Welcome to Part 3 of Jet’s Favorite Freesources! Got a good one for you here today. If you didn’t catch our past releases, hit this link right HERE and don’t forget to read up on all of the good, free supplemental information that followed the Freesource posts.

When we talk about improving the business processes and organizational and marketing strategy for pet stores, GSuite is one of our best friends. As both an employee and a small business owner, we highly highly highly recommend utilizing GSuite for…all of your needs. It’s so easy to use and so powerful and so multifunctional. Here’s some examples:

Send an email? Use GMail through GSuite.
Hosting and sharing files? Use Drive through GSuite.
Planning out your Q4? Use Docs through GSuite.
Managing budgets? Use Sheets through GSuite.
Schedule a meeting? Use Calendar through GSuite.

There’s a lot more that we’ll get into in a minute, but let’s start with a 30,000 foot view: Google entered 2019 with 5 million paying G Suite customers — a number that’s increased by 25% since the beginning of 2017. I’ll let that statistic speak for itself: G Suite is a highly valuable tool for individuals and businesses worldwide.

We’re going to go through a LOT of features, so remember just take it one step of a time. Might want to bookmark this so you can reference it later! If it all seems like a lot to handle and you want to delegate all of these matters to competent paws, give us a shout and we’ll manage your marketing strategy for your pet store!

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If you haven’t tapped into the G Suite platform for your business, we encourage you to check it out. Read through this guide to better understand the G Suite platform, how you can optimize your account, and how you can use the tool to grow better. Better yet, bookmark this so you can reference it later.

What is GSuite?

G Suite is a collection of business, productivity, collaboration, and education software developed and powered by Google. The primary G Suite tools include Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Calendar, Google+, Sites, Hangouts, and Keep.

While G Suite services are free for consumers, businesses have to pay for enterprise features such as a custom email domain, unlimited cloud storage, additional administrative and marketing tools, and 24/7 support. We’ll get into the G Suite pricing structure later. Even without the business package, Google’s products can still vastly improve your pet store’s organization, marketing, and ultimately make your life as a pet store owner much easier.

GSuite Products & Benefits

We won’t go into EVERYTHING here, just some of more popular ones and then we’ll give a few examples of how these can help YOUR pet store.

Gmail

Gmail is the G Suite email software. It was released in 2004 and now has over 1 billion users worldwide.

With a G Suite plan, businesses enjoy 30GB of storage space, custom company email addresses (yourname@yourpetstore.com), unlimited Google Group email addresses, 24/7 phone and email support, and compatible add-ons available through the G Suite Marketplace.

An easy benefit to your pet store through Gmail is the ease of use, search functionality, ability to organize your emails into folders, create simple out-of-office and vacation auto-responders, and more. Market your pet store better through the use of a professional email address at your own pet store’s website to create a fully branded online identity.

Drive

Google Drive is the G Suite cloud storage platform and was launched in 2012. Drive can manage and store all of your company’s content and supports collaboration across your entire organization. It also allows you to view various file formats so you don’t have to download additional software to your devices.

Depending on the G Suite plan, businesses enjoy 30GB, 1TB, or unlimited storage per user and audit and reporting insights for Drive content. The non-business plan still gets 15GB of space, plenty to run your pet store on.

What would a pet store save in the Drive? How about next month’s schedule? Or this year’s quarterly returns? Or a vendor contact list? Maybe a comprehensive written marketing strategy or roadmap for your pet store? Whatever your business needs, you can store it safely in the Drive, and share it with as many or as few collaborators as you’d like.

Docs, Sheets, and Slides

Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides are the G Suite word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation programs, respectively. They were added to the platform in 2006.

These programs allow real-time collaboration, save changes automatically, and track revision history. Users can insert comments, suggest edits, communicate through a built-in chat, and create templates for future use.

With a G Suite plan, businesses enjoy unlimited revision history among other perks. Non-business plans still enjoy a vast array of features and functions that don’t limit the average user at all.

Your pet store could save your marketing strategy as a Doc, your yearly returns as a Sheet, and your branding kit in Google Slides.

Forms

Google Forms is the G Suite web form and survey tool. Also launched in 2006, Forms shares many of the same features as Docs, Sheets, and Slides, such as automatic saving, real-time collaboration, and template creation. To collect data through Forms, users can personalize surveys or quizzes, send respondents the URL, and review the data (that’s automatically collected in Sheets).

As a pet store owner, you could poll employees on potential changes, or you could survey your customers and share this through your online assets (also available with MailChimp).

Calendar

Google Calendar is the G Suite online calendar. It was launched in 2006 and integrates with Gmail to manage schedules, appointments, meetings, and tasks (via Google Tasks).

With a G Suite plan, businesses enjoy smart scheduling (where employees can see open windows of time on coworkers’ calendars), calendars for Google Groups, calendars for meeting rooms and shared resources, public calendars so customers can view company events, and easy migration from external calendars (e.g. iCal, Outlook, or Exchange).

Need to plan a meeting, or several, meetings? Calendar can help your pet store with that.

Conclusion

Seems like we’ve said the letter “G” and the word “Google” enough for one Insider post. We’ll see if we can wrap this up without saying either of those:

The products listed above are almost entirely FREE unless you get the business plan. Even with the free options, these are incredibly powerful tools that when used the right way will absolutely improve your pet store’s marketing, organization, and culture. Want some assistance? Stay tuned for more Freesources coming your way!