible Use of AI | Google Introduces ethical principles and practical considerations for using AI responsibly in business. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) also has a helpful recommendation for using AI ethically. TermsFeed | Privacy Policy Generators Simplifies the creation of legally required privacy disclosures for websites and digital services. WVU Students and Faculty Can Help | Intake Form If you are a local WV business in Morgantown (or the surrounding area), and you’d like to partner with Chambers College of Business (including the STAR Lab!) for an experiential learning project, please complete our intake form.